Interview with Stuart Milk following the UK Premiere of Emily Mann’s Execution of Justice: The Trial of the Man Who Killed Harvey Milk
Daniel Lee
ProactiveDiversity.co.uk • DosMaridosUK@gmail.com • @RealDanielLee on Twitter


November 27th 1978: Dan White shoots and kills Harvey Milk, the first openly gay American to hold elected office and George Moscone, mayor of San Francisco.
May 21st 1979: Dan White is found not guilty of murder.
Execution of Justice is the story of how and why it happened.
A cast of 20 perform Emily Mann’s award-winning 1982 verbatim play – a panoramic view of a time of upheaval and change, told in words taken from trial transcripts, interviews, reportage and the street.
Moving in and out of the courtroom and backwards and forwards in time, Execution of Justice captures a divided city in crisis and the impact of loss.

Stuart Milk is the nephew of the late civil rights pioneer Harvey Milk, and formed the start up, not-for-profit Harvey Milk Foundation, whose mission is to fulfil Harvey’s dream of a world without discrimination and a world without hate.
On the evening of 12 January 2012 I got the chance to interview and speak with Stuart Milk about Proactive Diversity, as well as the play we just watched, and how times have changed in the gay community since his uncle’s assassination. After watching the play as a person in the courtroom in 1978, many things ran through my mind, such as how I would have perceived my place in the world as a gay activist, what I needed to do to ensure this type of thing never happened again, and of course a moment of sadness for the family.
I looked up into the eyes of a man looking into mine. He looked uncannily like the posters, newspapers clippings, campaign banners, and other items bearing the image of Harvey Milk, decorating the Southwark Theatre in London. When the world lost a great human-rights leader and role-model, this man lost a dear uncle. Now, I had the chance to find out first-hand what it was like to lose both at the same time. If you are no fan of speakers who begin with small talk, or jokes, this was an opening you would appreciate:
“My Uncle Harvey was killed when I was seventeen, and played a very important role in my life because he was the person I had some very important conversations with about my own authenticity. Whenever I see him portrayed in major motion pictures like Milk or documentaries like The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, or a play that just premiered at the Kennedy Centre called Dear Harvey, or what you and I just saw, Execution of Justice, its a bit of an emotional roller coaster for me. But more than just because in this case it was my uncle, its because killings like my uncle faced go on around the world every day.
I know that a lot of people look at the case and wonder how could a jury come back from deliberation and say that Dan White (the man who killed Harvey Milk and George Moscone) didn’t kill them with malice, and in cold blood. However, when you go back to 1972 when Harvey first went into public office, and even in 1978 when he was killed, homosexuality in the United States was still criminal, it was considered a mental illness by the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association. A lot of people felt that homosexuals were not valuable citizens, and were not to be treated fairly.
When Harvey was killed, there were several states in the US where laws on the books stated one was not allowed to serve alcohol to known felons, deviants, or homosexuals. There is still one state that still has that law – Virginia, although the law isn’t enforced.
Harvey was a first for the gay rights movement because he wasn’t just gay, or openly gay, he was loudly openly gay. Many people in politics before him admitted, sometimes unwillingly, that they were gay, but Harvey brought it up in every conversation he had with absolutely anyone.
One point about Milk, or The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, or Execution of Justice, that I’m not sure how clear it becomes, is that the actual jury: The majority of those jurors did weep during Dan White’s confession. But it wasn’t just the jurors, the majority of the courtroom wept, and many people who read the transcript wept. They wept for Dan white. They wondered how could a good, Catholic boy who was representing wholesome, Americans values get caught up in this web created by the gay community in San Francisco. And I can tell you the type of defence that you see so beautifully portrayed in Execution of Justice is an excuse is a defence that continues to get used today: Not only in the dark corners of the world, where homosexuality is still punishable by death, but last year in a predominantly gay community in South Florida. There, we have an anti-hate crime law in the United States that was signed by President Obama that makes it a stiffer crime and a special prosecution if a person is killed or attacked because of discrimination that includes lesbians and gay people, but the prosecution has to say that discrimination took place. So here was this young man who was beaten for an estimated 90 minutes, and he was killed: Brutally beaten by three young people he knew, which often tends to be the case in gay-hate crimes, but the defense attorney said that it was a robbery. However, his full wallet and expensive watch were not taken.
Less than six months ago we had a complete dismemberment of a sixteen-year-old youth in San Juan (Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States) whose murder was not prosecuted as a hate-crime. When the police chief found out about the crime, he said, to a reporter, “That’s what you get when you live that type of lifestyle.”
I’m bringing this up because, unfortunately, we still have a lot of challenges. We have progressed in many ways – we have a tremendous leader in the President of the United Staes, we have great leaders around the world who stood up to the myths and the lies about gay people, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, and who have started to call people on this type of violent discrimination and violent hatred, but we have a long way to go.
So we’ve got some strong voices, and many strong allies, and Harvey was tremendously impacted on being a Jewish-American whose writing had been getting notice at the State University of New York in 1951 about why are we dividing people, why are we teaching teachers about war by having ROTC on campuses (Reserve Officers’ Training Corps – a programme where qualifying persons have their four-year college expenses paid for in exchange for four-years U.S. Army enlistment after said schooling.) So unlike the movie Milk where he meets an activist on the subway and instantly becomes charged, he had it in him many years earlier.
The knowledge that he was going to be killed was profound. We have two letters in the family that he wrote after the Briggs Initiative (a proposition in California that would have denied gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people the right to teach school. That was a tremendous victory that Harvey helped lead – Dan White was opposed to that proposition. Harvey got tonnes of hate-mail over that, and he knew he was going to be killed. He had conversations with friends, he talked with family, but he just knew that it was inevitable, similar to how Martin Luther King felt when he said to his followers, “I am not going to get to the mountaintop with you. Harvey knew he wasn’t going to get there – that isn’t Hollywood. The taped wills are there, the journals to be read after his death – we have those. He just didn’t know it was going to be Dan White. He felt what he did was worth a shortened life. Anne Kronenberg and I set up the Harvey Milk Foundation right after I accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest civilian honour in the US) for Harvey who, posthumously, was the first openly gay person to ever receive the award, but he was also the first GLBTQ activist to ever receive such an award, and we felt it was important to take Harvey’s message further.
In 1951, Harvey wrote, in a university paper, a column called You Didn’t Ask Me But… On one occasion he wrote about Göring (a leading member of the Nazi Party) and Hitler’s speech – he was really obsessed how a community can turn against multiple communities within their own nation, within their own statehood. He wrote about Göring and Hitler’s use of the word tolerance, where as they envisioned a Germany that was tolerant of second-class citizens by taking away their citizenship and putting them in places where they could be tolerated. There is work now, carried out by Dr. Caitlin Ryan who runs the Family Acceptance Project on semantics and the effects of semantics on families and their ability to accept their children and their differences including GLBTQ kids. Other researchers as well have looked at the people who commit these terrible hate crimes, and the overwhelming majority of people who perpetrate these crimes and murders do so because they say just couldn’t tolerate ‘those people’ and their type anymore. So the Harvey Milk Foundation wants to move the bar away from people tolerating other people. I’m from Florida, where we tolerate mosquitoes. We, in the gay community are the ladybugs, the dragonflies, and the butterflies of the world, and we aren’t meant to be tolerated. Nobody wants to be tolerated.
So our programme is called Beyond Tolerance and our goal is to move the bar to get everybody to include and accept everyone. Communities will realise that we are richer, and we are stronger when we accept and include everyone. There are a lot of people who are not remembered like my uncle who were killed just as violently, just as brutally, at the hands of people who simply could not tolerate them. According to the latest figures I just checked, murders that occur from GLBT hate-crimes are one every nine days. And that’s only the ones we can measure.
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Daniel Lee is CEO of Proactive Diversity, whose mission is to advise, assist, and support the GLBTQ community and gay-rights organisations, movements and advocates worldwide to help achieve acceptance.
EXECUTION OF JUSTICE
By Emily Mann
Directed by Joss Bennathan
Venue:
Main House, Southwark Playhouse, Shipwright Yard ( Corner of Bermondsey St. and Tooley St.) London SE1 2TF
Nearest Tube: London Bridge
Performances 11 January – 4 February 2012
Monday to Saturday at 7.45pm
Saturday matinee at 3.15pm (28 Jan only)
Box Office Online www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk
24 HOURS/NO BOOKING FEES
By Telephone 020 7407 0234
NO BOOKING FEES
Ticket Prices £10, £14, £18
‘Airline style’ pricing. The earlier you book the cheaper the tickets.
Concessions – Disabled people can bring one companion free of charge. There are no other concessions.
Access – Please inform Southwark Playhouse of your access requirements at least 48 hours before you attend the performance by phoning 020 7407 0234.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,900 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 32 trips to carry that many people.
Harvey Bernard Milk (27 May 1930 – 27 November 1978) was an American politician who became the first openly gay man elected to public office in California, when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Politics and gay activism were not his early interests as he was not open about his homosexuality and did not participate in civic matters until around the age of 40, after his experiences in the counterculture of the 1960s.
Harvey Milk in 1978
Milk moved from New York City, settling in San Francisco in 1972 amid a migration of gay men to the Castro District. He took advantage of the growing political and economic power of the neighborhood to promote his interests, and ran unsuccessfully for political office three times. His theatrical campaigns earned him increasing popularity, and Milk won a seat as a city supervisor in 1977, part of the broader social changes the city was experiencing.
Milk served 11 months in office and was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for the city. On 27 November 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor who had recently resigned but wanted his job back. Milk’s election was made possible by, and was a key component of a shift in San Francisco politics. The assassinations and the ensuing events were the result of continuing ideological conflicts in the city.
Despite his short career in politics, Milk became an icon in San Francisco and “a martyr for gay rights”, according to University of San Francisco professor Peter Novak. In 2002, Milk was called “the most famous and most significantly open GLBT official ever elected in the United States”. Anne Kronenberg, his final campaign manager, wrote of him: “What set Harvey apart from you or me was that he was a visionary. He imagined a righteous world inside his head and then he set about to create it for real, for all of us.” Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
Robert (left) and Harvey (right) Milk in 1934
Milk was born in Woodmere, New York, on Long Island, to William Milk and Minerva Karns. He was the younger son of Lithuanian Jewish parents and the grandson of Morris Milk, a department store owner who helped to organize the first synagogue in the area. As a child, Harvey was teased for his protruding ears, big nose, and oversized feet, tending to grab attention as a class clown. He played football in school, and developed a passion for opera. In his teens, he acknowledged his homosexuality, but kept it a closely guarded secret. Under his name in the high school yearbook, it reads, “Glimpy Milk—and they say WOMEN are never at a loss for words”.
Milk graduated from Bay Shore High School in Bay Shore, New York, in 1947 and attended New York State College for Teachers in Albany (now State University of New York at Albany) from 1947 to 1951, majoring in mathematics. He wrote for the college newspaper and earned a reputation as a gregarious, friendly student. None of his friends in high school or college suspected that he was gay. As one classmate remembered, “He was never thought of as a possible queer—that’s what you called them then—he was a man’s man”.
After graduation, Milk joined the United States Navy during the Korean War. He served aboard the submarine rescue ship USS Kittiwake (ASR-13) as a diving officer. He later transferred to Naval Station, San Diego to serve as a diving instructor. In 1955, he was discharged from the Navy at the rank of lieutenant, junior grade.
Milk’s early career was marked by frequent changes. In later years he would take delight in talking about his metamorphosis from a middle-class Jewish boy. He began teaching at George W. Hewlett High School on Long Island. In 1956, he met Joe Campbell, 19, at the Jacob Riis Park beach, a popular location for gay men in Queens. Even after they moved in together, Milk wrote Campbell romantic notes and poems. Growing bored with their New York lives, they decided to move to Dallas, Texas, but they were unhappy there and moved back to New York where Milk got a job as an actuarial statistician at an insurance firm. Campbell and Milk separated after almost six years: It would be his longest relationship.
Milk tried to keep his early romantic life separate from his family and work. Once again bored and single in New York, he thought of moving to Miami to marry a lesbian friend to “have a front and each would not be in the way of the other”. However, he decided to remain in New York, where he secretly pursued gay relationships. In 1962, Milk became involved with Craig Rodwell. Though Milk courted Rodwell ardently, waking him every morning with a call and sending him notes, Milk was discouraged by Rodwell’s involvement with the New York Mattachine Society, a gay activist organisation. Rodwell was arrested for walking in Riis Park, and charged with inciting a riot and with indecent exposure: An antiquated law required men’s swimsuits to extend from above the navel to below the thigh. He spent three days in jail. The relationship soon ended as Milk became alarmed at Rodwell’s tendency to agitate the police.
