by Milk, Harvey
At the same time, that broader vista only held meaning in relation to the communities in which one lived, the people for whom one strived and struggled politically. Milk’s hero, as he wrote in the column included in this volume, “My Concept of a Legislator,” was Harry Truman, who
never developed contempt for the common man, perhaps because he had personally waited on so many of them in his Kansas City clothing store. Once in public office, he never patronized his constituents, perhaps because he never forgot the time when he had to file bankruptcy. The people who supported Truman were those who had to sweat for their daily bread, many who may not have been as articulate as others with their tongues, but were loving in their hearts, those who instinctively recognized that no person is born to greatness, but many people rise to it.
His political vision and platform clearly had not changed, and he approached the campaign against the Machine as he had the others, by tirelessly attending every meeting possible, shaking hands and conversing, and by building bridges among those who shared stakes in the Sixteenth District. Frank Robinson remembered, “Everything could be going against him, but he would come back to the headquarters jubilant because he has persuaded one old lady to vote for him. . . . It was as if every person he won over represented an important victory. . . . Those moments meant more to him than anything in the world.”88
Throughout the campaign, and even into the first hours of the election returns, there was cause for hope. Hope, the theme and trope that would come to define Milk’s legacy, had emerged during the 1976 campaign in part because Art Agnos told him, after one of their countless tandem events, that his stump speech was too dour. Perhaps this time Milk underestimated his opponent, who was backed by every prominent politician at the state and local level (including, at the eleventh hour, Gov. Jerry Brown, who had sworn neutrality) and endorsed by the very press (such as the Bay Guardian) that had encouraged Milk and castigated the Machine. The gay establishment, of course, actively supported Agnos; that low moment when they imported openly lesbian Massachusetts state representative Elaine Noble to endorse Agnos (to throw her weight against Milk, whom she had never met) must have stung deeply. Some openly accused Milk himself of being involved in a political deal with the Machine, which he bitterly denounced as a smear campaign. Moreover, Milk may have strategically overestimated his support among Castro voters, spending more time emphasizing non-gay rights issues while Art Agnos highlighted his solidarity with the GLBTQ community. The full-page Agnos campaign ad in the Bay Area Reporter a week before the election packed a punch, however inaccurate: “’Who is really upfront for Gay rights no matter who the audience is?’ . . . If Harvey Milk won’t speak out for gay rights at the Labor Council in S.F., what will he do in Sacramento?” It has been suggested that the 35 percent of the votes Agnos received in the high turnout Castro (Milk garnered 62 percent), compared to the lower turn-out minority neighborhoods where Milk fared worse than he had planned and concentrated, arguably made the difference in the election. The toll was also personal, including the disintegration of his relationship with Scott Smith, and the death threats that resonated with his long-standing foreboding about an early demise.89
Against those long odds, Milk only lost by 3,630 votes of 32,000 cast, though the triumphalism of his enemies writing his political obituary must have only deepened the exhaustion of his third campaign—two in two years—and third defeat. Had he squandered his chance for election to the Board of Supervisors in 1977, as he had his appointment to the Board of Permit Appeals, because of his political willfulness? Were those pundits correct who suggested the margin of Milk’s loss meant that the gay establishment could no longer deliver the vote, thus paving the way for a run in 1977? Was the most significant, and dramatic, act of Milk’s operatic political career yet to come?
