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- Oct 9, 2005
I saw this movie the past weekend in San Francisco. It's the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly homosexual person elected to public office. He waselected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (a group of officials that vote on issues pertaining to the city) in 1977. He was arguably the country'sforemost "gay rights" advocate, passing several stringent gay rights laws that barred discrimination based on sexual preference in labor practicesand personal lives.
He gained national spotlight fighting against an anti-gay rights movement headed by country-singer Anita Bryant and Christian Fundamentalist California SenatorJohn Briggs, as well as the gay political establishment in San Francisco that Milk perceived to be shutting him out.
San Francisco Mayor Moscone appointed Milk as a commissioner, another first in the country, and Milk was poised to become the country's first homosexualappointee to California State Assembly.
Dan White, a fellow supervisor, had an antagonistic relationship with Milk, and was notoriously competitive and incapable of handling defeat. In 1978, facingresignation as a supervisor, White entered San Francisco City Hall through the basement and proceeded to shoot and kill both Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk.
White was sentenced to five years by a sympathetic white, Catholic jury (gays and minorities were excluded from the jury pool). His attorney's"Twinkie Defense" maintained White had diminished mental capacity due to a junk food binge the night before.
The White Night Riots following the verdict included over 3,000 rioters that burned SF Police cars and attempted to burn down city hall. Retaliating policestormed gay bars in the Castro District beating citizens at random. In 1985 Dan White committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisioning - he had run a gardenhose from his exhaust pipe into his garaged car.
Excerpts from Milk's famous Hope Speech:
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He gained national spotlight fighting against an anti-gay rights movement headed by country-singer Anita Bryant and Christian Fundamentalist California SenatorJohn Briggs, as well as the gay political establishment in San Francisco that Milk perceived to be shutting him out.
San Francisco Mayor Moscone appointed Milk as a commissioner, another first in the country, and Milk was poised to become the country's first homosexualappointee to California State Assembly.
Dan White, a fellow supervisor, had an antagonistic relationship with Milk, and was notoriously competitive and incapable of handling defeat. In 1978, facingresignation as a supervisor, White entered San Francisco City Hall through the basement and proceeded to shoot and kill both Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk.
White was sentenced to five years by a sympathetic white, Catholic jury (gays and minorities were excluded from the jury pool). His attorney's"Twinkie Defense" maintained White had diminished mental capacity due to a junk food binge the night before.
The White Night Riots following the verdict included over 3,000 rioters that burned SF Police cars and attempted to burn down city hall. Retaliating policestormed gay bars in the Castro District beating citizens at random. In 1985 Dan White committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisioning - he had run a gardenhose from his exhaust pipe into his garaged car.
Excerpts from Milk's famous Hope Speech:
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On this anniversary of Stonewall, I ask my gay sisters and brothers to make the commitment to fight. For themselves, for their freedom, for their country ... We will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets ... We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions. We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I'm going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out. Come out to your parents, your relatives.
And the young gay people in the Altoona, Pennsylvanias and the Richmond, Minnesotas who are coming out and hear Anita Bryant in television and her story. 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 cannot prevent anyone from getting angry, or mad, or frustrated. I can only hope that they'll turn that anger and frustration and madness into something positive, so that two, three, four, five hundred will step forward, so the gay doctors will come out, the gay lawyers, the gay judges, gay bankers, gay architects ... I hope that every professional gay will say 'enough', come forward and tell everybody, wear a sign, let the world know. Maybe that will help.
