In 2021, the United States Navy chose to name a ship in honor of LGBTQ+ rights activist and former San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk as part of its new fleet of replenishment oil tankers. Other honorees included illustrious civil rights icons Sojourner Truth, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Robert F. Kennedy, suffragist Lucy Stone and U. S. Rep. John Lewis.
In 2014, the United States Postal Service released a long-awaited and overdue postage stamp in honor of the pioneering legislator and advocate not only for LGBTQ+ rights, but also for all people, especially those who had been traditionally locked out of the legislative power structure that often attempted to control their lives.
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The stamp bears the likeness of Milk, the first openly gay person elected to the San Francisco City Board of Supervisors in 1977, who worked for and garnered support from members of a wide coalition of groups and communities.
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Once in office, he was responsible for shepherding a comprehensive LGBTQ+ rights ordinance through the Board of Supervisors and worked successfully to defeat the draconian Proposition 6 on the November 7, 1978 California ballot sponsored by John Briggs, a conservative state legislator from Orange County.
If the ordinance had passed, it would have mandated the firing of all LGBTQ+ public school teachers as well as anyone who supported LGBTQ+ 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, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, were brutally murdered by Dan White, another Supervisor who had quit the Board but changed his mind and demanded to be reinstated.
Controversy surrounded Harvey during his time in electoral politics, and the controversy did not end with his assassination.
Just this month, the majority of members on the Temecula Valley School Board in Southern California pumped life back into the corpse of John Briggs by voting to reject a new social studies curriculum because a teacher’s guide for the textbook mentions Harvey Milk.
“My question is, why even mention a pedophile?” asked Temecula Valley School Board President Dr. Joseph Komrosky, making a groundless assertion prior to the vote.
A crucial point in the psychology of stereotyping and scapegoating is the representation of minoritized groups. In historian Dr. John Boswell’s words, “animals bent on the destruction of the children of the majority” and dominant groups have long accused LGBTQ+ people and members of other marginalized groups of acting as dangerous predators of young people.
For example, in the Middle Ages, Jews were accused of ritualistically killing Christian babies in the so-called “Blood Libel” to drain their blood in order to cure the “stink of the Jews” and in the making of their sacred matzos. Also at this time, it was thought that since Jewish men are circumcised that they menstruate and that they and Jewish women use the blood of virginal Christian babies to replenish their bodies of the blood lost in menstruation.
Former beauty queen and Florida Orange Juice Commission spokesperson Anita Bryant spearheaded the 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 LGBTQ+ people from adopting or serving as foster parents.
In recent years, the fear of alleged pedophilia has been used to justify the ban on gay and bisexual boy scouts, and to continue the Boy Scouts of America’s ban on gay and bisexual scoutmasters as argued in 2013 by Rob Schwarzwalder, 2013, Vice President of conservative Washington, DC-based public policy and lobbying organization, Family Research Council (FRC): “The reality is, homosexuals have entered the Scouts in the past for predatory purposes.”
In a 2011 fundraising letter addressing the LGBTQ+ community’s so-called public promotion of homosexuality to youth, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins 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.”
In June 2013, President Vladimir Putin signed its “anti-homosexual propaganda” law specifically targeting “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations around minors,” including public discussions, events that “promote” LGBTQ+ rights, such as Pride marches, and public displays of affection by same-sex couples that children might see or hear.
According to a July 1994 Pediatrics study of pedophilia, however, the largest group of abused or molested children were young females by adult males. Of the offenders, 82% identified as heterosexual partners of a close family member. 3.1% of offenders were identified as homosexual.
The study concluded that “the children in the group studied were unlikely to have been molested by identifiably gay or lesbian people.”
Thank you Harvey
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 LGBTQ+ 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.
I never met Harvey Milk, but I feel that I knew him on a deep personal level. His murder hit me like the death of an old trusted friend. His loss remains palpable to me.
In his relatively brief time with us, Harvey Milk left an indelible mark. 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. Harvey’s life force continues, inspiring a new generation, nation and world.
I do believe that love will conquer hatred. Harvey, thank you for the riches you left us. We will continue the struggle in your name to make the world a safer and more supportive environment for all its people.
Harvey, we will proudly affix your stamps to our parcels and our letters, and we will pass your image and your sense of fairness throughout the world.
May your memory and legacy be a blessing to us and future generations.
In the face of rising hate, let’s honor Harvey Milk’s legacy & proudly be ourselves