Milk abruptly stopped working as an insurance actuary and became a researcher at the Wall Street firm Bache & Company. He was frequently promoted despite his tendency to offend the older members of the firm by ignoring their advice and flaunting his success. Although he was skilled at his job, co-workers sensed that Milk’s heart was not in his work. He started a romantic relationship with Jack Galen McKinley, and recruited him to work on conservative Republican Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential campaign. Their relationship was troubled: McKinley, was prone to depression and frequently threatened to commit suicide if Milk did not show him enough attention. To make a point to McKinley, Milk took him to the hospital where Milk’s ex-lover, Joe Campbell, was himself recuperating from a suicide attempt after his lover—a man named Billy Sipple—left him. Milk had remained friendly with Campbell, who had entered the avant-garde art scene in Greenwich Village, but Milk did not understand why Campbell’s despondency was sufficient cause to consider suicide as an option.
The Eureka Valley of San Francisco, where Market and Castro Streets intersect, had for decades been a blue-collar Irish Catholic neighborhood synonymous with the Most Holy Redeemer Parish. Beginning in the 1960s, however, young families left the neighbourhood moving to Bay Area suburbs, and the city’s economic base eroded as factories moved to cheaper locations nearby. Mayor Joseph Alioto, proud of his working-class background and supporters, based his political career on welcoming developers and attracting a Roman Catholic Cardinal to the city. Many blue-collar workers—often Alioto supporters—lost their jobs as large corporations with service industry positions replaced factory and dry dock jobs. San Francisco, which had been “a city of villages”, a decentralized city with ethnic enclaves that each surrounded its own main street, began a demographic change.
As the downtown area developed, neighborhoods suffered, including Castro Street. The Most Holy Redeemer Parish shops shut down, and houses were abandoned and shuttered. In 1963, real estate prices plummeted when most of the working-class families tried to sell their houses quickly after a gay bar opened in the neighbourhood. Hippies, attracted to the free love ideals of the Haight-Ashbury area but repulsed by its crime rate, bought some of the cheap Victorian houses.
Since the end of World War II, the major port city of San Francisco had been home to a sizable number of gay men expelled from the military who decided to stay rather than return to their hometowns and face ostracism. By 1969, San Francisco had more gay people per capita than any other American city. Milk and McKinley were among the thousands of gay men attracted to San Francisco. McKinley was a stage manager for Tom O’Horgan, a director who started his career in experimental theater, but soon graduated to much larger Broadway productions. They arrived in 1969 with the Broadway touring company of Hair. McKinley was offered a job in the New York City production of Jesus Christ Superstar, and their tempestuous relationship came to an end. The city appealed to Milk so much that he decided to stay, working at an investment firm. In 1970, increasingly frustrated with the political climate after the U.S. invasion of Cambodia, Milk let his hair grow long. When told to cut it, he refused and was fired.
Milk drifted from California to Texas to New York, without a steady job or plan. In New York City he became involved with O’Horgan’s Theatre Company as a “general aide”, signing on as associate producer for Eve Merriam’s Inner City. The time he spent with the cast of flower children wore away much of Milk’s conservatism. A contemporary New York Times story about O’Horgan described Milk as “a sad-eyed man—another aging hippie with long, long hair, wearing faded jeans, and pretty beads”. Craig Rodwell read the description of the formerly uptight man and wondered if it could be the same person. One of Milk’s Wall Street friends worried that he seemed to have no plan or future, but remembered Milk’s attitude: “I think he was happier than at any time I ever saw him in his entire life.”
Milk met Scott Smith, 22, and began another relationship. Milk and Smith returned to San Francisco, where they lived on money they had saved. In March 1973, after a roll of film Milk left at a local shop was ruined, he and Smith opened a camera store on Castro Street with their last $1,000.
In the late 1960s, the Society for Individual Rights (SIR) and the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) began to work against police persecution of gay bars and entrapment in San Francisco. Oral sex was still a felony, and in 1970, nearly 90 people in the city were arrested for it. Facing eviction if caught having homosexual sex in a rented apartment, and unwilling to face arrest in gay bars, some men turned to having sex in public parks at night. Mayor Alioto asked the police to target the parks, hoping the decision would appeal to the Archdiocese and his Catholic supporters. In 1971, 2,800 gay men were arrested for public sex in San Francisco. By comparison, New York City recorded only 63 arrests for the same offense that year. Any arrest for a morals charge required registration as a sex offender.
Congressman Phillip Burton, Assemblyman Willie Brown, and other California politicians recognized the growing clout and organization of homosexuals in the city, and courted their votes by attending meetings of gay and lesbian organizations. Brown pushed for legalization of sex between consenting adults in 1969 but failed. SIR was also pursued by popular moderate Supervisor Dianne Feinstein in her bid to become mayor, opposing Alioto. Ex-policeman Richard Hongisto worked for ten years to change the conservative views of the San Francisco Police Department, and also actively appealed to the gay community, which responded by raising significant funds for his campaign for sheriff. Though Feinstein was unsuccessful, Hongisto’s win in 1971 showed the political clout of the gay community.
SIR had become powerful enough for political maneuvering. In 1971 SIR members Jim Foster, Rick Stokes, and Advocate publisher David Goodstein formed the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club, known as simply “Alice”. Alice befriended liberal politicians, persuading them to sponsor bills, proving successful in 1972 when Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon obtained Feinstein’s support for an ordinance outlawing employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Alice chose Stokes to run for a relatively unimportant seat on the community college board. Though Stokes received 45,000 votes, he was quiet, unassuming, and did not win. Foster, however, shot to national prominence by being the first openly gay man to address a political convention. His speech at the 1972 Democratic National Convention ensured that his voice, according to San Francisco politicians, was the one to be heard when they wanted the opinions, and especially the votes, of the gay community.
Milk became more interested in political and civic matters when he was faced with civic problems and policies he disliked. One day in 1973, a state bureaucrat entered Milk’s shop Castro Camera and informed him that he owed $100 as a deposit against state sales tax. Milk was incredulous and traded shouts with the man about the rights of business owners; after he complained for weeks at state offices, the deposit was reduced to $30. Milk fumed about government priorities when a teacher came into his store to borrow a projector because the equipment in the schools did not function. Friends also remember around the same time having to restrain him from kicking the television while Attorney General John N. Mitchell gave consistent “I don’t recall” replies during the Watergate hearings. Milk decided that the time had come to run for city supervisor. He said later, “I finally reached the point where I knew I had to become involved or shut up”.
Milk’s reception by the gay political establishment in San Francisco was icy. Jim Foster, who had by then been active in gay politics for ten years, resented the newcomer’s asking for his endorsement for a position as prestigious as city supervisor. Foster told Milk, “There’s an old saying in the Democratic Party: You don’t get to dance unless you put up the chairs. I’ve never seen you put up the chairs.” Milk was furious at the patronizing snub, and the conversation marked the beginning of an antagonistic relationship between the “Alice” Club and Harvey Milk. Some gay bar owners, still battling police harassment and unhappy with what they saw as a timid approach by Alice to established authority in the city, decided to endorse him.
Milk, here with his sister-in-law in front of Castro Camera in 1973, had been changed by his experience with the counterculture of the 1960s. Dianne Feinstein, who first met him in 1973, did not recognize him when she met him again in 1978.
Though he had drifted through his life thus far, Milk found his vocation, according to journalist Frances FitzGerald, who called him a “born politician”. At first, his inexperience showed. He tried to do without money, support, or staff, and instead relied on his message of sound financial management, promoting individuals over large corporations and government. He supported the reorganisation of supervisor elections from a city-wide ballot to district ballots, which was intended to reduce the influence of money and give neighbourhoods more control over their representatives in city government. He also ran on a socially liberal platform, opposing government interference in private sexual matters, and favouring the legalization of marijuana. Milk’s fiery, flamboyant speeches and savvy media skills earned him a significant amount of press during the 1973 election. He earned 16,900 votes—sweeping the Castro District and other liberal neighborhoods—coming in 10th place out of 32 candidates. Had the elections been reorganized to allow districts to elect their own supervisors, he would have won.
Milk displayed an affinity for building coalitions from early in his political career. The Teamsters wanted to strike against beer distributors—Coors in particular—who refused to sign the union contract. An organizer asked Milk for assistance with gay bars; in return, Milk asked the union to hire more gay drivers. A few days later, Milk canvassed the gay bars in and surrounding the Castro District, urging them to refuse to sell the beer. With the help of a coalition of Arab and Chinese grocers the Teamsters had also recruited, the boycott was successful. Milk found a strong political ally in organized labor, and it was around this time that he began to style himself “The Mayor of Castro Street”. As Castro Street’s presence grew, so did Milk’s reputation. Tom O’Horgan remarked, “Harvey spent most of his life looking for a stage. On Castro Street he finally found it.”
Tensions between the older citizens of the Most Holy Redeemer Parish and the gays entering the Castro District were growing. However, in 1973, when two gay men tried to open an antique shop, the Eureka Valley Merchants Association (EVMA) attempted to prevent them from receiving a business license. Milk and a few other gay business owners founded the Castro Village Association, with Milk as president. He often repeated his philosophy that gays should buy from gay businesses. Milk organized the Castro Street Fair in 1974 to attract more customers to the area. More than 5,000 attended, and some of the EVMA members were stunned; they did more business at the Castro Street Fair than on any previous day.
Although he was a newcomer to the Castro District, Milk had shown leadership in the small community. He was starting to be taken seriously as a candidate and decided to run again for supervisor in 1975. He reconsidered his approach, cut his long hair, swore off marijuana, and vowed never to visit another gay bathhouse again. Milk’s campaigning earned the support of the teamsters, firefighters, and construction unions. Castro Camera became the center of activity in the neighborhood. Milk would often pull people off the street to work his campaigns for him.
Milk favoured support for small businesses and the growth of neighbourhoods. Since 1968, Mayor Alioto lured large corporations to the city despite what critics labeled “the Manhattanization of San Francisco”. As blue-collar jobs were replaced by the service industry, Alioto’s weakened political base allowed for new leadership to be voted into office in the city. George Moscone was elected mayor. Moscone had been instrumental in repealing the sodomy law earlier that year in the California State Legislature. He acknowledged Milk’s influence in his election by visiting Milk’s election night headquarters, thanking Milk personally, and offering him a position as a city commissioner. Milk came in seventh place in the election, only one position away from earning a supervisor seat. Liberal politicians held the offices of the mayor, district attorney, and sheriff.
Despite the new leadership in the city, there were still conservative strongholds. One of Moscone’s first acts as mayor was appointing a police chief to the embattled San Francisco Police Department (SFPD). He chose Charles Gain, against the wishes of the SFPD. Most of the force disliked Gain for criticizing the police in the press for racial insensitivity and alcohol abuse on the job, instead of working within the command structure to change attitudes. By request of the mayor, Gain made it clear that gay police officers would be welcomed in the department This became national news. Police under Gain expressed their hatred of him, and of the mayor for betraying them.
Keeping his promise to Milk, newly elected Mayor George Moscone appointed him to the Board of Permit Appeals in 1976, making him the first openly gay city commissioner in the United States. Milk, however, considered seeking a position in the California State Assembly. The district was weighted heavily in his favor, as much of it was based in neighbourhoods surrounding Castro Street, where Milk’s supporters voted. In the previous race for supervisor, Milk received more votes than the currently seated assemblyman. However, Moscone had made a deal with the assembly speaker that another candidate should run—Art Agnos. Furthermore, by order of the mayor, neither appointed nor elected officials were allowed to run a campaign while performing their duties.
By the time of Milk's 1975 campaign, he decided to cut his hair and wear suits. Here, Milk (far right) is campaigning with longshoremen in San Francisco during his 1976 race for the California State Assembly.
Milk spent five weeks on the Board of Permit Appeals before Moscone was forced to fire him when he announced he would run for the California State Assembly. Rick Stokes replaced him. Milk’s firing, and the backroom deal made between Moscone, the assembly speaker, and Agnos, fueled his campaign as he took on the identity of a political underdog. He railed that high officers in the city and state governments were against him. He complained that the prevailing gay political establishment, particularly the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club, were shutting him out; he referred to Jim Foster and Stokes as gay “Uncle Toms”. He enthusiastically embraced a local independent weekly magazine’s headline: “Harvey Milk vs. The Machine”.
