by Milk, Harvey
. . .
In just about 90 days there will be an election in this state over the Briggs Initiative, Prop. 6. That could turn the mood of the nation more to the Right or more to the Left. It is more than just the rights of Gay teachers. Every Gay professional person—every Gay person who has any kind of license—has to realize that they may be next. The list will not end. Every effort by every Gay person must be made to defeat this initiative.
“I don’t have to worry . . . it can never happen here in San Francisco!” That is a comment that I have heard too often these past few weeks. Sounds like some of the unaware Jews talking during the early days of Hitler. That attitude itself could very well bring about disaster. Letting others do the work . . . do the financing . . . etc., because it does not affect you personally—right now—is exactly why the Briggs Initiative could pass. No one is going to win the battle for Gay rights if the Gay community does not put its full effort into the battle. Yet, a vast number of Gays seem to think that by talking about how bad Briggs is will in itself do the battle. By the time the anti-Gay ads hit the media and mails it will be too late. The battle must be fought now, before the hate campaign starts. And sitting home, or in your friendly bar, won’t help one bit. It will also take money.
NO MORE BAR MITZVAHS
Gays don’t spend a lot of money on their children’s education or birthdays. On their children’s bar mitzvahs, weddings, confirmations. Gays don’t put funds aside in large insurance policies or trusts for their mates and family. Thus the potential is there for Gays to contribute more towards a political campaign to protect themselves than non-Gays can. If every Gay person gave a small amount, there would be enough funds to mount a strong fight against Briggs. And if every Gay person contributed an amount equal to what they would have put into a child’s education, clothing, food, gifts, etc., if they had one, then there would be enough money to mount a winning campaign. Yet, for some reason, Gay people don’t seem to understand the need to fund this battle. For some reason Gay people feel someone else will put up the funds and volunteer their time.
THE HATE CAMPAIGN
Unless there is a rapid change in attitudes, unless there is a fast awakening of consciousness, there will be a rude awakening come November. I have a copy of the first volley against Gays put out by the Concerned Christians. It is not just against Gays teaching. It includes the ministry, police and fire fighters. It, in effect, links Gays and pornography as one and the same thing. And that is just the beginning.
Unless the Gay community, in total, starts to act now, it will be too late. It will not be a campaign that will be won on the last days as many “candidate” campaigns are. This will take a long time to win . . . people have to be talked to, on a one-to-one basis. And more than once. It cannot be done after the hate starts to pour out.
Already here in San Francisco the signs are for a rotten campaign to be waged against us. It ain’t pleasant. Please get involved. Please give of your time and funds. Both are badly needed.
SNOW WHITE & SAFETY
Snow White made famous the concept of “Whistle While You Work.” For the past several years, the Richard Harkness Butterfly Brigade has been making famous the concept of “Carry A Whistle For Your Protection.” Several thousand are out there. More are needed. The concept has spread to Chicago and other cities. The “carry a whistle” works!
With the long hot summer still here and the Briggs hate campaign starting, there could well be an increase to the violence against Gays that already exists. The best protection is to carry a police whistle. Use it only when either under attack or when you see another person under attack. When you hear one being blown you, and you, and you, and you, respond. With yours and on the run. A lot of violence has already been abated by the use of whistles. A lot of violence may well have been abated by the simple knowledge that the whistle force exists. The cost: $1.00! It could very well make the difference between a safe neighborhood—no matter where you live—and a violent one. Many stores in the Castro Village area carry them. A good investment!
39
“I Have High Hopes Address”
Stump speech, 1978
Even in the midst of the Briggs fight, Milk never left his populist roots. Lest history look back at the final months of Milk’s life as dedicated solely to the anti-Proposition 6 campaign, the stump address he delivered around San Francisco in the summer of 1978 concerning “the people” proved otherwise. As with his early discourse from 1978 (see Document 27), Milk kept his attention focused on his notion of a “city of neighborhoods.” Below, he reminded his constituencies that “Perhaps the most valuable resource of any city—and the one that’s ignored the most—is the people who live in it.”
One of Milk’s favorite citizen groups was the senior population. He was a constant advocate for senior rights, and had he lived longer, he indeed would have initiated plans for employing seniors and ensuring that their golden years were both fulfilling and comfortable. As fond as Milk was of children (one of his hobbies was dressing as a clown for community events), he also had a genuine affinity for seniors. As he saw it, both groups represented the bookends of life in San Francisco. Milk even considered putting the two groups together in his populist vision for the “city of neighborhoods”: “And we might consider employing some of our seniors as PSAs—‘Practical Student Aides’—to help out as tutors. We could even include them in the school’s hot-lunch program.” As always, Milk elevated people above business.
