Commentary

Harvey Milk’s civil rights legacy lives on, sailing the high seas

Harvey Milk’s civil rights legacy lives on, sailing the high seas
The United States Navy has chosen LGBT rights activist and former San Francisco Supervisor, Harvey Milk, for a ship in his honor in its new fleet of replenishment oil tankers. Other honorees include illustrious civil rights icons Sojourner Truth, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Robert F. Kennedy, suffragist Lucy Stone, and U. S. Rep. John Lewis.

Only two years ago, the United States Postal Service released a long-awaited and overdue postage stamp in honor of Harvey Milk, a pioneering legislator and advocate not only for the civil and human rights of LGBTQ people, but for all people, especially those who had been traditionally locked out of the legislative power structure that often attempted to control their lives.

Once in office, Harvey shepherded a comprehensive ordinance for LGBT rights through the Board of Supervisors and worked successfully to defeat the draconian Proposition 6 on the November 7, 1978, California ballot. The proposition was sponsored by John Briggs, a conservative state legislator from Orange County and, if passed, would have mandated the firing of all LGBT public school teachers as well as anyone who supported LGBT rights in the schools. Briggs alleged that gay teachers desired to abuse, molest, and “recruit” youth.

Just three weeks later, after serving only eleven months in office, Harvey Milk and his friend and political ally, George Moscone, the Mayor of San Francisco, were brutally murdered by Dan White, another supervisor who recently quit the board, but changed his mind and demanded to be reinstated.

The controversy that surrounded Harvey during his time in electoral politics did not end with his assassination. Following the announcement by the U.S. Postal Service in 2014, the ultra right-wing American Family Association (AFA) initiated a two-pronged boycott of the stamp. At the time, they wrote their supporters:

1. Refuse to accept the Harvey Milk stamp if offered by your local post office. Instead, ask for a stamp of the United States flag. 2. Refuse to accept mail at your home or business if it is postmarked with the Harvey Milk stamp. Simply write ‘Return to Sender’ on the envelope and tell your postman you won’t accept it.

AFA’s mission is “to inform, equip, and activate individuals to strengthen the moral foundations of American culture, and give aid to the church here and abroad in its task of fulfilling the Great Commission,” and to “restrain evil by exposing the works of darkness” by “championing Christian activism.”

AFA justified its action to stamp out Harvey:

The Harvey Milk stamp was a result of seven years of lobbying by a self-described drag queen (a biological [California] man with implanted breasts) and former transsexual prostitute Nicole Murray Ramirez of San Diego. Honoring predator Harvey Milk on a U.S. postage stamp is disturbing to say the least. Harvey Milk was a very disreputable man and used his charm and power to prey on young boys with emotional problems and drug addiction. He is the last person we should be featuring on a stamp.

In actuality, no amount of cis-supremacist rantings by the AFA will ever diminish Nicole Murray Ramirez’ integrity and groundbreaking lobbying efforts for the establishment of a postage stamp and California state holiday to honor civil rights pioneer, Cesar Chavez.

A crucial point in the psychology of stereotyping and scapegoating is the representation of minoritized groups as, in historian John Boswell’s words, “animals bent on the destruction of the children of the majority,” and dominant groups have long accused LGBT people of acting as dangerous predators of young people.

Former beauty queen and Florida Orange Juice Commission spokesperson Anita Bryant, for example, spearheaded her so-called “Save Our Children” campaign, which succeeded in overturning a gay-rights ordinance in Dade Country, Florida in 1977. The ordinance was finally reinstated in 1998. According to Bryant, “a particularly deviant-minded [gay] teacher could sexually molest children.”

These stereotypes have been validated institutionally. The 1992 Republican Party platform openly endorsed this oppression, stating that “[The Republican Party] opposes any legislation or law which legally recognizes same-sex marriages and allows such couples to adopt children or provide foster care.” In fact, some states still explicitly ban LGBT people from adopting or serving as foster parents.

In recent years, the fear of alleged pedophilia had been used to justify the ban on gay and bisexual Boy Scouts and Boy Scouts of America leaders as argued by Rob Schwarzwalder, vice president of the conservative Washington, D.C.-based public policy and lobbying organization, Family Research Council (FRC): “The reality is, homosexuals have entered the Scouts in the past for predatory purposes.”

FRC President Tony Perkins, in a 2011 fundraising letter for the organization addressing the LGBT communities’ so-called public promotion of homosexuality to youth, wrote: “The videos are titled ‘It Gets Better.’ They are aimed at persuading kids that although they’ll face struggles and perhaps bullying for ‘coming out’ as homosexual (or transgendered or some other perversion), life will get better. …It’s disgusting. And it’s part of a concerted effort to persuade kids that homosexuality is okay and actually to recruit them into that lifestyle.”

Harvey recorded a will that was to be played in the event of his assassination. In it he stated that he never considered himself simply as a candidate for public office, but rather, always considered himself as part of a liberation movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans* people, and a liberation movement for all people.

Each time Harvey spoke in front of a crowd, he urged people to come out everywhere and often: “Tell your immediate family,” he would say. “Tell friends, neighbors, people in the stores you shop in, cab drivers, everyone.” And he urged heterosexual and cisgender people to be our allies, to interrupt derogatory remarks and jokes, to support us and offer aid when needed. If we all did this, he said, we could change the world.

In his relatively brief time with us, Harvey Milk left an indelible mark and invaluable gift by changing lives. He has earned the lasting, enthusiastic, and unqualified esteem of the countless people he touched, and we deeply and sorely miss him. During his time here, he did not simply walk, but in fact, he paved a path of justice and decency.

Though his killer may have destroyed his body, and his detractors then and now may have attempted to slander his reputation and malign and vilify his work, they will never succeed in extinguishing his legacy or destroying his spirit, or in terminating the heart of a community and a movement for social justice, for Harvey’s life-force continues, inspiring a new generation, a nation, and a world.

Harvey served in the Navy for four years. His legacy not only inspires us landlubbers, but it will now sail the high seas.

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