Milk’s role as a representative of San Francisco’s gay community expanded during this period. On 22 September 1975, President Gerald Ford, while visiting San Francisco, walked from his hotel to his car. In the crowd, Sara Jane Moore raised a gun to shoot him. A former Marine who had been walking by grabbed her arm as the gun discharged toward the pavement. The bystander was Oliver “Bill” Sipple, who had left Milk’s ex-lover Joe Campbell years before, prompting Campbell’s suicide attempt. The national spotlight was on him immediately. On psychiatric disability leave from the military, Sipple refused to call himself a hero and did not want his sexuality disclosed. Milk, however, took advantage of the opportunity to illustrate his cause that public perception of gay people would be improved if they came out of the closet. He told a friend: “It’s too good an opportunity. For once we can show that gays do heroic things, not just all that ca-ca about molesting children and hanging out in bathrooms.” Milk contacted a newspaper.
Several days later, Herb Caen, a columnist at The San Francisco Chronicle, exposed Sipple as gay and a friend of Milk’s. The announcement was picked up by national newspapers, and Milk’s name was included in many of the stories. Time magazine named Milk as a leader in San Francisco’s gay community. Sipple, however, was besieged by reporters, as was his family. His mother, a staunch Baptist in Detroit, now refused to speak to him. Although he had been involved with the gay community for years, even participating in Gay Pride events, Sipple sued the Chronicle for invasion of privacy. President Ford sent Sipple a note of thanks for saving his life. Milk said that Sipple’s sexual orientation was the reason he received only a note, rather than an invitation to the White House.
Milk’s continuing campaign, run from the storefront of Castro Camera, was a study in disorganization. Although the older Irish grandmothers and gay men who volunteered were plentiful and happy to send out mass mailings, Milk’s notes and volunteer lists were kept on scrap papers. Any time the campaign required funds, the money came from the cash register without any consideration for accounting. The campaign manager’s assistant was an 11-year-old neighborhood girl who joyfully ordered the volunteers to work. Milk himself was hyperactive and prone to fantastic outbursts of temper, only to recover quickly and shout excitedly about something else. Many of his rants were directed at his lover, Scott Smith, who was becoming disillusioned with the man who was no longer the laid-back hippie he had fallen in love with.
If the candidate was manic, he was also dedicated and filled with good humor, and he had a particular genius for getting media attention. He spent long hours registering voters and shaking hands at bus stops and movie theater lines. He took whatever opportunity came along to promote himself. He thoroughly enjoyed campaigning, and his success was evident. With the large numbers of volunteers, he had dozens at a time stand along the busy thoroughfare of Market Street as human billboards, holding “Milk for Assembly” signs while commuters drove into the heart of the city to work. He distributed his campaign literature anywhere he could, including among one of the most influential political groups in the city, the Peoples Temple. Milk’s volunteers took thousands of brochures there, but came back with feelings of apprehension. Because the Peoples Temple leader, Jim Jones, was politically powerful in San Francisco (and supported both candidates), Milk allowed Temple members to work his phones, and later spoke at the Temple and defended Jones. But to his volunteers, he said: “Make sure you’re always nice to the Peoples Temple. If they ask you to do something, do it, and then send them a note thanking them for asking you to do it. They’re weird and they’re dangerous, and you never want to be on their bad side.”
The race was close, and Milk lost by fewer than 4,000 votes. Agnos, however, taught Milk a valuable lesson when he criticized Milk’s campaign speeches as “a downer… You talk about how you’re gonna throw the bums out, but how are you gonna fix things—other than beat me? You shouldn’t leave your audience on a down.” In the wake of his loss, Milk, realizing that the Toklas Club would never support him politically, co-founded the San Francisco Gay Democratic Club.
The fledgling gay rights movement had yet to meet organized opposition in the U.S. In 1977 a few well-connected gay activists in Miami, Florida were able to pass a civil rights ordinance that made discrimination based on sexual orientation illegal in Dade County. A well-organized group of conservative fundamentalist Christians responded, headed by singer Anita Bryant. Their campaign was titled Save Our Children, and Bryant claimed the ordinance infringed her right to teach her children Biblical morality. Bryant and the campaign gathered 64,000 signatures to put the issue to a county-wide vote. With funds raised in part by the Florida Citrus Commission, for which Bryant was the spokeswoman, they ran television advertisements that contrasted the Orange Bowl Parade with San Francisco’s Gay Freedom Day Parade, stating that Dade County would be turned into a “hotbed of homosexuality” where “men cavort with little boys”.
Jim Foster, then the most powerful political organizer in San Francisco, went to Miami to assist gay activists there as election day neared, and a nationwide boycott of orange juice was organized. The message of the Save Our Children campaign was influential, and the result was an overwhelming defeat for gay activists; in the largest turnout in any special election in the history of Dade County, 70% voted to repeal the law.
Christian conservatives were inspired by their victory, and saw an opportunity for a new, effective political cause. Gay activists were shocked to see how little support they received. An impromptu demonstration of over 3,000 Castro residents formed the night of the Dade County ordinance vote. Gay men and lesbians were simultaneously angry, chanting “Out of the bars and into the streets!”, and elated at their passionate and powerful response. The San Francisco Examiner reported that members of the crowd pulled others out of bars along Castro and Polk Streets to “deafening” cheers. Milk led marchers that night on a five-mile (8 km) course through the city, constantly moving, aware that if they stopped for too long there would be a riot. He declared, “This is the power of the gay community. Anita’s going to create a national gay force.” Activists had little time to recover, however, as the scenario replayed itself when civil rights ordinances were overturned by voters in Saint Paul, Minnesota; Wichita, Kansas; and Eugene, Oregon, throughout 1977 and into 1978.
California State Senator John Briggs saw an opportunity in the Christian fundamentalists’ campaign. He was hoping to be elected governor of California in 1978, and was impressed with the voter turnout he saw in Miami. When Briggs returned to Sacramento, he wrote a bill that would ban gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools throughout California. Briggs claimed in private that he had nothing against gays, telling gay journalist Randy Shilts, “It’s politics. Just politics.” Random attacks on gays rose in the Castro. When the police response was considered inadequate, groups of gays patrolled the neighborhood themselves, on alert for attackers. On June 21, 1977, a gay man named Robert Hillsborough died from 15 stab wounds while his attackers gathered around him and chanted “Faggot!” Both Mayor Moscone and Hillsborough’s mother blamed Anita Bryant and John Briggs. One week prior to the incident, Briggs had held a press conference at San Francisco City Hall where he called the city a “sexual garbage heap” because of homosexuals. Weeks later, 250,000 people attended the 1977 San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade, the largest attendance at any Gay Pride event to that point.
In November 1976, voters in San Francisco decided to reorganize supervisor elections to choose supervisors from neighborhoods instead of voting for them in city-wide ballots. Harvey Milk quickly qualified as the leading candidate in District 5, surrounding Castro Street.
Milk supporters offer Anita Bryant her well-deserved, just desserts.
Anita Bryant’s public campaign opposing homosexuality and the multiple challenges to gay rights ordinances across the United States fueled gay politics in San Francisco. Seventeen candidates from the Castro District entered the next race for supervisor; more than half of them were gay. The New York Times ran an exposé on the veritable invasion of gay people into San Francisco, estimating that the city’s gay population was between 100,000 and 200,000 out of a total 750,000. The Castro Village Association had grown to 90 businesses; the local bank, formerly the smallest branch in the city, had become the largest and was forced to build a wing to accommodate its new customers. Milk biographer Randy Shilts noted that “broader historical forces” were fueling his campaign.
Milk’s most successful opponent was the quiet and thoughtful lawyer Rick Stokes, who was backed by the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club. Stokes had been open about his homosexuality long before Milk had, and had experienced more severe treatment, once hospitalized and forced to endure electroshock therapy to cure him. Milk, however, was more expressive about the role of gay people and their issues in San Francisco politics. Stokes was quoted saying, “I’m just a businessman who happens to be gay,” and expressed the view that any normal person could also be homosexual. Milk’s contrasting populist philosophy was relayed to The New York Times: “We don’t want sympathetic liberals, we want gays to represent gays… I represent the gay street people—the 14-year-old runaway from San Antonio. We have to make up for hundreds of years of persecution. We have to give hope to that poor runaway kid from San Antonio. They go to the bars because churches are hostile. They need hope! They need a piece of the pie!”
Other causes were also important to Milk: he promoted larger and less expensive child care facilities, free public transportation, and the development of a board of civilians to oversee the police. He advanced important neighborhood issues at every opportunity. Milk used the same manic campaign tactics as in previous races: human billboards, hours of handshaking, and dozens of speeches calling on gay people to have hope. This time, even The San Francisco Chronicle endorsed him for supervisor. He won by 30% against sixteen other candidates, and after his victory became apparent, he arrived on Castro Street on the back of his campaign manager’s motorcycle—escorted by Sheriff Richard Hongisto—to what a newspaper story described as a “tumultuous and moving welcome”.
Milk had recently taken a new lover, a young man named Jack Lira, 25, who was frequently drunk in public, and just as often escorted out of political events by Milk’s aides. Since the race for the California State Assembly, Milk had been receiving increasingly violent death threats. Concerned that his raised profile marked him as a target for assassination, he recorded on tape his thoughts, and whom he wanted to succeed him if he were killed, adding: “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door”.
Milk’s swearing-in made national headlines, as he became the first openly gay non-incumbent man in the United States to win an election for public office. He likened himself to pioneering African American baseball player Jackie Robinson and walked to City Hall arm in arm with Jack Lira, stating “You can stand around and throw bricks at Silly Hall or you can take it over. Well, here we are.” The Castro District was not the only neighborhood to promote someone new to city politics. Sworn in with Milk were also a single mother (Carol Ruth Silver), a Chinese American (Gordon Lau), and an African American woman (Ella Hill Hutch)—all firsts for the city. Daniel White, a former police officer and firefighter, was also a first-time supervisor, and he spoke of how proud he was that his grandmother was able to see him sworn in.
Milk’s energy, affinity for pranking, and unpredictability at times exasperated Board of Supervisors President Dianne Feinstein. In his first meeting with Mayor Moscone, Milk called himself the “number one queen” and dictated to Moscone that he would have to go through Milk instead of the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club if he wanted the city’s gay votes—a quarter of San Francisco’s voting population. However, Milk also became Moscone’s closest ally on the Board of Supervisors. The biggest targets of Milk’s ire were large corporations and real estate developers. He fumed when a parking garage was slated to take the place of homes near the downtown area, and tried to pass a commuter tax so office workers who lived outside the city and drove into work would have to pay for city services they used. Milk was often willing to vote against Feinstein and other more tenured members of the board. In one controversy early in his term, Milk agreed with fellow Supervisor Dan White, whose district was located two miles south of the Castro, that a mental health facility for troubled adolescents should not be placed there. After Milk learned more about the facility, he decided to switch his vote, ensuring White’s loss on the issue—a particularly poignant cause that White championed while campaigning. White did not forget it. He opposed every initiative and issue Milk supported.
Milk began his tenure by sponsoring a civil rights bill that outlawed discrimination based on sexual orientation. The ordinance was called the “most stringent and encompassing in the nation”, and its passing demonstrated “the growing political power of homosexuals”, according to The New York Times. Only Supervisor White voted against it; Mayor Moscone enthusiastically signed it into law with a light blue pen that Milk had given him for the occasion.
The second bill Milk concentrated on was designed to solve the number one problem according to a recent citywide poll: dog excrement. Within a month of being sworn in, he began to work on a city ordinance to require dog owners to scoop their pets’ feces. Dubbed the “pooper scooper law”, its authorization by the Board of Supervisors was covered extensively by television and newspapers in San Francisco. Anne Kronenberg, Milk’s campaign manager, called him “a master at figuring out what would get him covered in the newspaper”. He invited the press to Duboce Park to explain why it was necessary, and while cameras were rolling, stepped in the offending substance, seemingly by mistake. His staffers, however, knew he had been at the park for an hour before the press conference looking for the right place to walk in front of the cameras. It earned him the most fan mail of his tenure in politics and went out on national news releases.
