Harvey Milk

Video from the Freedom Requires Wings YouTube channel. Made by Patrick.

Harvey Milk was arguably one of the founders of the gay rights movement and changed the mentalities of hundreds of thousands of Americans from San Francisco to New York City. Born and bred in New York, he lead a very secretive, closeted life until he was in his 40s after his experiences in the counterculture of the 1960s; a movement also known as the Hippy movement, which spread the message of love and peace. He moved to San Francisco in 1969 and after three attempts, he became the first gay politician ever elected to public office, winning a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977.

He served almost 11 months in office, and during that time he passed a gay rights ordinance for the city. Since the end of World War II, San Francisco was the home of thousands of gay men who were expelled from the military on the grounds of their sexual orientation and had decided to stay rather than return to their hometowns and face discrimination. By the beginning of the 1970s, the city had more gay people per capita than any other city in America. But at this time, the then-mayor, Joseph Alioto, was enforcing laws that were strongly anti-gay, forcing men out of gay bars where they would face arrest and away from rented apartments where they would be evicted if caught having sex with another man. Ultimately, nowhere was left except the parks of San Francisco, and when Mayor Alioto asked the police to target the parks it lead to 2,800 gay men being arrested for public sex in 1971. A far cry from the 63 similar arrests made in New York City for the same year. In addition, all of these arrests required registration as a sex offender.

But these weren't the only reasons Milk went into politics. Other problems like high sales taxes for businesses and lack of school equipment, pushed him to make a difference. Later in his political career he became an advocate for gay rights. Anita Bryant was running an anti-gay campaign at the time and this prompted many gay men to run for election. Harvey came out on top though, and won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, sending shockwaves through the American press. His swearing-in made national headlines. He walked into the San Francisco city hall arm-in-arm with his boyfriend Jack Lira and said "You can stand around and throw bricks at Silly Hall or you can take it over. Well, here we are."

Milk supported gay rights and helped kick-start the gay rights movement that is running so strongly today. Even after his assassination by Dan White on November 27th, 1978 which rocked the city of San Francisco as well as the rest of the United States, he made sure that people were staying strong and fighting for their rights through a recording he had made after he started receiving more and more violent death threats later into his campaign. "If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door" he said. His work started to make it easier for members of the LGBT community to come out and, more importantly, feel safe and be accepted for who they are. But more work remains to be done to this day. We can see that through the numerous suicides we read in the news every month, and one listen to the conservatives' anti-gay mentalities will tell you how those suicides happen. But Milk's message of hope is a message that's even stronger today, and echoed by organisations such as the It Gets Better Project, Gay-Straight Alliances in schools, GLSEN and the Trevor Project, and we must remember that we've come a long way since the 1970s but a lot of work remains to be done.

Milk was included in the "Time 100 Heroes and Icons of the 20th Century" as "a symbol of what gays can accomplish and the dangers they face in doing so". The American director Gus Van Sant made a film called Milk about the life and work of Harvey Milk in San Francisco which received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, winning two for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Sean Penn and Best Original Screenplay for Dustin Lance Black. In August 2009, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contribution to the gay rights movement stating "he fought discrimination with visionary courage and conviction".

Dan White was sentenced to seven and two-thirds years for the voluntary manslaughter of Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. He cried when he heard the verdict. He would be released after five.


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