SUPERVISOR HARVEY MILK (1930–1978)

 

“The closet” doesn’t just connote the shame of having to lie about one’s identity and life. A closet is the small, dark, enclosed space where we keep things that we don’t want to look at. Thus, coming out of the closet is more than truth-telling; it’s entering the world and, with the act of being seen and reckoned with, changing society. After the Stonewall riots of 1969 debuted the rebellion against government-sponsored persecution, gay people were increasingly visible and becoming bolder. The next year, lesbians staged a zap at the Second Congress to Unite Women, wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the words Lavender Menace and signaling that lesbians wouldn’t be in the closet for feminism. By 1973, the American Psychiatric Association announced the removal of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and began to promote antidiscrimination laws to protect LGBT Americans.

This was the world to which the first openly gay nonincumbent man to be elected to public office belonged, caught between exhilarating openness and high-stakes backlash. Long before there was debate about gay people in the military, Harvey Milk served honorably in the United States Navy on active duty during the Korean War. In 1972, Milk moved from New York to San Francisco and, with his boyfriend Scott Smith, opened a camera shop on Castro Street, an emerging gay neighborhood. Provoked by disgust over Watergate and buoyed by an exciting out gay community, Milk decided to run for office. Veterans of campaigns often say some version of “If you’ve run for office and lost only once, you haven’t run for office.” The trick to winning is to not be deterred by your loss from running again. By the time Milk won the race for San Francisco city supervisor in 1977, he had run three times.

The world of Harvey Milk was partly one of great change and freedom, as countless minorities—women, people with disabilities, people of color—began organizing for their human rights. Milk’s tenure coincided not only with a movement steadily gaining momentum, but also with the beginnings of the organized anti–gay rights movement.

For instance, on January 18, 1977, Florida’s Dade County Commission voted 5 to 3 to enact an ordinance banning discrimination against gays in employment, housing, and public accommodations. This was the first time a Southern city passed a gay rights law. That year alone, gay rights bills and ordinances were passed in more than forty cities and antidiscrimination bills emerged in twenty-eight state legislatures. The year 1977 looked as though it would usher in legal recourse to gays who were vulnerable to harm in every area of life and might end perpetrators’ utter impunity. There was hope that cultural attitudes had shifted so that gay people could come out without fear of reprisal.

But 1977 also saw the rise of the organized backlash. A former Miss America runner-up, pop singer, born-again Christian, and Florida Citrus Commission’s orange juice promoter Anita Bryant attended a revival at Miami’s Northside Baptist Church. The preacher there railed against the new Dade County ordinance that protected gay people against discrimination. Bryant established the group Save Our Children, attracting media outlets with her celebrity status and spreading her slogan, Homosexuals cannot reproduce so they must recruit. Vilifying gays as child molesters, rapists, and homosexual “recruiters,” Bryant collected sixty-five thousand signatures, more than six times the amount needed, on petitions to repeal the law. Gay advocates and groups were not prepared for the political onslaught, intense organizing, and fear-mongering.

On June 7, 1977, known as Orange Tuesday, the ordinance was repealed by 69 percent of Dade County voters in a special ballot election. This defeat set off a wave of repeals of nondiscrimination ordinances in 1978 in St. Paul, Minnesota, Wichita, Kansas, and Eugene, Oregon. On the heels of these repeals, State Senator John Briggs sponsored Proposition 6 to ban homosexuals from teaching in public schools in California. The Briggs proposition ultimately failed, but some gay teachers and gay public officials still lost their jobs during this time of fomenting hatred. In the face of this bigotry, gay rights advocates gained strength and strategies. They protested Anita Bryant’s appearances (including the very first “pie-ing” incident on live TV), forced her sponsors to retract their support through boycotts of any company even rumored to be promoting Save Our Children, and fervently boycotted all Bryant-endorsed products. By 1980, the Florida Citrus Commission did not renew Bryant’s contract.

Harvey Milk didn’t have a chance to savor Bryant’s eventual fall from grace. Less than a year after Supervisor Milk was elected, he and Mayor George Moscone were killed by former Board of Supervisors colleague Dan White. White served five years for the double murder, but Milk’s tragic death—as his fame and influence were escalating—ensured his place in history. His brief career in public life marked the beginning of progay electoral politics. Milk demonstrated, in words and deeds, the power of having a “face” on an issue. Visibility is the first step toward liberation. Milk understood how even protest is a good sign for gay people, because it indicates that they are here, queer, and gaining ground.

The “Hope” speech which follows was Milk’s stump speech, delivered often as he built his branch of the strong, gorgeous, and always-growing tree of human rights.