badgerdaveo's Blog
-
A Man Named Milk
- Posted on 10.20.08
When I was in college in Wisconsin, I had the opportunity to work on Tammy Baldwin's first campaign for the US House of Representatives. When she ultimately won, she became the first woman from Wisconsin and the first out lesbian nationwide to be elected to congress. After the election, I walked in the Madison LGBT pride parade with Tammy, and it was this moment I knew that my own life needed to be about helping in some small way to change the way the world worked...on the issue of LGBT rights and many others.
It wasn't until a year or two later when I learned about Harvey Milk, who had been the first openly gay man elected to public office...around 20 years earlier. In 1977, Harvey was elected city supervisor in San Francisco and became known informally as "Mayor of Castro Street." He was assassinated less than a year later by Dan White, another city supervisor, but in the interim he lead a strong gay rights movement in San Francisco, striking down several anti-gay initiatives and helping to pass a major gay rights ordinance.
White was acquitted of the murder of Harvey Milk and of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone on the grounds of impaired mental state brought on by a junk-food binge, which the media later dubbed the "twinkie defense." A mob of more than 3000 people marched from the Castro district to city hall in protest, igniting riots with police, as well as police attacks on a local gay bar.
This month, we will see the premiere of the Gus Van Sant film "MILK," starring Sean Penn as Harvey Milk. At the same time, in California, Arizona and Florida we face ballot initiatives from the religious right seeking to write in one-man-one-woman marriage restrictions to those state constitutions, which in my state of California would mean negating the legal marriages of thousands of LGBT couples.
I often think back to the way I felt walking in that parade with Tammy Baldwin, and on the day when she was elected so many years ago. It's often easy for me to turn on the television and see LGBT characters and people everywhere from Lifetime to ABC, or to walk around in Los Angeles where it's relatively safe to be out and forget about the daily persecution faced by LGBT people in other parts of the world...and in other parts of the US. I hope that in the face of people who work tirelessly to see people like me relegated to second-class citizenship I can find even some the courage shown over 30 years ago when such images of LGBT people in the media were non-existent...by a man named Milk.
Related causes: Community, Human Rights
Comments
You must be logged in to do that.
Sign In