Milk and Lira split around this time, but Lira called him a few weeks later and demanded Milk come to his apartment. When Milk arrived, he found Lira had hanged himself. Already prone to severe depression, Lira had been upset about the Anita Bryant and John Briggs campaigns.
John Briggs was forced to drop out of the 1978 race for California governor, but received enthusiastic support for Proposition 6, dubbed the Briggs Initiative. The proposed law would have made firing gay teachers—and any public school employees who supported gay rights—mandatory. Briggs’ messages supporting Proposition 6 were pervasive throughout California, and Harvey Milk attended every event Briggs hosted. Milk campaigned against the bill throughout the state as well, and swore that even if Briggs won California, he would not win San Francisco. In their numerous debates, which toward the end had been honed to quick back-and-forth banter, Briggs maintained that homosexual teachers wanted to abuse and recruit children. Milk responded with statistics compiled by law enforcement that provided evidence that pedophiles identified primarily as heterosexual, and dismissed Briggs’ assertions with one-liner jokes: “If it were true that children mimicked their teachers, you’d sure have a helluva lot more nuns running around”.
Attendance at Gay Pride marches during the summer of 1978 in Los Angeles and San Francisco swelled. An estimated 250,000 to 375,000 attended San Francisco’s Gay Freedom Day Parade; newspapers claimed the higher numbers were due to John Briggs. Organizers asked participants to carry signs indicating their hometowns for the cameras, to show how far people came to live in the Castro District. Milk rode in an open car carrying a sign saying “I’m from Woodmere, N.Y.” He gave a version of what became his most famous speech, the “Hope Speech”, that The San Francisco Examiner said “ignited the crowd”:
“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.”
Despite the losses in battles for gay rights across the country that year, he remained optimistic, saying “Even if gays lose in these initiatives, people are still being educated. Because of Anita Bryant and Dade County, the entire country was educated about homosexuality to a greater extent than ever before. The first step is always hostility, and after that you can sit down and talk about it.”
Citing the potential infringements on individual rights, former governor of California Ronald Reagan voiced his opposition to the proposition, as did Governor Jerry Brown and President Jimmy Carter, the latter in an afterthought following a speech he gave in Sacramento. On November 7, 1978, the proposition lost by more than a million votes, astounding gay activists on election night. In San Francisco, 75 percent voted against it.
On 10 November 1978, 10 months after being sworn in, White resigned his position on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, claiming that his annual salary of $9,600 was not enough to support his family. Milk was also feeling the pinch of the decrease in income when he and Scott Smith were forced to close Castro Camera a month before. Within days, White requested that his resignation be withdrawn and he be reinstated, and Mayor Moscone initially agreed. However, further consideration—and intervention by other supervisors—convinced the mayor to appoint someone more in line with the growing ethnic diversity of White’s district and the liberal leanings of the Board of Supervisors. On 18 November, news broke of the murder of California Representative Leo Ryan, who was in Jonestown, Guyana to check on the remote community built by members of the Peoples Temple who had relocated from San Francisco. The next day came news of the mass suicide of members of the Peoples Temple. Horror came in degrees as San Franciscans learned more than 400 Jonestown residents were dead. Dan White remarked to two aides who were working for his reinstatement, “You see that? One day I’m on the front page and the next I’m swept right off.” Soon the number of dead in Guyana topped 900.
Moscone planned to announce White’s replacement days later, on 27 November 1978. A half hour before the press conference, White entered City Hall through a basement window to avoid metal detectors, and made his way to Moscone’s office. Witnesses heard shouting between White and Moscone, then gunshots. White shot the mayor in the shoulder and chest, then twice in the head after Moscone had fallen on the floor. White then quickly walked to his former office, reloading his police-issue revolver with hollow-point bullets along the way, and intercepted Milk, asking him to step inside for a moment. Dianne Feinstein heard gunshots and called the police. She found Milk face down on the floor, shot five times, including twice in the head at close range. After identifying both bodies, Feinstein was shaking so badly she required support from the police chief. It was she who announced to the press, “Today San Francisco has experienced a double tragedy of immense proportions. As President of the Board of Supervisors, it is my duty to inform you that both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed,” then adding after being drowned out by shouts of disbelief, “and the suspect is Supervisor Dan White.” Milk was 48 years old. Moscone was 49.
Within an hour, White called his wife from a nearby diner; she met him at a church and escorted him to the police, where White turned himself in. Many residents left flowers on the steps of City Hall. That evening, a spontaneous gathering began to form on Castro Street, moving toward City Hall in a candlelight vigil. Their numbers were estimated between 25,000 and 40,000, spanning the width of Market Street, extending the mile and a half (2.4 km) from Castro Street. The next day, the bodies of Moscone and Milk were brought to the City Hall rotunda where mourners paid their respects. Six thousand mourners attended a service for Mayor Moscone at St. Mary’s Cathedral. Two memorials were held for Milk; a small one at Temple Emanu-El and a more boisterous one at the Opera House.
Cover of San Francisco Examiner 28 November 1978
The headline of The San Francisco Examiner on 28 November 1978 announced Dan White was charged with first-degree murder, and eligible for the death penalty.
Moscone had recently increased security at City Hall in the wake of the Jonestown suicides. Survivors from Guyana recounted drills for suicide preparations that Jones called “White Nights”. Rumors about Moscone’s and Milk’s murders were fueled by the coincidence of Dan White’s name and Jones’ suicide preparations. A stunned District Attorney called the assassinations so close to the news about Jonestown “incomprehensible”, but denied any connection. Governor Jerry Brown ordered all flags in California to be flown at half staff, and called Milk a “hard-working and dedicated supervisor, a leader of San Francisco’s gay community, who kept his promise to represent all his constituents”. President Jimmy Carter expressed his shock at both murders and sent his condolences. Speaker of the California Assembly Leo McCarthy called it “an insane tragedy”. “A City in Agony” topped the headlines in The San Francisco Examiner the day after the murders; inside the paper stories of the assassinations under the headline “Black Monday” were printed back to back with updates of bodies being shipped home from Guyana. An editorial describing “A city with more sadness and despair in its heart than any city should have to bear” went on to ask how such tragedies could occur, particularly to “men of such warmth and vision and great energies”. Dan White was charged with two counts of murder and held without bail, eligible for the death penalty owing to the recent passage of a statewide proposition that allowed death or life in prison for the murder of a public official. One analysis of the months surrounding the murders called 1978 and 1979 “the most emotionally devastating years in San Francisco’s fabulously spotted history”.
The 32-year-old White, who had been in the Army during the Vietnam War, had run on a tough anti-crime platform in his district. Colleagues declared him a high-achieving “all-American boy”. He was to have received an award the next week for rescuing a woman and child from a 17-storey burning building when he was a firefighter in 1977. Though he was the only supervisor to vote against Milk’s gay rights ordinance earlier that year, he had been quoted as saying, “I respect the rights of all people, including gays”. Milk and White at first got along well. One of White’s political aides remembered, “Dan had more in common with Harvey than he did with anyone else on the board”. White had voted to support a center for gay seniors, and to honor Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin’s 25th anniversary and pioneering work.
“The plaque covering Milk’s ashes reads, in part: Harvey Milk’s camera store and campaign headquarters at 575 Castro Street and his apartment upstairs were centers of community activism for a wide range of human rights, environmental, labor, and neighborhood issues. Harvey Milk’s hard work and accomplishments on behalf of all San Franciscans earned him widespread respect and support. His life is an inspiration to all people committed to equal opportunity and an end to bigotry.
After Milk’s vote for the mental health facility in White’s district, however, White refused to speak with Milk and only communicated with one of Milk’s aides. Other acquaintances remembered White as very intense. “He was impulsive … He was an extremely competitive man, obsessively so … I think he could not take defeat,” San Francisco’s assistant fire chief told reporters. White’s first campaign manager quit in the middle of the campaign, and told a reporter that White was an egotist and it was clear that he was antigay, though he denied it in the press. White’s associates and supporters described him “as a man with a pugilistic temper and an impressive capacity for nurturing a grudge”. The aide who had handled communications between White and Milk remembered, “Talking to him, I realized that he saw Harvey Milk and George Moscone as representing all that was wrong with the world”.
When Milk’s friends looked in his closet for a suit for his casket, they learned how much he had been affected by the recent decrease in his income as a supervisor. All of his clothes were coming apart; all of his socks had holes. He was cremated and his ashes were split, most of them scattered in San Francisco Bay by his closest friends. Some of them were encapsulated and buried beneath the sidewalk in front of 575 Castro Street, where Castro Camera had been located. Harry Britt, one of four people Milk listed on his tape as an acceptable replacement should he be assassinated, was chosen to fill that position by the city’s acting mayor, Dianne Feinstein.
Dan White’s arrest and trial caused a sensation, and illustrated severe tensions between the liberal population and the city police. The San Francisco Police were mostly working-class Irish descendants who intensely disliked the growing gay immigration, as well as the liberal direction of the city government. After White turned himself in and confessed, he sat in his cell while his former colleagues on the police force told Harvey Milk jokes; police openly wore “Free Dan White” T-shirts in the days after the murder. An undersheriff for San Francisco later stated: “The more I observed what went on at the jail, the more I began to stop seeing what Dan White did as the act of an individual and began to see it as a political act in a political movement.” White showed no remorse for his actions, and only exhibited vulnerability during an eight-minute call to his mother from jail.
The seated jury for White’s trial consisted of white middle-class San Franciscans who were mostly Catholic; gays and ethnic minorities were excused from the jury pool. The jury was clearly sympathetic to the defendant: some of the members cried when they heard White’s tearful recorded confession, at the end of which the interrogator thanked White for his honesty. White’s defense attorney, Doug Schmidt, argued that he was not responsible for his actions, using the legal defense known as diminished capacity: “Good people, fine people, with fine backgrounds, simply don’t kill people in cold blood.” Schmidt tried proving that White’s anguished mental state was a result of manipulation by the politicos in City Hall who had consistently disappointed and confounded him, finally promising to give his job back only to refuse him again. Schmidt said that White’s mental deterioration was demonstrated and exacerbated by his junk food binge the night before the murders, since he was usually known to have been health-food conscious. Area newspapers quickly dubbed it the Twinkie defense. White was acquitted of the first degree murder charge on 21 May 1979, but found guilty of voluntary manslaughter of both victims, and he was sentenced to serve seven and two-thirds years. With the sentence reduced for time served and good behavior, he would be released in five. He cried when he heard the verdict.
Rioters outside San Francisco City Hall, 21 May 1979, reacting to the voluntary manslaughter verdict for Dan White.
Acting Mayor Feinstein, Supervisor Carol Ruth Silver, and Milk’s successor Harry Britt condemned the jury’s decision. When it was announced over the police radio in the city, someone sang “Danny Boy” on the police band. A surge of people from the Castro District walked again to City Hall, chanting “Avenge Harvey Milk” and “He got away with murder”. Pandemonium rapidly escalated as rocks were hurled at the front doors of the building. Milk’s friends and aides tried to stop the destruction, but the mob of more than 3,000 ignored them and lit police cars on fire. They shoved a burning newspaper dispenser through the broken doors of City Hall, then cheered as the flames grew. One of the rioters responded to a reporter’s question about why they were destroying parts of the city: “Just tell people that we ate too many Twinkies. That’s why this is happening.” The chief of police ordered the police not to retaliate, but to hold their ground. The White Night riots, as they became known, lasted several hours.
Later that evening, 21 May 1979, several police cruisers filled with officers wearing riot gear arrived at the Elephant Walk Bar on Castro Street. Harvey Milk’s protégé Cleve Jones and a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, Warren Hinckle, watched as officers stormed into the bar and began to beat patrons at random. After a 15-minute melee, they left the bar and struck out at people walking along the street. The chief of police finally ordered the officers out of the neighborhood. By morning, 61 police officers and 100 rioters and gay residents of the Castro had been hospitalised. City Hall, police cruisers, and the Elephant Walk Bar suffered damages in excess of $1,000,000.