. . .
I have high hopes for the future of our cities. I have high hopes for the future of San Francisco. Granted its present problems, I have high hopes that the city of the future—our City of the future—will be one that will enrich the lives of all the people who live in it.
Most plans for the city of the future involve money—lots of it, more than any city could afford. But there are improvements that can be made in the city that don’t necessarily involve lots of money. That require, instead, generous amounts of imagination—and heart.
Perhaps the most valuable resource of any city—and the one that’s ignored the most—is the people who live in it, particularly the elderly. At present, we treat our senior citizens like so many beer cans, to be discarded after use. But the seniors are the very same people who made this city. They’re you and I, twenty or thirty or forty years from now.
Senior citizens don’t suddenly lose their expertise, their knowledge of what makes things work, and how, at the magic age of 65. Instead of scrapping them, why not use them? Why limit their contributions to civic life to service on the Commission for Aging, or related agencies? Why not appoint them to other boards and commissions? Their feeling for the human dimensions of a city would make them invaluable.
And there are other ways in which we could use our “Senior Power.” I would like to see a complex that we might call a “people-center”—a complex that contains schools, hospitals, child-care centers and senior centers. It might even have a center for minor criminal offenders.
In such a center, our Seniors could be employed in the hospital section to read to patients or as aides to the staff. They might help staff our childcare center. Those who commit minor crimes might also be employed to work in various portions of the center. Perhaps the senior citizen would meet the “inmate” and discover that he’s good at math. “Then why aren’t you an accountant?” “Because I never went to school.” And the next day the “inmate” might enroll in the center school, with the senior citizen as a tutor.
Someday, the “inmate” would leave the center for a decent job. And the senior citizen—and society—will have discovered that his own talents are still worthwhile, that he qualifies for something more than “no deposit, no return.”
And perhaps the child enrolled in the people-center school will learn more than the Three R’s. He will have discovered that prisoners, too, have hopes and aspirations, that being old need not be a period of uselessness, and that life is really about people helping people.
The great thing about imagination is that a little of it can go a long way. With not too much effort, we could turn small areas of our older hotels, or empty store fronts, into much-needed child-care centers. We might even pay some of our senior citizens to help staff them.
And we might consider employing some of our seniors as PSA’s—“Practical Student Aides”—to help out as tutors. We could even include them in the school’s hot-lunch program.
There are other problems that might yield to imagination. Why must an industrial “complex” be an area of brick buildings, railroad tracks and shanties that dies every evening at five when the workers go home? Why not intermix home and factory, make factories light and airy so people would enjoy working in them—and then ban the automobile!
40
“Harvey Milk vs. John Briggs”
Televised debate transcription, August 6, 1978
As the referendum vote on Proposition 6 inched closer and closer, Milk and Briggs engaged in numerous public debates. Many were not recorded; of those that were many are nearly inaudible and, at their best, difficult to translate. One of the extant (and clear) exchanges between the two adversaries was aired on August 6, 1978, on San Francisco’s KPIX-TV. The heated chat was later rebroadcast around California. In this televised “discussion”—over a restaurant table with an unnamed moderator—the talk was anything but cordial. In the transcript that follows, Briggs attempted to reframe Proposition 6 as attending solely to GLBTQ teachers rather than denying “anybody the right to a job.” Milk, of course, refuted this idea, suggesting that the Briggs Initiative would be the first of many dominoes to fall should GLBTQ teachers be banned in the state of California (see Document 38, Document 40, and Document 42). Interestingly, the discussion turned to the issue of “choice” as it related to sexualities—still a hotly contested and robust issue to this day. Milk chided Briggs for assuming that people simply stake out their sexualities “like you would choose your candidates.” In the process, Milk addressed the myths that Briggs and his supporters espoused.
Throughout the series of debates over the summer (and into early fall) of 1978, Milk was calm and methodical in his approach. Working alongside debate partner and San Francisco State University professor Sally Gearhart, he stuck to verifiable statistics when talking about exploding homosexual myths (i.e., “90 to 95 percent of all known child molesters are heterosexual men”) and reasoned narrative evidence when it came to the topic of choice (i.e., “I was born of heterosexual parents. I was taught by heterosexual teachers. In a society that’s so fiercely heterosexual, who was there to tell me, ‘Gee, Harvey, you ought to be homosexual!’”).
