‘Hope will never be silent’: Honoring Harvey Milk on his 88th birthday – By Gabe Ortiz (dailyko.com) / May 22 2018
Today, May 22, marks what would have been the 88th birthday of Supervisor Harvey Milk. Milk, the first out gay person to be elected to public office in a major American city, was supervisor for barely a year before his tragic assassination. But during his all-too-short lifetime, Milk challenged homophobic attitudes and campaigns that threatened to kill “the few protections that existed for LGBTQ people in cities and states across the country, including California”:
Milk and an army of activists opposed Proposition 6, also known as the “Briggs Initiative.”
The ballot measure was spearheaded by state representative John Briggs, and it would have mandated the firing of any California teacher who was gay or was in support of gay rights.
Milk campaigned across California and publicly debated Briggs, determined to counter Briggs’s hateful rhetoric even though the proposition looked likely to pass.
When the Briggs Initiative lost by more than a million votes, San Francisco celebrated.
The failed Briggs Initiative had its roots in an anti-gay campaign led by singer and Florida Citrus Commissioner Anita Bryant, who outright compared gay people to child molesters during her effort to overturn local ordinance prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Milk believed that visibility was essential in tearing down the walls of ignorance, and encouraged people to come out. “I’m tired of the lies of the Anita Bryants and the John Briggs,” he said:
“I’m tired of their myths. I’m tired of their distortions. I’m speaking out about it. Gay brothers and sisters, what are you going to do about it? You must come out. Come out… to your parents… I know that it is hard and will hurt them but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out… to your relatives. I know that is hard and will upset them but think of how they will upset you in the voting booth.”
But particular, Milk knew the damage that was happening to the young closeted people and “youngsters who are becoming scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene.” Coming out didn’t just mean personal freedom, it also meant showing another person that they weren’t alone. “Once and for all,” he continued, “break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions.”
“As a young Jew who was just coming out as gay,” writes Robert Blank, president of the American Jewish World Service, “I was deeply inspired by Harvey’s courage, confidence and secure sense of self as an ‘out-and-proud’ gay Jewish man, unafraid to speak truth to power.” There are still lessons to be learned from Milk, particularly in an era when the current administration is hellbent on reversing our victories, and hellbent on stifling justice:
When police in San Francisco were violently harassing gay men in the 1970s, Harvey wrote an open letter to the City of San Francisco Hall of Justice, a Superior Court in California, using a trope that would become central to his future writings and speeches. He argued that ignoring police brutality against gay men in San Francisco at that time was dangerously similar to ignoring Nazi brutality against Jews in Germany in the 1930s. He argued that even San Franciscans who disdained LGBT people needed to oppose police brutality because if they didn’t, they would “one day find that they, too, are becoming victims of a police state.”
As Blank notes, Milk also believed in a simple yet powerful message: hope. “The young gay people in the Altoona, Pennsylvanias and the Richmond, Minnesotas who are coming out and hear Anita Bryant on television and her story,” Milk said in his famous 1978 speech, “the only thing they have to look forward to is hope. And you have to give them hope”:
“Hope for a better world, hope for a better tomorrow, hope for a better place to come to if the pressures at home are too great. Hope that all will be all right. Without hope, not only gays, but the blacks, the seniors, the handicapped, the us’es, the us’es will give up. And if you help elect to the central committee and other offices, more gay people, that gives a green light to all who feel disenfranchised, a green light to move forward. It means hope to a nation that has given up, because if a gay person makes it, the doors are open to everyone.
“I view Milk as an often overlooked icon for queer people, folks like me who have been told we are less than, immoral, undeserving,” Chelsey Engle writes. “Heroes like Milk risked their lives to show the world they would not live in hiding. Through this courageous way of living, Milk gave so many people, particularly young people, hope that you can do anything you wanted as a member of the LGBTQ community—even be elected to office.”
Milk’s vision still lives on, with the California Assembly unanimously passing a bill recognizing May 22 as Harvey Milk Day. “Harvey Milk’s role in the LGBT civil rights movement and his resulting legacy have inspired generations of LGBT leaders and activists,” said Assemblymember Evan Low, who authored the legislation, and is out himself. “His contributions to the state of California are lasting, and it is important that we recognize and honor him.”
“Hope will never be silent,” Milk once said. And, through us, his voice won’t be either. Happy birthday, Harvey.