After the verdict, the District Attorney Joseph Freitas faced a furious gay community to explain what had gone wrong. The prosecutor admitted to feeling sorry for White before the trial, and neglected to ask the interrogator who recorded White’s confession (and who was a childhood friend of White’s and his police softball team coach) about his biases and the support White received from the police because, he said, he did not want to embarrass the detective in front of his family in court. Nor did Freitas question White’s frame of mind, lack of a history of mental illness, or bring into evidence city politics, suggesting that revenge may have been a motive. Supervisor Carol Ruth Silver testified on the last day of the trial that White and Milk were not friendly, yet she had contacted the prosecutor and insisted on testifying. It was the only testimony the jury heard about their strained relationship. Freitas blamed the jury whom he claimed had been “taken in by the whole emotional aspect of the trial”.
Milk’s and Moscone’s murders and White’s trial changed city politics and the California legal system. In 1980 San Francisco ended district supervisor elections, fearing that a Board of Supervisors so divisive would be harmful to the city, and that they had been a factor in the assassinations. A grassroots neighborhood effort to restore district elections in the mid-1990s proved successful, and the city returned to neighborhood representatives in 2000. As a result of Dan White’s trial, California voters changed the law to reduce the likelihood of acquittals of accused who knew what they were doing but claimed their capacity was impaired. Diminished capacity was abolished as a defense to a charge, but courts allowed evidence of it when deciding whether to incarcerate, commit, or otherwise punish a convicted defendant. The “Twinkie Defence” has entered American mythology, popularly described as a case where a murderer escapes justice because he binged on junk food, simplifying White’s lack of political savvy, his relationships with George Moscone and Harvey Milk, and what San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen described as pandemic police “dislike of homosexuals”.
Dan White served a little more than five years for the double murder of Moscone and Milk. On 21 October 1985, a year and a half after his release from prison, White was found dead in a running car in his ex-wife’s garage. He was 39 years old. His defense attorney told reporters that he had been despondent over the loss of his family, and the situation he had caused, adding “This was a sick man.”
Harvey Milk’s political career centered on making government responsive to individuals, gay liberation, and the importance of neighborhoods to the city. At the onset of each campaign, an issue was added to Milk’s public political philosophy. His 1973 campaign focused on the first point, that as a small business owner in San Francisco—a city dominated by large corporations that had been courted by municipal government—his interests were being overlooked because he was not represented by a large financial institution. Although he did not hide the fact that he was gay, it did not become an issue until his race for the California State Assembly in 1976. It was brought to the fore in the supervisor race against Rick Stokes, as it was an extension of his ideas of individual freedom.
Milk strongly believed that neighborhoods promoted unity and a small-town experience, and that the Castro should provide services to all its residents. He opposed the closing of an elementary school; even though most gay people in the Castro did not have children, Milk saw his neighborhood having the potential to welcome everyone. He told his aides to concentrate on fixing potholes and boasted that 50 new stop signs had been installed in District 5. Responding to city residents’ largest complaint about living in San Francisco—dog feces—Milk made it a priority to enact the ordinance requiring dog owners to take care of their pets’ droppings. Randy Shilts noted, “some would claim Harvey was a socialist or various other sorts of ideologues, but, in reality, Harvey’s political philosophy was never more complicated than the issue of dogshit; government should solve people’s basic problems.”
Karen Foss, a communications professor at the University of New Mexico, attributes Milk’s impact on San Francisco politics to the fact that he was unlike anyone else who had held public office in the city. She writes, “Milk happened to be a highly energetic, charismatic figure with a love of theatrics and nothing to lose … Using laughter, reversal, transcendence, and his insider/outsider status, Milk helped create a climate in which dialogue on issues became possible. He also provided a means to integrate the disparate voices of his various constituencies.” Milk had been a rousing speaker since he began campaigning in 1973, and his oratory skills only improved after he became City Supervisor. His most famous talking points became known as the “Hope Speech”, which became a staple throughout his political career. It opened with a play on the accusation that gay people recruit impressionable youth into their numbers: “My name is Harvey Milk—and I want to recruit you.” A version of the Hope Speech that he gave near the end of his life was considered by his friends and aides to be the best, and the closing the most effective:
And to the young gay people in the Altoona, Pennsylvania and the Richmond, Minnesota 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.
In the last year of his life, Milk emphasized that gay people should be more visible to help to end the discrimination and violence against them. Although Milk had not come out to his mother before her death many years before, in his final statement during his taped prediction of his assassination, he urged others to do so:
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.
However, Milk’s assassination has become entwined with his political efficacy, partly because he was killed at the zenith of his popularity. Historian Neil Miller writes, “No contemporary American gay leader has yet to achieve in life the stature Milk found in death.” His legacy has become ambiguous; Randy Shilts concludes his biography writing that Milk’s success, murder, and the inevitable injustice of White’s verdict represented the experience of all gays. Milk’s life was “a metaphor for the homosexual experience in America”. According to Frances FitzGerald, Milk’s legend has been unable to be sustained as no one appeared able to take his place in the years after his death: “The Castro saw him as a martyr but understood his martyrdom as an end rather than a beginning. He had died, and with him a great deal of the Castro’s optimism, idealism, and ambition seemed to die as well. The Castro could find no one to take his place in its affections, and possibly wanted no one.” On the 20th anniversary of Milk’s death, historian John D’Emilio said, “The legacy that I think he would want to be remembered for is the imperative to live one’s life at all times with integrity.” For a political career so short, Cleve Jones attributes more to his assassination than his life: “His murder and the response to it made permanent and unquestionable the full participation of gay and lesbian people in the political process.”
Gay Pride flag above Harvey Milk Plaza in San Francisco's Castro neighbourhood
The City of San Francisco has paid tribute to Milk by naming several locations after him. Where Market and Castro streets intersect in San Francisco flies an enormous Gay Pride flag, situated in Harvey Milk Plaza. The San Francisco Gay Democratic Club changed its name to the Harvey Milk Memorial Gay Democratic Club in 1978 (currently named the Harvey Milk Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Democratic Club) and boasts that it is the largest Democratic organization in San Francisco. In New York City, Harvey Milk High School is a school program for at-risk youth that concentrates on the needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students and operates out of the Hetrick Martin Institute.
In 1982, freelance reporter Randy Shilts completed his first book: a biography of Milk, titled The Mayor of Castro Street. Shilts wrote the book while unable to find a steady job as an openly gay reporter. The Times of Harvey Milk, a documentary film based on the book’s material, won the 1984 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. Director Rob Epstein spoke later about why he chose the subject of Milk’s life: “At the time, for those of us who lived in San Francisco, it felt like it was life changing, that all the eyes of the world were upon us, but in fact most of the world outside of San Francisco had no idea. It was just a really brief, provincial, localized current events story that the mayor and a city council member in San Francisco were killed. It didn’t have much reverberation.” Milk’s life has been the subject of a musical theatre production, an opera, a children’s picture book, and the biopic Milk, released in 2008 after 15 years in the making. The film was directed by Gus Van Sant and starred Sean Penn as Milk and Josh Brolin as Dan White, and won two Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor. It took eight weeks to film, and often used extras who had been present at the actual events for large crowd scenes, including a scene depicting Milk’s “Hope Speech” at the 1978 Gay Freedom Day Parade.
Milk was included in the “Time 100 Heroes and Icons of the 20th Century” as “a symbol of what gays can accomplish and the dangers they face in doing so”. Despite his antics and publicity stunts, according to writer John Cloud, “none understood how his public role could affect private lives better than Milk … he knew that the root cause of the gay predicament was invisibility”. The Advocate listed Milk third in their “40 Heroes” of the 20th century issue, quoting Dianne Feinstein: “His homosexuality gave him an insight into the scars which all oppressed people wear. He believed that no sacrifice was too great a price to pay for the cause of human rights.”
Stuart Milk (left) with Barack Obama (right)
In August 2009, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contribution to the gay rights movement stating “he fought discrimination with visionary courage and conviction”. Milk’s nephew Stuart accepted for his uncle. Shortly after, Stuart co-founded the Harvey Milk Foundation with Anne Kronenberg with the support of Desmond Tutu, co-recipient of 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom and now a member of the Foundation’s Advisory Board. Later in the year, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger designated May 22 as “Harvey Milk Day”, and inducted Milk in the California Hall of Fame. Starting in 2011, the Harvey Milk Foundation began coordinating global recognition and celebration of Harvey Milk Day.
Harry Britt summarized Milk’s impact the evening Milk was shot in 1978: “No matter what the world has taught us about ourselves, we can be beautiful and we can get our thing together … Harvey was a prophet … he lived by a vision … Something very special is going to happen in this city and it will have Harvey Milk’s name on it.”
Below is an heartwarming letter I received from a long-time friend I’ve known over 30 years. After reading it, and her daughter’s article, you’ll see why I call her a great parent, who taught by example:
Dan, I loved this article. It brought out so many emotions in me. First I was moved to tears, add in a little pissed off, then I was so proud, and finally actually picturing a chorus line of transgenders and gays getting fed up and kicking some bigot, hypocritical asses made me laugh. I’m also proud of you for standing up for youself and others who havn’t quite worked up the courage to take a stand for themselves. I always knew Geneva was to small for you. YOU WERE BORN TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
The following is an article that my 21 year old daughter wrote. She herself is heterosexual but has several friends who are transgender and/or gay and has seen them hurt and treated poorly by people who have brains equivalent to the size of a knat. It was never published, but it made her feel better, to let off steam. She doe’s this alot and sometimes her work does get published. God help Geneva County as she is a little woman with a great big voice. lol I hope you enjoy it.
Hell Is The Shell
“I never asked to be this way!”
“They call me a freak!”
“I feel like I’m trapped inside the wrong body!”
Many of you reading this today may hear this on a daily basis, whether it’s said by a friend, a brother, a sister, a son or daughter. Some of you never have these notions cross your path. And perhaps some of you may feel or have once felt like screaming these words. Regardless of how they may or may not apply to you, the words above and the emotions behind them are very real, and are experienced every single day by someone. Everyone has their own personal hell to deal with and to conquer. My only hope today is to bring to light the confusion and torment of transgender individuals that walk among us in society. My intention is to show you readers, that who they are are not an abomination, and what makes them feel and act this way is not merely personal choice, but genetics and chemical imbalances in the brain. I wish to also point out to you how they are discriminated. Most importantly, my intention is to provide you with a different view, and hopefully increase the numbers of those who can make a difference, who can be heard; starting with you.
Many people believe that being transgender is repulsive, is a sickness of the mind and that those who claim to be of the wrong gender physically are merely homosexual. Some of you might find it easier to accept one being gay as opposed to one claiming they were meant to be another sex. This is complicated to take in because a majority believe that to call yourself a mistake from birth would be to condemn what God has made you, in other words to be born a man is to be a man, and likewise with being born a woman. But it’s not that simple. I for one can’t provide reasoning behind the grand design of things, but as an aspiring writer I choose to view things from all angles, and I have looked into the opposing views of my research I am sharing with you today. I’m in favor of believing it’s a glitch in the genetic makeup. Research by scientist Simon LeVav (1991) suggests that sexual orientation is in part physiological. While studying the hypothalamus from two deceased males, one homosexual and the other heterosexual, LeVav was able to discover a significant difference between the two brains. The cell cluster in the heterosexual man proved to be larger than that of the homosexual man and even of women; thus proving that the homosexual man has a chemical makeup in the brain that is identical to a female’s. Another theory is that all fetuses are conceived essentially female. As the fetus grows and develops its organs, it then can either grow as a male or female. Transgender people are believed to have grown into a male physically; however their brain remains that of a female, therefore a genetic glitch that causes the individual to feel trapped inside a body that was not meant to be theirs.
The transgender person goes through a life of confusion that can often lead to resentment of themselves as well as others. It’s a sad truth that this often goes ignored. While looking up transgender crime rates I discovered that although the numbers are quite high, not much is being done about awareness. I found countless crimes involving victims that were viciously murdered with the killers themselves receiving minor sentencing such as manslaughter, with no counts of hate crimes. Such victims of these malicious crimes are Brandon Teena, Duanna Johnson, Moses Cannon, Leeneshia Edwards, the list could go on and on. Further research informed me that although the FBI keeps violent crime statistics against Gays and Lesbians, it does not against Transgendered persons. The most recognized of the Transgender crimes is that of Gwen Amber Rose Araujo, a California teen murdered in October 2002. A movie was released on Lifetime Movie Network in 2006 called A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story. This movie was bittersweet because it raised awareness by telling this poor girl’s story, however it only told her story. There are thousands of victims whose stories will never be heard.
