Party and prott: the radil history of gay liberatn, Stonewall and Pri | LGBTQ+ rights | The Guardian

Contents:

• HARVEY MILK’S GAY FREEDOM DAY SPEECH: ANNOTATED
• UNVERG GAY HISTORY SAN FRANCIS
• PARTY AND PROTT: THE RADIL HISTORY OF GAY LIBERATN, STONEWALL AND PRI

HARVEY MILK’S GAY FREEDOM DAY SPEECH: ANNOTATED

The send son of William and Merva Milk, he me om a fay wh proment ti to the muny: His Lhuanian-born grandfather Morris owned Milk’s Dry Goods, which beme the largt partment store on Long Island, and had helped anize the area’s first realized he was gay at an early age, and reportedly was dulgg his sir wh illic trysts by his early teens. Partly spired by what he viewed as an unfair tax on small bs, he cid to n for a seat on the San Francis Board of Supervisors was spurned by much of the cy’s more fluential gay electorate, who felt the outspoken New Yorker should tone down his act and wa his turn. Bettmann Archive/Getty ImagSupervisor Harvey Milk Undnted by his electn loss, Milk found the San Francis Gay Democratic Club to garner more polil support, and succsfully phed for a reanizatn of the Board of Supervisors electn om a cywi, at-large format to a geographil district format.

Returng to the mpaign trail 1977, he sought to broan his appeal beyond the gay muny through promis to reform the tax to boost dtry, create low-e hog and tablish day re centers for workg mothers. That November, an historic electn that also saw the first Che Amerin and the first Ain Amerin woman elected to the cy’s Board of Supervisors, Milk beme one of the untry’s first openly gay elected Rights Legislatn Demonstratg his penchant for urtg publicy, Milk -sponsored a “pooper-soper” ordance that required dog owners to clean up after their pets. As supervisor, he also dove to more personal matters by spearheadg a bill to ban discrimatn employment, hog and public acmodatns based on sexual orientatn, one of the natn’s strongt gay-rights measur to date.

Followg California State Senator John Briggs’s troductn of the Proposn 6 ballot iative, which sought to ban gay teachers and anyone supportg gay rights om workg California schools, Milk spent much of the summer and fall of 1978 mpaigng agast the iative. ” Addnally, more elected officials, cludg Massachetts Congrsman Gerry Studds and Barney Frank, me forth to acknowledge their homosexualy durg this subsequent years, Milk’s name was attached to a seri of schools, buildgs and public centers throughout California. The two most visible figur behd the legislative manvers were John Briggs, a state Senator California, who sought to remove openly lbian and gay teachers wh Proposn 6 (the phrase “public homosexual” repeats throughout the proposn); and Ana Bryant, whose “Save Our Children” anizatn succsfully helped overturn equal rights ordanc Miami, Florida; Eugene, Oregon; Wicha, Kansas; and St.

UNVERG GAY HISTORY SAN FRANCIS

And here, so-lled liberal San Francis, we have a lumnist for the San Francis Examer, a lumnist named Kev Starr, who has prted a number of lumns ntag distortns and li about gays. And fally, I want to tell the John Briggs and the Ana Bryants that they talk about the myths of gays, but today I’m talkg about the facts of heterosexual vlence and what the hell are you gog to do about that? If you do not speak out, if you rema silence, if you do not lift up your voice agast Briggs, then I ll upon lbians and gay men om all over the natn, your natn, to gather Washgton one year om now on that natnal day of eedom, the fourth of July…the fourth of July, 1979…to gather Washgton on that very same spot where over a ago Dr.

I ll upon all mori and pecially the lns of lbians and gay men to wake up om their dreams…to gather Washgton and tell Jimmy Carter and their natn: “Wake up…wake up, Ameri…no more racism, no more sexism, no more ageism, no more hatred…no more!

Racism has been a problem San Francis’s gay muny, pecially sce the Castro beme a gay neighborhood the early 1970s, and the problem has not abated over time spe perdic efforts to curb . Romburg outled some of the formal and rmal mpaigns agast racially discrimatory practic gay bars over time—cludg muny rponse to hirg discrimatn, selective intifitn checkg practic, the sale of racist paraphernalia, and more.

PARTY AND PROTT: THE RADIL HISTORY OF GAY LIBERATN, STONEWALL AND PRI

While the relaxatn rooms, snas and a seclud ck for nu sunbathg were all gone, somehow the bathhoe’s spir liv Flaherty for The New York TimWhen one thks of gay San Francis, this isn’t ually what to md. But the Natnal Park Service has started a lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr history iative, mappg out dozens of hidn gems like Osento San Francis and other plac wh unacknowledged ti to gay culture. I cid to e the Natnal Park Service survey map — and a gui — to go search of the and other nearly visible landmarks to get a better unrstandg of the Bay Area’s unherald gay tour started at the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front Natnal Historil Park Richmond, Calif., on the eastern shore of San Francis Bay.

The shift was so formative for the gay muny that the mm is seekg to clu lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr stori permanent exhibn mak clear that while the fense dtry employed women huge numbers — 12 ln 1941 and 18 ln by 1944 — there were still others whose liv were siarly shiftg amid war and discrimatn. ’ ”The next morng, I was joed by Donna Grav, a public historian who, together wh her lleague Shayne Watson, has studied the Bay Area’s gay historic s and has worked wh the Park Service sce 1999.

She offered to gui me around the Tenrlo and peel back the layers, as she put , of the district’s rich gay Grav and I head for the Tenrlo, which today has a smatterg of attractively refurbished buildgs but mostly is not easy on the ey. Built around 1911 and listed today on the Natnal Register of Historic Plac, the Ambassador was managed by Henry Wilson, a lbian, gay, bisexual and transgenr activist, om 1978 until 1996, when he left to re for his dyg parents. In the early 1960s, when he was Gli’s pastor, he was a pivotal figure llg for cln and tolerance, and he still is; he helped form the Council on Relign and the Homosexual, a muny anizatn, and his work has been praised by Maya Angelou and Bill Clton.