One can imagine Milk losing faith in Hope. In addition to the precariousness of his political future, Milk now sought change amid shifting, worsening political contexts in California and nationally, with obvious impact at home. Cultural anxieties in California were running high despite new Governor Jerry Brown’s “big thinking”: “Beneath the glamour of California life, the undercurrent of anxiety had rarely run harder and faster than in the mid-1970s. With the economy in recession, jobless rates stood at almost 10 percent, and the state was coming under growing pressure to raise taxes and slash services. Factories and employers were heading south, their tanks and theaters were closing, and people were increasingly moving out of the big cities.”90 Was there glumness in Milk’s interview with the San Francisco State University student paper, Zenger’s? “I’m deeply in debt, my store’s deeply in debt. It’s a struggle to get out. . . . I just took my stand and lost, unlike other politicians who get involved just to fill their egos and their pockets. But I knew the consequences of running, but it’s vital that someone raises the questions. Such as, why is there crime? Not how to stop it by using more police. Why is there unemployment and why has industry been driven out of town?”91
More ominously, evangelical and social conservatives, alarmed by what they perceived as widespread moral deterioration in a climate of tolerance and permissiveness precipitating a crisis in the American family, began in earnest to mobilize a movement that would hit full stride after Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980. Paul Boyer explained, “In this decade, the nation’s evangelical subculture emerged from self-imposed isolation to become a powerful force in mainstream culture and politics. . . . When Newsweek magazine proclaimed 1976 as ‘The Year of the Evangelical,’ the editors underscored a phenomenon that was well under way.”92 As Bruce Schulman put it, “Thunder was gathering on the right.” Worse yet, its lightening, prayers being answered, should smite GLBTQ people. “In the rhetoric of the New Right, feminists were second only to homosexuals in the list of villains threatening the American family,” according to Dominic Sandbrook. “If there was one threat that particularly disturbed preachers, it was homosexuality.”93 Texas televangelist James Robison’s battle cry of 1980 could be found forming in the throats of the devout half a decade earlier: “I’m sick and tired of hearing about all of the radicals, and the perverts, and the liberals, and the leftists, and the communists coming out of the closet. It’s time for God’s people to come out of the closet, out of our churches, and change America.”94 And so they did.
The year 1977 proved to be one of the most important in GLBTQ history to date, the best and worst of times, though its memory has been overshadowed by Stonewall and by the tragic events of 1978. The year began with such promise. The long-sought district elections had finally been won the previous November, changing the landscape of municipal politics and quite likely the political fortunes of Harvey Milk, as that color-coded map had long predicted. In his first “Milk Forum” column for the new year, he touted Carter’s presidency and district elections as “changes of influence . . . changes in priorities” that meant good news for GLBTQ people.95 A gay rights ordinance protecting against homophobic discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations had just passed in Dade County, Florida, a noteworthy civil rights victory in what would become a series of such advancements over the course of the year, in unlikely bastions such as St. Paul, Wichita, Iowa City, Champaign-Urbana, Aspen, and Eugene. A number of states were considering similar legislation. Wyoming became the 19th state to legalize sex between consenting adults of either gender. Shilts described the “year of the gay”: “The year, it seemed, surely would show that the gay movement had reached the juggernaut status; nothing could stop this idea whose time had come.”96
Ironically, the year would be consequential for the movement because an evangelical pop singer and sunny endorser of Florida orange juice named Anita Bryant thwarted the gay rights juggernaut in a Manichean showdown. Bryant’s wholesome persona, Donna Reed looks, mellifluous voice, conservative values, and devout faith—embodiments of what we now know familiarly as family values rhetoric—made her a powerful spokesperson for a homophobic campaign to repeal the Dade