Many faiths and religions are said to believe that the body is merely a vessel, a container of the soul itself. The Bible also states much the same in scripture. Upon dying the body does not depart along with the soul, but stays to return to dust. If that statement rings true, then how can the transgender populace be viewed as sinners or as a corruption. I realize that not all of my readers are Christian or any other faith for that matter. But if we can all look at ourselves as souls being contained by our physical selves, then perhaps we can better understand that our inner beings are not limited to gender, or even eye color. We are all of equal value, because despite our personal preferences we are all human beings. We all coexist.
As I conclude my argument, I would like to leave you with a quote that has always stayed with me ever since my eyes came across the words. It rings true with this article along with any facet of life, any conflict we may face..
“It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.” J.K. Rowling
I would rather live proudly on the street, in a jail, or in the ground, than lie to myself and others. I am sickened, and I am tired, from the actions – and the inactivity – of the majority of the gay people of this world.I am sickened by thousands, even millions, of the GLBT population attending Pride events who take advantage of what others do and have done. Without the sacrifices made in the beginning of the ‘Gay Movement’, there would be no Pride events today. I am frustrated by the number of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and other sexual minority members who turn to suicide. I am repulsed by the lack of outcry from the gay community by statements such as:
“Perez Hilton called me douchebag, so I had my homie shoot up a gay wedding. wasnt his, but made me feel better.” And “If you a man and your (sic) over 25 and you don’t eat pu**y just kill your self damn it, the world will be a better place. Lol.” ~ 50 Cent
“Today,1969 Stonewall riots started gay movement, ‘Gay movement’ involves putting a hand on your hip whilst pouting at someone you fancy” ~ Jimmy Carr, 28 June 2011
Does he have any idea what the Stonewall Riots were? At 1:20 in the morning on Saturday, June 28, 1969, four plainclothes policemen in dark suits, two patrol officers in uniform, and Detective Charles Smythe and Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine arrived at the Stonewall Inn’s double doors and announced “Police! We’re taking the place!” Two undercover policewomen and two undercover policemen had entered the bar earlier that evening to gather visual evidence, as the Public Morals Squad waited outside for the signal. Once inside, they called for backup from the Sixth Precinct using the bar’s pay telephone. The music was turned off and the main lights were turned on. Approximately 200 people were in the bar that night. Patrons who had never experienced a police raid were confused, but a few who realized what was happening began to run for doors and windows in the bathrooms. Police barred the doors, and confusion spread. Michael Fader remembered, “Things happened so fast you kind of got caught not knowing. All of a sudden there were police there and we were told to all get in lines and to have our identification ready to be led out of the bar.”
The raid did not go as planned. Standard procedure was to line up the patrons, check their identification, and have female police officers take customers dressed as women to the bathroom to verify their sex, upon which any men dressed as women would be arrested. Those dressed as women that night refused to go with the officers. Men in line began to refuse to produce their identification. The police decided to take everyone present to the police station, and separated the transvestites in a room in the back of the bar. Maria Ritter, who was known as Steve to her family, recalled, “My biggest fear was that I would get arrested. My second biggest fear was that my picture would be in a newspaper or on a television report in my mother’s dress!” Both patrons and police recalled that a sense of discomfort spread very quickly, spurred by police who began to “bully” some of the lesbians by “feeling some of them up inappropriately” while frisking them.
When did you ever see a fag fight back?… Now, times were a-changin’. Tuesday night was the last night for bullshit…. Predominantly, the theme was, “this shit has got to stop!” —anonymous Stonewall riots participant.
The police were to transport the bar’s alcohol in patrol wagons. Twenty-eight cases of beer and nineteen bottles of hard liquor were seized, but the patrol wagons had not yet arrived, so patrons were required to wait in line for about 15 minutes. Those who were not arrested were released from the front door, but they did not leave quickly as usual. Instead, they stopped outside and a crowd began to grow and watch. Within minutes, between 100 and 150 people had congregated outside, some after they were released from inside the Stonewall, and some after noticing the police cars and the crowd. Although the police forcefully pushed or kicked some patrons out of the bar, some customers released by the police performed for the crowd by posing and saluting the police in an exaggerated fashion. The crowd’s applause encouraged them further: “Wrists were limp, hair was primped, and reactions to the applause were classic.”
When the first patrol wagon arrived, Inspector Pine recalled that the crowd—most of whom were homosexual—had grown to at least ten times the number of people who were arrested, and they all became very quiet. Confusion over radio communication delayed the arrival of a second wagon. The police began escorting Mafia members into the first wagon, to the cheers of the bystanders. Next, regular employees were loaded into the wagon. A bystander shouted, “Gay power!”, someone began singing “We Shall Overcome”, and the crowd reacted with amusement and general good humor mixed with “growing and intensive hostility”.[58] An officer shoved a transvestite, who responded by hitting him on the head with her purse as the crowd began to boo. Author Edmund White, who had been passing by, recalled, “Everyone’s restless, angry, and high-spirited. No one has a slogan, no one even has an attitude, but something’s brewing.” Pennies, then beer bottles, were thrown at the wagon as a rumor spread through the crowd that patrons still inside the bar were being beaten.
A scuffle broke out when a woman in handcuffs was escorted from the door of the bar to the waiting police wagon several times. She escaped repeatedly and fought with four of the police, swearing and shouting, for about ten minutes. Described as “a typical New York butch” and “a dyke—stone butch”, she had been hit on the head by an officer with a billy club for, as one witness claimed, complaining that her handcuffs were too tight. Bystanders recalled that the woman, whose identity remains unknown, sparked the crowd to fight when she looked at bystanders and shouted, “Why don’t you guys do something?” After an officer picked her up and heaved her into the back of the wagon, the crowd became a mob and went “berserk”: “It was at that moment that the scene became explosive”.
The police tried to restrain some of the crowd, and knocked a few people down, which incited bystanders even more. Some of those handcuffed in the wagon escaped when police left them unattended (deliberately, according to some witnesses). As the crowd tried to overturn the police wagon, two police cars and the wagon—with a few slashed tires—left immediately, with Inspector Pine urging them to return as soon as possible. The commotion attracted more people who learned what was happening. Someone in the crowd declared that the bar had been raided because “they didn’t pay off the cops”, to which someone else yelled “Let’s pay them off!” Coins sailed through the air towards the police as the crowd shouted “Pigs!” and “Faggot cops!” Beer cans were thrown and the police lashed out, dispersing some of the crowd, who found a construction site nearby with stacks of bricks. The police, outnumbered by between 500 and 600 people, grabbed several people, including folk singer Dave Van Ronk—who had been attracted to the revolt from a bar two doors away from the Stonewall. Though Van Ronk was not gay, he had experienced police violence when he participated in antiwar demonstrations: “As far as I was concerned, anybody who’d stand against the cops was all right with me, and that’s why I stayed in…. Every time you turned around the cops were pulling some outrage or another.” Ten police officers—including two policewomen—barricaded themselves, Van Ronk, Howard Smith (a writer for The Village Voice), and several handcuffed detainees inside the Stonewall Inn for their own safety.
Multiple accounts of the riot assert that there was no pre-existing organization or apparent cause for the demonstration; what ensued was spontaneous. Michael Fader explained,
We all had a collective feeling like we’d had enough of this kind of shit. It wasn’t anything tangible anybody said to anyone else, it was just kind of like everything over the years had come to a head on that one particular night in the one particular place, and it was not an organized demonstration…. Everyone in the crowd felt that we were never going to go back. It was like the last straw. It was time to reclaim something that had always been taken from us…. All kinds of people, all different reasons, but mostly it was total outrage, anger, sorrow, everything combined, and everything just kind of ran its course. It was the police who were doing most of the destruction. We were really trying to get back in and break free. And we felt that we had freedom at last, or freedom to at least show that we demanded freedom. We weren’t going to be walking meekly in the night and letting them shove us around—it’s like standing your ground for the first time and in a really strong way, and that’s what caught the police by surprise. There was something in the air, freedom a long time overdue, and we’re going to fight for it. It took different forms, but the bottom line was, we weren’t going to go away. And we didn’t.
The only photograph taken during the first night of the riots shows the homeless youth that slept in nearby Christopher Park, scuffling with police. The Mattachine Society newsletter a month later offered its explanation of why the riots occurred: “It catered largely to a group of people who are not welcome in, or cannot afford, other places of homosexual social gathering…. The Stonewall became home to these kids. When it was raided, they fought for it. That, and the fact that they had nothing to lose other than the most tolerant and broadminded gay place in town, explains why.”
Garbage cans, garbage, bottles, rocks, and bricks were hurled at the building, breaking the windows. Witnesses attest that “flame queens”, hustlers, and gay “street kids”—the most outcast people in the gay community—were responsible for the first volley of projectiles, as well as the uprooting of a parking meter used as a battering ram on the doors of the Stonewall Inn. Sylvia Rivera, who was in full drag and had been in the Stonewall during the raid, remembered: “You’ve been treating us like shit all these years? Uh-uh. Now it’s our turn!… It was one of the greatest moments in my life.” The mob lit garbage on fire and stuffed it through the broken windows as the police grabbed a fire hose. Because it had no water pressure, the hose was ineffective in dispersing the crowd, and seemed only to encourage them. When demonstrators broke through the windows—which had been covered by plywood by the bar owners to deter the police from raiding the bar—the police inside unholstered their pistols. The doors flew open and officers pointed their weapons at the angry crowd, threatening to shoot. The Village Voice writer Howard Smith, in the bar with the police, took a wrench from the bar and stuffed it in his pants, unsure if he might have to use it against the mob or the police. He watched someone squirt lighter fluid into the bar; as it was lit and the police took aim, sirens were heard and fire trucks arrived. The onslaught had lasted 45 minutes.
The Tactical Police Force (TPF) of the New York City Police Department arrived to free the police trapped inside the Stonewall. One officer’s eye was cut, and a few others were bruised from being struck by flying debris. Bob Kohler, who was walking his dog by the Stonewall that night, saw the TPF arrive: “I had been in enough riots to know the fun was over…. The cops were totally humiliated. This never, ever happened. They were angrier than I guess they had ever been, because everybody else had rioted … but the fairies were not supposed to riot … no group had ever forced cops to retreat before, so the anger was just enormous. I mean, they wanted to kill.” With larger numbers, police detained anyone they could and put them in patrol wagons to go to jail, though Inspector Pine recalled, “Fights erupted with the transvestites, who wouldn’t go into the patrol wagon”. His recollection was corroborated by another witness across the street who said, “All I could see about who was fighting was that it was transvestites and they were fighting furiously”.
The TPF formed a phalanx and attempted to clear the streets by marching slowly and pushing the crowd back. The mob openly mocked the police. The crowd cheered, started impromptu kick lines, and sang to the tune of The Howdy Doody Show theme song: “We are the Stonewall girls/ We wear our hair in curls/ We don’t wear underwear/ We show our pubic hairs”. Lucian Truscott reported in The Village Voice: “A stagnant situation there brought on some gay tomfoolery in the form of a chorus line facing the line of helmeted and club-carrying cops. Just as the line got into a full kick routine, the TPF advanced again and cleared the crowd of screaming gay power[-]ites down Christopher to Seventh Avenue.” One participant who had been in the Stonewall during the raid recalled, “The police rushed us, and that’s when I realized this is not a good thing to do, because they got me in the back with a night stick”. Another account stated, “I just can’t ever get that one sight out of my mind. The cops with the [nightsticks] and the kick line on the other side. It was the most amazing thing…. And all the sudden that kick line, which I guess was a spoof on the machismo … I think that’s when I felt rage. Because people were getting smashed with bats. And for what? A kick line.”
Christopher Park, where many of the demonstrators met after the first night of rioting to talk about what had happened, now features a sculpture of four white figures by George Segal that commemorates the milestone.
Craig Rodwell, owner of the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop reported watching police chase participants through the crooked streets, only to see them appear around the next corner behind the police. Members of the mob stopped cars, overturning one of them to block Christopher Street. Jack Nichols and Lige Clarke, in their column printed in Screw, declared that “massive crowds of angry protesters chased [the police] for blocks screaming, ‘Catch them!’ ”
By 4:00 in the morning the streets had nearly been cleared. Many people sat on stoops or gathered nearby in Christopher Park throughout the morning, dazed in disbelief at what had transpired. Many witnesses remembered the surreal and eerie quiet that descended upon Christopher Street, though there continued to be “electricity in the air”. One commented: “There was a certain beauty in the aftermath of the riot…. It was obvious, at least to me, that a lot of people really were gay and, you know, this was our street.” Thirteen people had been arrested. Some in the crowd were hospitalized, and four police officers were injured. Almost everything in the Stonewall Inn was broken. Inspector Pine had intended to close and dismantle the Stonewall Inn that night. Pay phones, toilets, mirrors, jukeboxes, and cigarette machines were all smashed, possibly in the riot and possibly by the police.
