As he turned 40, Harvey Milk was a closeted insurance salesman who looked for love in New York City cruising spots, always fearing a police bust would end his career, as it did to so many gay men of his generation.

Then, in a phenomenal eight-year burst of courage and leadership, he moved to San Francisco, came out, opened a camera shop in the gay Castro neighborhood and repeatedly ran for office until he won a spot on the city's Board of Supervisors.

Milk inspired and cajoled countless people into getting honest with heterosexual friends and relatives about being gay, because he knew only truth was powerful enough to halt the wave of anti-gay laws spearheaded by singer Anita Bryant.

The witty, jug-eared Milk triggered hatred and fear among people threatened by changing times. In 1978, he was assassinated.

His killer was not a lunatic deadbeat but a fellow supervisor — Dan White, a financially struggling married dad with a jealous, stingy view of the world and its possibilities — who finally snapped.

Harvey Milk's life ended far too early. But as the mesmerizing new film "Milk" shows, for those eight years his life burned brightly — spreading enlightenment, warmth and hope.

Academy Award winner Sean Penn, a former husband of gay men's icon Madonna, doesn't so much play Milk as channel him.

Those of us who came to admire the theatrical, energetic Milk through Randy Shilts' book "The Mayor of Castro Street" and an Oscar-winning documentary, "The Times of Harvey Milk," can appreciate that the film captures Milk's quirky creativity: Pushing to require dog owners to clean up after their pets, the media savvy Milk summoned reporters to a park and, TV cameras rolling, stepped into a strategically placed pile of poop.

But what ultimately makes Penn's performance so powerful is his poignant depiction of how deeply Milk felt the pain of individual gay people suffering from societal hostility.

When a drunken, increasingly marginalized White whines to Milk that having the gay "issue" gives him a political "advantage," Milk responds: "Dan, I have had four relationships in my life. And three of them tried to commit suicide, and it's my fault because I kept them hidden and quiet because I was closeted and weak. ... This is not just jobs or issues. This is our lives we're fighting for."

Despite his political triumphs — passing a gay-rights ordinance in San Francisco and defeating the Briggs Initiative, which sought a California-wide ban on gay and gay-friendly teachers — Milk never lost touch with how desperately younger gay people needed a lifeline.

"There is nothing wrong with you. ... You are not sick, and you are not wrong, and God does not hate you," Milk reassured a suicidal teenager calling from Minnesota to say his parents were planning to institutionalize him.

Although three decades have passed since Milk's murder, the movie's storyline is eerily similar to our current wave of anti-gay ballot initiatives.

But for me, the film's biggest gift was getting to feel like I was spending two hours beside a true American hero, learning and laughing, and being reminded of the huge impact every individual is capable of making. Harvey Milk's message was and will always be: Come out.

Deb Price of The Detroit News writes the first nationally syndicated column on gay issues. To find out more about Deb Price and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.