Happy Birthday to trailblazing politician and LGBTQIA+ community leader Harvey Milk (b. May 22, 1930, in Woodmere, NY), who was one of the first openly gay people elected to public office in the United States. His commitment to enacting policy for social change led to his murder by a homophobic colleague in 1978. Milk publicly emphasized the importance of LGBTQIA+ people feeling empowered to express themselves freely. As historian Lillian Faderman observed in 2018, “Coming out, he exhorted in his dynamic speeches, would be the most effective way to break down the toxic lies about homosexuals that characterized them as criminals, crazies, sinners, and subversives . . . Harvey Milk’s martyrdom and the outpouring of gay anger and sorrow that followed helped trigger what has become a steady exodus from closets everywhere. These days a majority of Americans—75 percent—say they have relatives or friends who are gay or lesbian. As Harvey prophesied, the demolition of closet doors has been the single most important factor in changing America’s hearts and minds and laws about gay people.”
Citations: Lillian Faderman, Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 1-2, Kindle edition; San Francisco Public Library, “Harvey Milk in front of Castro Camera, June 1977,” photograph (San Francisco, CA, June 1977), Creative Commons, https://flic.kr/p/6rSirL.
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