On the other hand, Briggs remained true to form, demonstrating his constant and blatant heterosexism during the discussions. Oftentimes snapping and issuing non sequiturs, he once told a moderator who mentioned how Governor Ronald Reagan disagreed with the Briggs Initiative, “I really don’t care what Gov. Reagan says. [He] comes from the same Hollywood crowd [that financed a great deal of the anti-Prop 6 campaign]. About 90 percent of the films that come out of Hollywood that are pornographic are homosexual films.” Other times, Briggs became visibly and physically hostile. A San Francisco Examiner article from October 1978 reported that KSFO radio reporter Tony Russomanno was attacked by Briggs after one debate. Russomanno stopped Briggs to ask how the senator thought the debate went. Briggs called him “a first class liar . . . then seized Russomanno’s microphone, pushed it against his chest and neck and shoved him out of the way.” To many, Briggs’s feigned statistics, outlandish comments, and—eventually—his physical responses smacked of desperation.
Indeed, as the documents preceding and following the present debate transcript indicate, Briggs’s motivations were severely in question. Perhaps voters brought those very doubts to the polls with them in November of 1978.
. . .
Briggs: I’ll tell you what [Proposition] 6 does not do. It does not deny you the right to be a supervisor. It does not deny anybody in this room a right to have a job.
Milk: Yes, it does, it denies people the right to teach.
Briggs: But there are no teachers in this room.
Milk: But we don’t know; there are some other people in this room.
Briggs: It does not deny anybody the right to a job. It does not deny anybody the right to rent or buy a house. All it does is say that parents—parents have the ultimate right as to who is going to teach their children.
Milk: Wait, wait, wait. Based on that—on that “ultimate right,” at one time parents didn’t want blacks to teach. At one time they didn’t want women to teach. You know, the old Bible says women shouldn’t be teachers, in the Old Testament. At one time. Because parents are locked in—they’re afraid of something different. They’re afraid of change. Because of fears and myths put into their heads. . . . One of those myths in this new ordnance is that you choose your sexuality. You don’t choose your homosexuality. Like you don’t choose blue eyes. Like you would choose your candidates . . .
Briggs: I care about this country. And I care about the family. And I really, sincerely, honestly, and truly believe from the bottom of my heart that homosexuality is a real threat to the survival of this country, if we continue to tolerate it and approve it and let it be raised to an equal level and standard of heterosexuality. That’s what I truly believe.
Milk: That’s the oldest game in the world! That’s why I keep saying to you, study! I would be surprised what your next step is! . . . [Homosexuality] is not ever done because of an experience. It is determined before school age. And as every scientific study done says, it is not a choice. It is not a choice. That’s the most fundamental mistake conservatives like Briggs bring up.
Briggs: But children learn by example. Children emulate. People need heroes. I said at the opening of the show that the reason you wanted to be elected to high office is so you can recruit and convert every young, adolescent homosexual. Those were your own words!
Milk: No, no, no. I said that one of the reasons of being elected is I’m a role model to young gay people. To young gay people. You see? You mis—turn things around like you turn everything else around.
Briggs: What about a teacher who’s a role model?
Milk: A teacher to a [particular] sexual orientation? You see, Senator, you’re turning things around. My statement was, I’m a role model to the young gay people. To people who have already established themselves as gay. Period. I didn’t say—you’re the one who keeps bringing up this phony recruitment. You know you’re lying. You know you’re changing the statements around. And you’re doing that all the way around, just like you shifted the money around in your campaigns. And you talk about morality! And I question, what is your real motive behind it? What is your real ambition behind this? What are you really using this for? And stop this phony issue!
41
“The Positive or the Negative”
Column, Bay Area Reporter, August 31, 1978
Toward the summer’s end, Milk continued to worry about the divisions of ideological and spiritual commitments within the GLBTQ community regarding the Briggs Initiative fight. The editorial below outlined the three categories of community members that Milk saw implicated in the struggle to defeat the Briggs Initiative. He asked his readers to “Take your choice!” and, of course, recommended that they fall into the category of “The Positive Beat”—“those who feel that we can win against Briggs.” As the campaign amped up and reached its climax, Milk’s movement had lesbians and gay men pass around the following palm card as a means of educating heterosexual voters, but also firming-up the movement’s members: “The purpose of this card is to make you aware of the fact that you ride with, talk to, eat with, and see gay people every day. I hope that the time you sent with me has helped you to realize that we are people just like you. Please think carefully about the Briggs Initiative before you vote in November, because it directly affects human rights, particularly mine as a gay person.” The movem
ent also inspired rallies in the days leading up to that fateful November election day, such as those in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, not to mention solidarity parades in New York, Houston, and New Orleans. Milk even published an editorial during the summer, telling people, “If each person puts into the fight 2 hours per week, that is about 30 hours. A little more than one day in your life to win freedom—not just for Gays, but for all. It is a small amount of time . . . less than the amount of time each person would spend in a bar one night a week or at a movie one day a week.” He and his allies were pulling out all the stops leading into the election.