During the siege of the Stonewall, Craig Rodwell called The New York Times, The New York Post, and The New York Daily News to inform them what was happening. All three papers covered the riots; The New York Daily News placed coverage on the front page. News of the riot spread quickly throughout Greenwich Village, fueled by rumors that it had been organized by the Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panthers, or triggered by “a homosexual police officer whose roommate went dancing at the Stonewall against the officer’s wishes”. All day Saturday, June 28, people came to stare at the burned and blackened Stonewall Inn. Graffiti appeared on the walls of the bar, declaring “Drag power”, “They invaded our rights”, “Support gay power”, and “Legalize gay bars”, along with accusations of police looting, and—regarding the status of the bar—”We are open”.
The next night, rioting again surrounded Christopher Street; participants remember differently which night was more frantic or violent. Many of the same people returned from the previous evening—hustlers, street youths, and “queens”—but they were joined by “police provocateurs”, curious bystanders, and even tourists. Remarkable to many was the sudden exhibition of homosexual affection in public, as described by one witness: “From going to places where you had to knock on a door and speak to someone through a peephole in order to get in. We were just out. We were in the streets.”
Thousands of people had gathered in front of the Stonewall, which had opened again, choking Christopher Street until the crowd spilled into adjoining blocks. The throng surrounded buses and cars, harassing the occupants unless they either admitted they were gay or indicated their support for the demonstrators. Sylvia Rivera saw a friend of hers jump on a nearby car trying to drive through; the crowd rocked the car back and forth, terrifying its occupants. Another of Rivera’s friends, Marsha P. Johnson, climbed a lamppost and dropped a heavy bag onto the hood of a police car, shattering the windshield. As on the previous evening, fires were started in garbage cans throughout the neighborhood. More than a hundred police were present from the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth Precincts, but after 2:00 a.m. the TPF arrived again. Kick lines and police chases waxed and waned; when police captured demonstrators, whom the majority of witnesses described as “sissies” or “swishes”, the crowd surged to recapture them. Street battling ensued again until 4:00 a.m.
Beat poet and longtime Greenwich Village resident Allen Ginsberg lived on Christopher Street, and happened upon the jubilant chaos. After he learned of the riot that had occurred the previous evening, he stated, “Gay power! Isn’t that great!… It’s about time we did something to assert ourselves”, and visited the open Stonewall Inn for the first time. While walking home, he declared to Lucian Truscott, “You know, the guys there were so beautiful—they’ve lost that wounded look that fags all had 10 years ago”.
Activity in Greenwich Village was sporadic on Monday and Tuesday, partly due to rain. Police and Village residents had a few altercations, as both groups antagonized each other. Craig Rodwell and his partner Fred Sargeant took the opportunity the morning after the first riot to print and distribute 5,000 leaflets, one of them reading: “Get the Mafia and the Cops out of Gay Bars”. The leaflets called for gays to own their own establishments, for a boycott of the Stonewall and other Mafia-owned bars, and for public pressure on the mayor’s office to investigate the “intolerable situation”.
Not everyone in the gay community considered the revolt a positive development. To many older gays and many members of the Mattachine Society that had worked throughout the 1960s to promote homosexuals as no different from heterosexuals, the display of violence and effeminate behavior was embarrassing. Randy Wicker, who had marched in the first gay picket lines before the White House in 1965, said the “screaming queens forming chorus lines and kicking went against everything that I wanted people to think about homosexuals … that we were a bunch of drag queens in the Village acting disorderly and tacky and cheap.” Others found the closing of the Stonewall Inn, termed a “sleaze joint”, as advantageous to the Village.
On Wednesday, however, The Village Voice ran reports of the riots, written by Howard Smith and Lucian Truscott, that included unflattering descriptions of the events and its participants: “forces of faggotry,” “limp wrists” and “Sunday fag follies”. A mob descended upon Christopher Street once again and threatened to burn down the offices of The Village Voice. Also in the mob of between 500 and 1,000 were other groups that had had unsuccessful confrontations with the police, and were curious how the police were defeated in this situation. Another explosive street battle took place, with injuries to demonstrators and police alike, looting in local shops, and arrests of five people. The incidents on Wednesday night lasted about an hour, and were summarized by one witness: “The word is out. Christopher Street shall be liberated. The fags have had it with oppression.”
Folks, THIS fag has had it with oppression as well. I am called to action, and hope you join me. In the words of gay-rights activist, “My name is Harvey Milk and I’m here to recruit you.”
I recruit you as well. Harvey spent, and gave his life for equal rights to all humans. “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!” Harvey Milk, 1978.
In closing, I leave you with more quotes by Harvey Milk.
“I fully realize that a person who stands for what I stand for, an activist, a gay activist, becomes the target or the potential target for a person who is insecure, terrified, afraid, or very disturbed with themselves.” Harvey Milk, on a tape he made to be played in the event of his assassination.
“If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.” On 27 November 1978 he was killed by gunshot, to the head.
“The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, that my friends, is true perversion..”
“All men are created equal. No matter how hard you try, you can never erase those words.”
“If I turned around every time somebody called me a faggot, I’d be walking backward – and I don’t want to walk backward.” Harvey Milk, quoted in The Chronicle.
After Meeting With Daniel Lee of Proactive Diversity, Swindon Pride Opens Its Function To All 18 Year-Olds & Over
On Monday 21 March 2011, Proactive Diversity founder and chair, Daniel Lee and Patrick Hargreaves, Proactive Diversity co-chair, met with Swindon Pride chair Jo Sharpe and that organisation’s co-chair Tracey Doran, discussing concerns detailed in the following article that brought outrage from members of the UK’s GLBT and other gender and sexual minorities. Once these points reached ears of Swindon Pride’s other committee members in a second meeting later that same evening, Swindon Pride dropped their stance of making this event open to ‘ladies only’ and ‘those who identify as female’, resulting in an event all legal-aged persons. Now, this is an event all can enjoy, and should support. Money raised helps fund this year’s Pride Event taking place 06 August 2011.
Demand the Cancellation of Swindon Pride’s Ladies Night, scheduled for 02 April 2011.
Ladies Night
Swindon and Wiltshire Pride are excited to be hosting a Ladies Night at The Bell Hotel in Old Town on Saturday 2nd April.
To make the event one to remember we have an amazing line up.
The evening will start with some top class humour and song from one of the UK’s established Drag Queens and followed by not just 1 but 2, yes 2 hunky male strippers. If that’s not enough there will be a hot buffet of treats, some naughty pleasures with the lovely Ann Summers Girls, Topless Waiters and Polefect fitness will be there showing you how it’s done, plus The City Beauty Co will be on hand with fragrances and cosmetics at discounted prices.
There is a strictly over 18’s and Ladies only policy for this event
Ticket cost is £20 which will include a welcome drink and a hot buffet.
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My problem with this event is one of discrimination and exclusion, the core of what every GLBT, or human rights organisation in general, is supposed to oppose.
When asked the reason why men are excluded, I was told by Jo Sharpe, who chairs Swindon Pride, “We are NOT discriminating or making it off limits to anyone, we are however bound by certain laws regarding events like this.”
Firstly, when terms and conditions state ‘there is a ladies only policy for this event’ I fail to see how she claims Swindon Pride ‘is not making the event off limits to anyone’.
Senondly, I asked her to cite the ‘certain laws’, yet she did not. Interestingly, according to the actual ad, there will be “one of the UK’s established Drag Queens and followed by not just 1 but 2, yes 2 hunky male strippers.” If it is illegal, according to Sharpe, for men to be in attendance, how does the drag queen and hunky male strippers avoid breaking the law by attending? How do the male officers of Swindon Pride, who are attending, avoid incrimination?
Whilst I applaud any organisation doing what it can to raise money and bring attention to the GLBT movement, it should not be at the very expense of a portion of the population that group represents.
Hosting a fundraising event and excluding the entire male population – gay men included – by a GLBT group supposedly fighting for equal rights and acceptance is not different from an animal rights group raising money by selling furs.
As for not being able to please all of the people all of the time, I agree. If this were an all-inclusive event, nobody could complain. Now they say anyone who identifies as a woman will be admitted. Some whose birth certificate says female do not identify this way. I am not trying to split hairs, but work with people who are somewhere besides cut & dry male or female, and have an issue defining as one or the other. This event has really upset more people than I think its organisers intend. After speaking with some of the members of Swindon Pride, I am convinced that the group’s hearts are in the right place, and they honestly mean well, yet parts of the straight as well as GLBT and other gender and sexual minorities feel left out, dismissed, and even shunned by the very type of organisation that should support them.
When anyone practices exclusion and discrimination, I ask Swindon Pride, where is the pride in that?
Now let’s support this, and all events hosted by Swindon Pride!
Pink Therapy is the UK’s largest independent therapy organisation working with gender and sexual minority clients, promoting high quality therapy and training services for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and others who identify as being gender or sexual minorities. We comprise a team of twelve Associate Therapists who all positively identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual, and this also website hosts the UK’s first online Directory of Pink Therapists which lists other qualified therapists around the UK who adopt a sexuality-affirmative stance and do not see sexual or gender variation as a sickness. Although we help members who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered, as most therapists, we realise not everybody defines as one of these. Pink Therapy is the first of it’s kind to include heterosexual cross-dressers, androgynous persons, the intersexed, asexual patients, BDSM and kink clientele, those in the polyamourous community, and others.
This type of service is hardly available in parts of the world with little or no acceptance of the LBGT community. For this reason, Pink Therapy hosts its highly regarded International Summer School, in July this year, allowing LGBT therapists working in poorer countries around the world to come to London and study. Therapists in Croatia, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, Greece, and Colombia who are working with LGBT people but who receive little or no fees for their time, and who can’t afford the fares, accommodation and course fees to travel to London for the Summer School have already contacted Pink Therapy about the course.
Most of these therapists work in countries where there isn’t even a gay switchboard/helpline let alone any other of the LGBT support infrastructure. They, like most therapists here in the UK, have little if any formal training in working with gender and sexual minority clients, but unlike British LGBT therapists, they are generally working in isolation with very little collegial and knowledgable supervisory support.
Last year, the Summer School attracted people from Singapore, Thailand, Denmark, Ireland and Scotland, and was an extraordinarily powerful learning experience for everyone involved with it. For a number of the participants, it really changed their lives. We’re hoping this year to build on this and want to be able to welcome people who are working in some of the toughest places to be out as LGB or T.
To make it possible for these therapists to attend the school, Pink Therapy established the International Scholarship Fund, administered by the well respected charity, London Friend, as they can also claim Gift Aid on donations, thus maximising the donation. Pink Therapy is also raising money through an art auction, Dining With the Stars evening, invitation-only cocktail parties and dinners, and other events.
For further information on the International Summer School, the International Scholarship Fund, bidding in the Art Auction or Dining With the Stars, or other items mentioned, please visit the Pink Therapy website at: http://www.PinkTherapy.co.uk
For information on how you can donate your work to the art auction, or if you are a public figure willing to donate an evening for the celebrity dinner auction, contact
Daniel Lee
07904 453639
DosMaridosUk@gmail.com with ‘Pink Therapy’ in the subject line.
We really have so many benefits from living here in Britain where our civil rights are protected. Whilst this isn’t by any means a perfect place to be a gender or sexual minority, Pink Therapy knows it is worse elsewhere in the world, and tries to make a difference by helping them find skilled therapists.
B Proud Bedfordshire, and Freedom Friends invite you to an evening of entertainment to celebrate LGBT History month 2011 with us on 05 February 2011 from 19:30 – 22:00.
We are honoured to welcome, as part of this event, Scottish singer/songwriter Horse McDonald (www.randan.org) and former Bedfordian Tracy Mack, who has entertained audiences at both the Clarence and Barley Mow. Special guest speaker this evening is documentary filmmaker and Proactive Diversity founder, Daniel Lee.
More acts and history month activities to be confirmed, so watch this blog.
Tickets are available from The Gordon Arms in Castle Road, Lavender Lifestyles (www.lavenderlifestyles.co.uk) and by e-mailing Cindy Armstrong: cindy.armstrong@ntlworld.com.
