Harvey Milk
Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California.
During Milk's short time in office, he sponsored a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in public accommodations, housing, and employment. The supervisors passed the bill by a vote of 11–1, and Mayor George Moscone signed it into law. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, a disgruntled former city supervisor who cast the sole vote against Milk's bill.
After his assassination, Milk became an icon in San Francisco and a martyr in the LGBTQ community. In 2002, Milk was called "the most famous and most significant openly LGBTQ official ever elected in the United States".[1] Considered a homosexual icon, Milk now has a public holiday dedicated to him in California, an airport and Navy vessel named after him, his image on postage stamps, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom as a symbolic gesture by President Barack Obama in 2009.
Of relevance to MAPs, AAMs, and their allies, a biographer of Milk's states that Milk had his first sexual experience with a man at 14 years of age, and "always maintained [...] about those early sexual contacts[,] that he had not been molested, because they were exactly what he had been anxiously looking and hoping for. He had had homosexual feelings ever since he could remember".[2] Milk's experience is similar to other gay icons from his era, such as Harry Hay, Edmund White, and Craig Rodwell.
Milk is also known to have entered a sexual relationship with a runaway hustler named Jack Galen McKinley, who had just turned 17 at the time. Milk was then 33 years old, and served as a father figure/mentor role for McKinley.[2] A personal friend of Harvey's said he "always had a penchant for young waifs," and Milk is alleged to have had sexual contact with people below 15 years-of-age.[3]
Ironically, even the known case of Jack McKinley alone would already make Milk guilty of statutory rape in U.S. states which now venerate him (e.g. California), where the age of consent for sexual activity is 18 years old. If he had lived during the moral panic and pedohysteria of the 2020s, Harvey Milk would be likely be falsely deemed a "pedophile" - and if caught by law enforcement for any of his consensual-but-unlawful relationships - imprisoned and/or placed on the sex offenders' register.
References
- ↑ Smith, Raymond, Haider-Markel, Donald, eds., (2002). Gay and Lesbian Americans and Political Participation, ABC-CLIO, p. 204. [ISBN 1576072568. OCLC 1056097931].
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Review of Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death by Lillian Faderman. Quotes passages from Faderman about their relationship; e.g. "Harvey ... took him to museums, operas and ballets, and made him feel like he was the only person in the world who mattered."
- ↑ This video presents useful historical information despite being hostile to Milk and framing him negatively. Ironically, the video's creator ends by contrasting Alan Turing as a respectable (i.e. non-MAP related) gay icon, and seems unaware that Alan Turing likely shared Harvey Milk's attraction towards younger males.