Thereâs not much I can add about Harvey Milkâs contribution to Gay Right. He was one of the first openly gay people in the United States to win an election for public office as a San Francisco City Supervisor. He was dubbed âthe Mayor of Castro Streetâ by his constituents in the predominantly Gay neighborhood. Numerous books have written about his legacy, his murder by a fellow city supervisor.
I worked in downtown San Francisco at the time. It was an exciting but tense time. Gays were being attacked by conservative politicians regularly.
In 1977 the pious singer Anita Bryant led a campaign to overturn a gay rights ban in Florida. This was vigorously opposed by gay people across the country. Milk led a 5 mile long protest March (âOut of the Bars and into the Streetsâ) which I joined.
In 1978 there was proposed law would have made firing gay teachersâand any public school employees who supported gay rightsâmandatory. (Milk vigorously campaigned against it.) it eventually lost by more than a million votes.
At the 1977 Gay Pride parade in San Francisco he had said to the crowd:
âOn this anniversary of Stonewall, I ask my gay sisters and brothers to make the commitment to fight. For themselves, for their freedom, for their country ... We will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets ... We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions. We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I'm going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out. Come out to your parents, your relatives.â
In November 1978, conservative San Francisco Supervisor Dan White resign, saying the salary for the position was too low. Almost immediately he regretted his decision and asked the Mayor to be reinstated. Although Mayor Moscone initially considered it, Milk opposed it and let his feeling known.
I remember riding to work on the bus, reading about the topsy-turvey event wondering how it would all end. During this time period, 900 people of the âPeopleâs Templeâ committed suicide in Guiana - many of them were from San Francisco and the Bay Area. Then on November 27, 1978, Dan White bypassed metal detectors and murdered both Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk.
Itâs hard to described the climate of the city at this time - after both horrific events.
Even Whiteâs own supporters described him as:
âas a man with a pugilistic temper and an impressive capacity for nurturing a grudge"
Yet White was only convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to serve seven and two-thirds years. How? His attorneys claimed he ate an excessive amount junk food (the Twinkie Defense) which altered his perception.
White served 5 years of his sentence, serving a year parole in Los Angeles. He returned to San Francisco but his marriage soon ended. On October 21, 1985, White committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in his garage. (Frankly a death too good for him.)
But Harvey Milk is still will remembered 40+ years later.
A plaza at the intersection of Castro Street and Market Street was name in his own (flying an enormous gay flag).
In August 2009, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Terminal 1 at San Francisco International Airport was named after Milk in 2018.