County gay rights ordinance that in its own right threatened to become a national juggernaut and a harbinger of the New Right. Calling itself “Save Our Children,” the repeal effort trafficked in the invidious and intoxicating fear appeals regarding homosexual “recruitment.” As Bryant, in a characteristic harangue, charged, “What these people really want, hidden behind obscure legal phrases, is the legal right to propose to our children that there is an acceptable alternate way of life. . . . No one has a human right to corrupt our children. Prostitutes, pimps, and drug pushers, like homosexuals, have civil rights, too, but they do not have the right to influence our children to choose their way of life.” Bigotry never sounded so sweet. It took no time at all to gather the required signatures (plus 50,000 more in addition) to secure a special election in June of 1977 that would become known as “Orange Tuesday.” Gay rights operatives from both coasts took their stand on the battleground of Miami. But their rational arguments proved to be no match for commercials featuring provocative images from the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day parade, and the refrain of children in peril, accompanied occasionally by Bryant’s rousing version of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” (and her labeling of gay people as “human garbage”).97
Harvey Milk brilliantly rose to the challenges of this shameful episode in U.S history (though children are not taught this blight in today’s classrooms). For months prior to the vote in Dade County, Milk used “Milk Forum” as a bully pulpit to mobilize against Anita Bryant, calling for a boycott of Florida orange juice, her firing, and an indictment against her for “inciting violence against Gay people.” He chided those who did not take her seriously, who were apathetic about participating in the boycott, and he excoriated the National Gay Task Force (NGTF), which defended her right to free speech. In response, he exclaimed, “Well, what about the rights of all those people who are fire-bombed because they are Gay? What about the rights of all who are, and will be, discriminated against because they are Gay? What about the rights of all who become victims of Anita Bryant’s preaching? What about the rights of Ovidio Ramos? Where is our great NGTF when it comes to Gay people who are beaten and lose their jobs?”98 Milk linked Bryant’s hate speech to recent public discourse by Supervisor Feinstein and Assistant District Attorney Douglas Munson in San Francisco that homophobically associated the “crime wave” with public sex spaces in their effort to relocate such businesses to a dilapidated section of the city.99
On June 7, the repeal passed with nearly 70 percent of the vote. Milk had not been enlisted by the gay establishment for the fight on the ground in Florida, but unlike more “respectable” representatives he became the de facto leader of the throngs of GLBTQ and allied people in the Bay Area who reacted to the repeal. Arguably, Milk was now a national leader of the gay rights movement. As in cities around the country, thousands took to the streets of San Francisco on Orange Tuesday and every night for the better part of a week thereafter, during which Milk’s presence towered. That first night is best remembered because Milk transformed the massive demonstration that threatened to turn violent (“Out of the Bars and into the Streets!”) into a five-mile peaceable march throughout the city, culminating in a rally of 5,000 at the steps of City Hall; the front-page Chronicle photograph of Milk with his familiar bullhorn captured well the spirit and achievement of the massive demonstration and its leadership. Clendinen and Nagourney observed:
[T]he midnight march was wholly a product of the city’s new gay population, one angry and aroused, with its own neighborhood, its own distinct cultural values, its own community organizations and leaders, and its own way of reacting to events. Anita Bryant’s victory had helped bring them into focus. As a large red banner emblazoned with the words “Gay Revolution” was run up the flagpole on Union Square that night, there was a new reality in San Francisco, and it was emerging in the middle of a crucial political campaign.100
Milk quelled violence even as he wasted no time in escalating his bellicose rhetoric so as to frame Dade’s outrage as a catalyst for intensified activism. “Without the President and the national leaders taking a stand, this will be a struggle like the black civil rights or the anti-Vietnam movements. . . . There will be violence and bitterness and the nation will be seared, but if we have to do battle in the streets we are ready to.”101
As the selected 1977 documents vividly convey, Milk believed Orange Tuesday to be a watershed event, “a victory deeper than the actual vote,” a swiftly rising tide of visibility, consciousness, and mobilization. “This was our Watts, our Selma, Alabama.” In a powerful turn of affect and logic, Milk thanked Anita Bryant, for “she herself pushed the Gay Movement ahead and the subject can never be pushed back into the darkness. . . . [S]he has, in fact, started what so many of us have talked about—a true national Gay Movement.”102 And Milk did shape his public discourse on Orange Tuesday with an eye toward the coming election. In his candidacy announcement later that month, during the Gay Freedom Day celebrations, Milk asked where the city’s elected officials had been during those days of protest, where had been the “appointed gay officials,” such as his replacement on the Board of Permit Appeals and soon-to-be campaign rival, Rick Stokes. “Like every other group,” Milk averred, “we should be judged by our leaders.”