With a capacity of only 110 people (and seating for only 90), get your tickets for this “must be there” event now and get there early to get a seat.
LGBT History Month
Claiming our History, Celebrating our Present, Creating our Future
The Shed is adjacent to The Gordon Arms, Castle Road, Bedford MK40 3QY
Tel: 01234 409297 http://www.entshed.com
11 November 2010 was a special date for a few people I know, and for several others I do not. One couple, my husband and I, celebrated our anniversary that evening at a concert by our friend, the fabulous Horse McDonald. I was a bit worried for our mate, though, as in the weeks prior she told me of her cold or flu affecting her sound, evident in telephone calls, and even upon arriving at Bush Hall in London on the afternoon of her show. All fears dashed when she hit the stage on this tour commemorating her own anniversary: 20 years since the release of her debut album ‘The Same Sky’ featuring UK chart singles ‘You Could Be Forgivien’, ‘Speed Of The Beat’, and ‘Careful’, featured below:
Aside from her immense talent, this woman has a heart larger than most. Through the friendship we formed because of her inclusion in my documentary ‘PROUD!’ I know the love she has for all of her fans, and the concerns she has for her fellow-members of the human race. Tightly sandwiched into the little time she had between sound checks and dressing for the show, Horse gave an interview and acoustic recording for a charity. She also spoke with Cindy Armstrong about her scheduled appearance at Cindy’s GLBT event in February 2011. Not surprisingly, other recording artists I talk to love her just as much, and had me pass along hugs to her from them. The highlight of the evening, for us personally, was when Horse dedicated ‘Somebody’ to Patrick and me for our milestone.
One sure sign of great artists is when other top-notch ones cover their work. At Glastonbury Music Festival, multi-award winning Will Young covered, ‘Careful’ in this moving arrangement:
Ending the perfect concert, after three audience-demanded encores, Horse finished with ‘Something Wicked’, bringing the room to its feet. Below is the video featuring a guest appearance by fellow Scottish celebrity, the beautiful Lorraine Kelly.
Once home, at 3AM the next morning, Patrick went to bed convinced we had the best anniversary ever by attending a concert of a good friend. Or, as we like to think, our anniversary party with Horse singing.
Another week is here, bringing another chance to meet individuals holding a place in the Gay History timeline and talking with other people who share my passion for acceptance of all citizens of our world.
First thing this morning was a meeting with Simon Fielder of Sounds and Images, who is composing music for the opening and closing credits of my documentary. Below is a video of his wonderful photography and original music:
Today was very special indeed, as one of my years-long favourite artists and entertainers agreed to take part in my documentary: Holly Johnson.
I first heard ‘Relax’, released in 1983 by his band, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, shortly after I decided to come out to all of my family, friends, and associates. I knew then that I was not ashamed of my sexuality, and his position of an openly gay man in this world was something unheard of in my little corner of Alabama in the United States ‘Deep South’, an area known for intolerance to diversity.
After going solo, Holly recorded Legendary Children in 1994, featuring names of gay celebrities and other public figures throughout history and present day who are gay, and mentions Oscar Wilde.
We met in Langtry’s, the wonderful restaurant in London’s Cadogan Hotel.
Lillie Langtry lived at 21 Pont Street, London from 1892 to 1897. Although from 1895 the building was actually the Cadogan Hotel, she would stay in her old bedroom there. A blue plaque on the hotel commemorates this, and the hotel named its restaurant Langtry’s in her honour. Shortly after opening, the hotel became infamous for the arrest of Oscar Wilde on 6 April 1895, in room no. 118. Police charged Oscar with “committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons” (a euphemism for any sex between males) under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885. Despite pleas by friends to flee the country, Wilde chose to stay and was found guilty and served two years hard labour. The poet laureate John Betjeman, in his tragic poem The Arrest of Oscar Wilde at the Cadogan Hotel, immortalized the events in the room, pictured below.
This meeting was especially poignant for me: I was actually in a place of significant importance in Gay History, as Oscar Wilde has always been an idol of mine. I sat in front of a window, once looked out by Wilde himself, perhaps pondering his future. More than one tear was shed.
Tuesday mornings usually designate an “up and at ‘em” type day for me, the type I most enjoy, and this was no exception. This is when I schedule meetings in London, all over our beautiful capital city. First on the agenda was at Stonewall, just south of the London Eye. This wonderful charity, founded in 1989 by a small group of men and women (including Sir Ian McKellen) who were active in the struggle against Section 28 of the Local Government Act, is one place I volunteer. Once inside this rather drab building’s fourteenth-floor, abutting Waterloo Station, one has a bird’s-eye view of every landmark for miles.
Lunchtime found me at Edge Bar in Soho where I met my friend, Dillon Buck, to discuss his interview for the PROUD! documentary, chat with manager Rafaela about filming locations in this impressive three-storey venue, and grab a pint. I really like the al fresco tables (which were unfortunately in use) although the multiple monitors of the latest music videos made up for having to meet inside.
A short walk away and I was at the Dominion Theatre discussing Freddie Mercury and his positive role-model qualities that are inspiring, and whose music with Queen are featured in the West-End musical, We Will Rock You.
The funniest moment of my day occurred when leaving my third stop, the Palace Theatre, speaking with folks there about ‘gay entertainment’ aimed at the general public. As I exited the stage door, a tourist taking pictures of the marquee ran up to me screaming, “Are you somebody?” Denying my urge to answer philosophically, I turned quizzical, lowering my ever-present sunglasses due to ‘glarephobia’, peering over the rims and replying, “Don’t you recognize me?” Without missing a beat, in true emperor’s-new-clothes mode she shrieked, “YES!” and snapped a dozen pictures. I turned my collar up, told her she was welcome, and walked away, laughing all the way to my fourth and final appointment – The Really Useful Group – Andrew Lloyd Webber’s office for permission to use Priscilla in my film.
Winding my way through the West End en route, I met a few actors outside St. Martin’s theatre, home of The Mousetrap – Agatha Christie’s mystery holding the world record of continually running play at 58 years. One of these, Michael Roberts (Mr. Paravicini in the show) introduced me to Polari, the old British gay slang that has all but died out, and its usage in theatre – a fascinating man and conversation, both of which I worked into PROUD! That conversation is exactly what I enjoy most about documentaries – watching or making: Discovering the unexpected, and realizing that often what one needs to tell the story best, cannot be found – it finds you.
This was MY kind of Tuesday: Cold, rainy, and I had plenty of coffee ready to make all day. As much as I love running around London, I really enjoy working from home on a day like this. I turn the music down low and listen to the trickling on my window as I research topics. Today I am finding all I can on Sir Ian McKellen, whom I meet tomorrow for an interview. I had already started volunteering at Stonewall before I knew he and a few other men and women started the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender organization opposing Section 28. If it were not for freethinking individuals as he is, there would be no same-gender marriage, no gay-adoptions, and possibly re-criminalization of simply being homosexual.
Don’t get me started here. I am passionate about human rights, equal-rights, gay-rights, whatever anyone calls it: When I can’t, while somebody else can, I shut-up only when things change or I know I’ve done all I can. This is the exciting part about meeting Ian: He didn’t shut-up, and now I am a happily married man with a wonderful husband, in a country where our wedding wasn’t just a party: It was as real and legal as one between a man and a woman. It sounds simple, until it is you, and it wasn’t possible just around five years ago.
The event was to dedicate a Blue Plaque to Peter Tatchell, a fellow GLBT rights campaigner, and one extremely deserving of the honour, with McKellen dedicating the plaque. The reception, five blocks away was in the schedule for a 10-minute walk. Ours was twenty-five. I enjoyed the stroll myself, and felt like I was taking an autumn stroll with my grandfather, although we were chatting about what needs to be done today, and furthering ‘the fight’. Most importantly how proud we are of the young people in the public’s eye who are gay are not as afraid of coming out as when he and I were their age. It is such a joy meeting people who have done so much, for so many, and work with them to do more. It may make for a twenty-hour day sometimes, but I never tire of the work.
I am pleased to tell you about a significant and important debate, taking place on the eve of the arrival of Pope Benedict to the UK for his state visit. The event takes place at the Odeon West End cinema in Leicester Square on Tuesday 14 September, and begins at 6.30pm with a screening of the award winning-film, Conspiracy of Silence, written and directed by John Deery. Along with the Bishop of Nottingham, stand-up comedian and broadcaster, Frank Skinner, there will be other special guests including theologians, lawyers, writers, and broadcasters, to debate the topic of celibacy in the Catholic priesthood. BBC Radio 4’s Ernie Rea will chair the debate.
The event has attracted a lot of media attention, with Sky, BBC, and ITN all covering on the day. Tickets are selling fast and as a very special offer to friends of mine who read this, the film’s producers are offering a 1/3 off ticket prices (reduced from £30 to £20) to the film and the debate. Order by calling John Deery’s office on 020 8392 1936 or email info@conspiracyofsilence.co.uk.
Make sure you quote ‘Daniel Lee’ to get this special price.
Reduced ticket prices: £20 for adults (normal price £30) and £15 students and seniors (normal price £20)
For details of the film and debate visit: http://www.conspiracyofsilence.co.uk
Follow on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/CelibacyDebate or through Facebook (search for Celibacy Debate 2010)
The film is based on real stories from real priests including one of the first Catholic priests in the UK to become HIV positive in 1986.
Join us for a great night of film drama and intelligent debate.
See y’all there!
Daniel
For more information on this event, please contact:
John Deery
Director Producer Screenwriter
Conspiracy of Silence Ltd
Office: +44 (0)20 8392 1936
Mob/cell: +44 (0)7711 384 327
Facebook.com
Twitter.com/CelibacyDebate
Horse is getting all kinds of love from Twitter peeps right now – including greetings from the one and only Will Young! There is also some exciting news – filmmaker Daniel Lee is collaborating with the leading LGBTQ rights organization Stonewall to create a documentary about Britain's rich gay history – and he wants to interview Horse! We will watch for further news on this! Speaking of documentaries, in 1993 Horse wrote music for a feminist film … Read More
The Pink Triangle (German: Rosa Winkel) was the Nazi concentration camp badge used to identify all homosexual men, as well as those imprisoned for sexual offences such as rape, bestiality, and paedophilia. Originally intended as a badge of shame, the Pink Triangle, often inverted from its Nazi usage, has become an international symbol of gay-pride and the gay-rights movement, and is second in popularity only to the rainbow flag.
Under Nazi Germany, every prisoner had to wear a concentration camp badge on their jacket, the colour of which categorized them into groups. Individuals who were sexual offenders (including homosexual men) had to wear the Pink Triangle. Other colours identified Jews (two triangles superimposed as a yellow star), political prisoners, Jehovah’s Witnesses, “anti-social” prisoners, and others the Nazis deemed undesirable.
While the number of homosexuals in German concentration camps is hard to estimate, Richard Plant (The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War against Homosexuals) gives a rough estimate of the number of men convicted for homosexuality “between 1933 and 1944 is about 63,000.”
After the camps were liberated at the end of the Second World War, many of the pink triangle prisoners were often simply re-imprisoned by the Allied-established Federal Republic of Germany. An openly gay man named Heinz Dörmer, for instance, served 20 years total, first in a Nazi concentration camp and then in the jails of the new Republic. In fact, the Nazi amendments to Paragraph 175, which turned homosexuality from a minor offence into a felony, remained intact after the war for a further 24 years. While suits seeking monetary compensation have failed, in 2002 the German government issued an official apology to the gay community.
Today, fewer than ten of those imprisoned for homosexuality are known to be still living. In 2000, the documentary film Paragraph 175 recorded some of their testimonies.
By the end of the 1970s, the pink triangle resurfaced as a symbol for gay rights protest. Some academics have linked the reclamation of
the symbol with the publication, in the early 1970s, of concentration camp survivor Heinz Heger’s memoir, Men With The Pink
Triangle. The pink triangle is the basis of the design of the Homomonument in Amsterdam, the Gay in Sydney, the Pink Triangle Park in the Castro neighbourhood of San Francisco and the huge one-acre Pink Triangle on Twin Peaks that is displayed every year during San Francisco Pride weekend.
Reclaiming a previously offensive term, the gay areas of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and Edinburgh, Scotland are known as the Pink
Triangles because of their approximate shapes.
Proactive Diversity 
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