Harvey Milk Day: Happening!

[BarTopDancer]

The governator signed the bill to honor Harvey Milk.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill commemorating Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician elected to public office in the state, a spokesman for the governor said Monday.

Milk was a "unique" historical figure who led a civil rights movement and then was "assassinated in his public office for being who he was," State Sen. Mark Leno, a Democrat, told CNN last month.

The day of significance would not close schools or state offices, according to its text.

[Gemini Cricket]

Awesome! (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/12/harvey.milk/index.html)

[BarTopDancer]

D'oh! Thanks for the link!

[Alex]

I'm fine with the day, but saying he was assassinated because he was gay seems a bit of a stretch. Why was Moscone assassinated?

This sentence saddens me (for reasons that have nothing to do with Milk, the governor or gay rights.

But she added that most of the Twitter posts the governor received were in favor of the bill.

[Gn2Dlnd]

I'm fine with the day, but saying he was assassinated because he was gay seems a bit of a stretch. Why was Moscone assassinated?



In large part, because Harvey Milk was gay.

[Chernabog]

Methinks Alex needs to put "Milk" on his Netflix list. I know he has been dying to see James Franco make out with another guy. ;)

[Strangler Lewis]

The movie suggests Harvey Milk was assassinated because Dan White was gay.

[Alex]

Yes, I've seen Milk. It very much portrays a gay man who was killed. Not so much a man who was killed because he was gay.

[innerSpaceman]

I don't think we can ever know. In one sense, since it was a political assassination - it might be fair to assume Milk being gay had something to do with it in the same way it would be fair to assume an assassination of Obama had something to do with him being black.

Of course, this killing was done by someone who knew Milk - so it could be argued it was a murder, and not "even" an assassination.
io
If we're going to generally consider it an assassination, I think it's fair to also credit his main issue as among the motives

[Gn2Dlnd]

Dan White was a resentful homophobe, who grew up in the old Irish cop neighborhoods of SF and hated seeing his vision of the world being co-opted by the "other." It's been a few years since I've read the books on the subject, but I definitely took away from them the idea that, had Harvey not been gay, White wouldn't have assassinated him. Moscone was part of the problem because, after all, if Moscone hadn't tolerated Harvey, Harvey wouldn't have had the job in the first place.

Or is this some "Jesus rode around on dinosaurs, and you can't prove he didn't" type of argument?

[Strangler Lewis]

Well, hell, Gn2Dlnd, I was going to post that as his macro-motive.

His micro-motive was that they f***** with his money--such as it was--and the crimes were simply workplace violence.

[innerSpaceman]

I haven't read any books, and I didn't pay enough attention at the time, but it seems pretty clear White was strongly motivated by wanting his job back, and thus his killing of Mayor Moscone (who refused) was almost certainly related to that.

His murder of Milk was also likely related to their relationship as city supervisors, and only tangentially (if at all) to Harvey's status as a gay rights leader (though perhaps his activism and political position cannot be separated). Whether White was a closet case and whether that had anything to do with either twinkies or the murders is rank speculation.

His motives are pretty much speculation as well ... but the job issue is the clearest of the murky lot.

[keith - SuPeR K!]

That's pretty good news :)

[Alex]

Didn't hear until today that he also signed legislation that clarified the status of out of state gay marriages.

This was an issue because when gay marriage was allowed, gay couples previously married out of state were not allowed to remarry in California (since they were already married). So, if you were married out of state prior to the passage of Prop 8 you are married in California.

And if you were married out of state after the passage of Prop 8 you automatically get all the benefits of marriage in California without getting the word. So I guess they don't need to re-register as domestic partners.

Good news.