And GLBTQ leadership was needed more than ever. Anita Bryant’s homophobic discourse surely had something central to do with the rise of anti-GLBTQ violence in San Francisco as elsewhere. Although city gardener Robert Hillsborough was murdered by a young man deeply conflicted about his own sexuality, John Cordova’s chanting of “faggot” while repeatedly stabbing his victim marked it as a crime constituted if not directly caused by the same hate speech that Milk found politically galvanizing. Hillsborough’s mother said of Anita Bryant, “My son’s blood is on her hands.”103 This very same fund of hate speech provided gubernatorial hopeful and California state senator John Briggs with an expedient platform, announcing just days after Orange Tuesday his campaign to remove from the public schools “gay teachers” or anyone affirming homosexuality in the classroom. Local politicians took the opportunity to attempt repeal of the recently won district elections and to recall GLBTQ-friendly officials such as Moscone, Hongisto, and Freitas, a nail biter not resolved favorably until the mid-summer special election. Across the nation, concerted efforts began to roll back gay rights, repeal campaigns that by 1978 would prove successful in St. Paul, Wichita, and Eugene.104 Assemblyman Art Agnos decided not to pursue promised gay rights legislation within the current climate created by Bryant and the Dade repeal.105
Within this broad combustible and propulsive political context, Milk stayed true to the vision he had forged through three previous campaigns. He never wavered from his position that GLBTQ people needed an “avowed gay leader” in office, one who was not beholden to those straight liberal “allies” who retreated from their pledged support whenever the political temperature on homosexuality rose precipitously. During this campaign, Milk first called for a statewide “gay caucus” and convention that would mobilize community across political, social, and other lines to create a unified front and influential bloc designed to test the commitment of any aspirant politician—local, state, or national—on gay rights issues. In the 1977 selected documents and elsewhere, Milk again was writing about what he called “gay economic power” and the representational power of a visible “lifestyle.”106 In his speech to the San Francisco Gay Democratic Club, he claimed that his motivation for running (running and running and running) was that “I remember what it was like to be 14 and gay.” Inspiring that kid from Altoona, or Des Moines, or wherever the closet needed to be opened in the now familiar refrain of the evolving Hope speech, was Milk’s sine qua non.107
Yet, even with a heightened emphasis on gay rights, Milk’s campaign vision and platform still embodied the populist, neighborhood activist fighting for all people in District 5 and across San Francisco, voicing issues that mattered to African Americans, Latinos, women, the elderly, and heterosexuals. In “M
ilk Forum,” he openly called for a coalition with other minorities.108 As he declared in his 1973 Address to the San Francisco Joint International Longshoremen & Warehousemen’s Union and Lafayette Club, “People are more important than buildings and neighborhoods, more important than freeways.” This was still Milk’s mantra, one that made his call to GLBTQ people that “we must learn from history that the time for riding in the back of the bus is over” broadly resonant, even in this virulently homophobic period.
Milk’s campaign, despite more favorable circumstances than in any of his previous attempts, nevertheless required a fight.109 He was once again openly opposed by prominent members of the gay establishment, including his accommodationist challenger, wealthy attorney and bathhouse entrepreneur Rick Stokes, who outspent him nearly three to one. Moreover, the threat loomed that a split gay vote in District 5 could lead to a victory for the formidable straight liberal candidate, Terence Hallinan. However, Milk had momentum in this electoral season that nearly perfectly reversed his showing in 1976. He won the endorsements of the GLBTQ press, including longtime antagonist Sentinel, as well as most of the GLBTQ Democratic clubs, and unexpectedly gained the straight press support of the liberal Bay Guardian and relatively conservative San Francisco Chronicle. With such visible and influential backing, and the help of campaign manager Anne Kronenberg as well as Dick Pabich, Jim Rivaldo, Cleve Jones, Frank Robinson, and Danny Nicoletta, Milk finally won, taking 30 percent of the vote in a field of seventeen, finishing first in sixty out of ninety-eight precincts and second in another thirty-three. Harry Britt, who would succeed Milk as city supervisor in little more than a year, remembered:
