Let’s get one thing out of the way first: Nearly every minute of Freeheld is heartbreaking to watch. The movie, adapted from the Academy Award-winning documentary short of the same name, chronicles the last days of New Jersey police lieutenant Laurel Hester (Julianne Moore) as she battles late-stage cancer and fights to have her pension awarded to her partner, Stacie Andree (Ellen Page). So, yes, it’s wrenching all the way through, but never more so than when we see Hester, gasping for breath as she breaths oxygen from a tube, plea for equality for same-sex couples.
Even if you don’t see Freeheld, showing now in select cities and opening more widely this weekend, you can see the real Hester make her plea on YouTube. However, you probably wouldn’t have seen it when she made it in 2005. YouTube had only just started then, and you didn't see PSAs go viral through online activism campaigns. Twitter was still a few months away from launching, Facebook still required a college email address to join, and the online political activism fine-tuned by the campaigns of Howard Dean and Barack Obama was still to come. Rallying people to Hester's cause, as Freeheld shows, required a lot of grassroots organizing Steven Goldstein (played by Steve Carell) of Garden State Equality.
To young people who may see equality as a given and don't remember a time before social media gave everyone a megaphone, it may seem like ancient history. But it was less than 10 years ago.
“I think this story would’ve been very different [if it happened today],” Freeheld director Peter Sollett says. “Steven Goldstein who is a very clever political activist is now very active on social media and I think he would’ve been at that time had he had Twitter, and Periscope, and YouTube and all of these things.”
Of course, little of what happened to Hester and Andree a decade ago would happen today, given the Supreme Court's landmark decision. But it's hard not to be reminded while watching Freeheld of just how much social change has been driven by the incredible power of social media.
The It Gets Better campaign has blown up on YouTube in the past decade, providing online support to LGBT youth. Facebook has raised awareness of the treatment of queer people the world over. Transgender folks are using Tumblr to promote visibility. Some 50 million people watched the finale of Friends, and three times as many saw President Obama’s tweet supporting marriage equality in 2013. Fast-forward to today and marriage equality is the law of the land and Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, is a meme. That’s the difference a decade makes.
It’s a nice reminder. All too often, especially when it comes to acceptance, it’s easy to see the Internet as a cesspool of hate. But then you watch a film like Freeheld and think, “Oh man, the right hashtag would’ve gotten that on MSNBC in less than 24 hours,” and it’s hard not to be struck by how different things are now. And not just because we have Rachel Maddow.
"It's an interesting conversation about the LGBT community and things like smartphones or computers or the internet, because I think it’s so easy to be so negative about new technology," says Page. "Social media and iPhones, as much as I can read a lot of hatred on them, I think ultimately it’s so beneficial. It's something that can make kids feel less isolated, or help them find other people."
Page speaks from experience. She's probably been one of those other people some isolated LGBT teen found. Prior to filming Freeheld, Page very publicly came out in 2014 when video from a Human Rights Campaign event almost instantly went viral. She got a second round of online fame when video of her debating gay rights with Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz hit the web in August.
It’s that last bit, though, that serves as a counterbalance to any warm-fuzzy feelings prompted by the rate of change since Hester fought for some measure of equality. As the film's epilogue notes, Andree still lives in the home she shared with Hester, who died shortly after winning the fight to give Andree her pension, and same-sex couples enjoy the same rights as everyone else. But there are those who refuse to accept change and wish to turn back progress. Sollett is quick to make that point to anyone who says he's film feels dated.
"Some people have asked me—and in fact I’ve seen journalists argue with one another about it—about whether or not the fact that marriage equality is now the law of the land makes this film outdated," the director says. "I think everybody who is thinking along those lines is completely missing the fact that you can’t legislate tolerance. Just because you can get married, doesn’t mean you’re not going to get spit on in the street."
