Harvey Milk
Years ago I was told the “real” reason why Dan White shot Harvey Milk.
It’s simple. Dan White was a conservative catholic that had a double life (get it). He was more than “friends” with Harvey Milk and when Right Wing extremist wanted to ban gays from teaching in the schools in California and they had a statewide initiative. Harvey Milk a big opponent of the anti gay legislation threatened to “out” Dan White if he did not oppose what was called proposition 6 known as the Briggs initiative. Dan White did oppose it and wrote a check to “prove” he supported being against it. Harvey Milk made sure everyone knew Dan White was opposed. Dan Whites buddies that were policemen and firefighters teased him. Dan White a Vietnam Vet was not emotionally stable, and the rest is history.
The “truth” does not make either side look good and that’s probably why the “mystery” continues.
For the record President Reagan was courageous enough to oppose this initiative.
As Lou Cannon (Reagan biographer) puts it Reagan was “well aware that there were those who wanted him to duck the issue” but nevertheless “chose to state his convictions.”
Reagan's November 1 editorial stated, in part, “Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual's sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child's teachers do not really influence this.”
Good Ole Boys... Republicans “used” to Respect All People” Get It!!!
Reading HISTORY is a good thing. Look at Lincoln.
NISSAN For the record, In July I got several odd calls from someone who wanted to “meet” me at 9pm in a bar. I had them linked with the NISSAN Good ole Boy team and I told that person “I’ll meet you in the day at Starbucks”. NO it had to be at night in a bar. I said NO.
Why did I not want to meet this person at a bar at 9pm? INSTINCTS
Experience is a GOOD thing.
1990”S flashback:
The political “dirty” tricks teams put into place after the IBC used “meetings” as a way to create “dirt” if legitimate opposition research people could not find anything worthy of victory. Sometimes it was used against their own “other Republicans”, like in primaries.
Ever Wonder Why Successful Business people don’t run for office. Read on.
Sometimes well meaning prominent business men would consider serving the people and run for office against embedded incumbents. Sometimes they would want to run for office because of the extreme “right wing” views of the sitting politician. Shocking the “dirty tricks team” used the children of those potential politicians as tools. Getting the teenage son of a “threat” drunk and putting him in a limo with a gay prostitute. Taking pictures and sending them to the candidate saying “lose the primary or these go to press”.
It’s DISGUSTING!!!!
Sadly it worked. There are many “versions” of framing “setting people up for failure”.
Good Ole Boys play politics at the LOWEST level. I have more but we’ll save it for:
Operation Airhead
Ending the era of Hypocritical Puritans Creating Conspiracies.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
At NISSAN North America during my 4 meetings with Human Resources I knew what kind of ball they were playing. Words are important and Good Ole Boys you and the political “dirty tricks” team speak the same language and used the same tactics. Those words & tactics came from a playbook that could have ONLY come from one source.
Many of them are coming to Nashville next week to enjoy a cup of TEA.
Luckily MOST American are Coffee drinkers.
Have A Great Day!!! Sharyn Love Cars~Love People~Love the Planet
On This Day: Harvey Milk Murdered
November 27, 2009 06:00 AM
Associated Press
Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone are shown in the mayor's office during the signing of the city’s gay rights bill, April 1977.
On Nov. 27, 1978, openly gay San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk was murdered, along with Mayor George Moscone, by former Supervisor Dan White.
Milk, Moscone Assassinated
Harvey Milk, the first openly gay American to hold a prominent elected office, served on the San Francisco City Board of Supervisors alongside Dan White, a clean-cut Vietnam veteran and former firefighter.
The two had a friendly relationship at first, but that had changed when Milk opposed a zoning bill pushed by White, and White became the only supervisor to vote against Milk’s gay-rights ordinance. Furthermore, as Milk’s work in the gay rights movement made him a national icon, White’s career sputtered and sent him into depression.
In November 1978, White resigned from his seat, saying that the supervisor salary was not enough to support his family. Progressive Mayor George Moscone told White that he would consider reappointing him if he chose to return; when White did ask to return several days later, Moscone refused to reappoint him, due in part to a request by Milk.
Feeling angry and betrayed, White decided to take revenge on Moscone and Milk. On Nov. 27, 1978, he carried a loaded .38 revolver to City Hall with the intent to kill the two men.
He entered City Hall through a side door to avoid a weapons search. Moscone’s secretary let White into Moscone’s office, where White shot him four times, the final two shots fired in the head as Moscone lay on the floor.
White then walked down the hall to Milk’s office and asked, “Harvey, can I see you a minute?” Milk followed White into his former office, where White shot him five times, again finishing with point-blank shots to the head.
Dianne Feinstein, president of the Board of Supervisors, announced the deaths on the steps on City Hall. The city was horrified. That night, 40,000 walked through the streets and held candlelight vigils.
“At suppertime, we were alerted again by KSAN that there would be a candlelight vigil at Market and Castro,” writes “Uncle Donald,” a Castro Street resident. “When we arrived, the crowd was already huge. Considering that there had been no planning, this was phenomenal. It assured us that we were not alone. We WERE community and we WERE supported by our fellow citizens.”
Biography: Harvey Milk
Harvey Milk owned a camera shop on San Francisco’s Castro Street, a center of gay culture. During the 1970s, he made a name for himself advocating for the rights of gays and small business owners, earning the nickname “The Mayor of Castro Street.”
He ran several times for public office and won an election for city supervisor in 1977, becoming one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States. The flamboyant Milk was not only open about his sexuality, but proud. He wanted to set an example to homosexuals across the country that they should not be ashamed.
“There was a time when it was impossible for people—straight or gay—even to imagine a Harvey Milk,” writes Time’s John Cloud. “The funny thing about Milk is that he didn’t seem to care that he lived in such a time. After he defied the governing class of San Francisco in 1977 to become a member of its board of supervisors, many people—straight and gay—had to adjust to a new reality he embodied: that a gay person could live an honest life and succeed.”
In his 11 months as supervisor, Milk pushed through a city ordinance outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation. “You could just see that people stood a little taller,” said Walter Caplan, Milk’s lawyer, to NPR. “There were always gay teachers, gay nurses, gay health-care people who lived quiet little lives and feared for losing the security of the jobs that they had.”
He also led the opposition to Proposition 6, also known as the Briggs Initiative, which would have required the firing of all homosexual public school teachers. It was in opposition to the Briggs Initiative that he gave his most famous speech.
“And you’ve got to elect gay people, so that thousand upon thousands like that child know that there is hope for a better world; there is hope for a better tomorrow,” he said. “Without hope, not only gays, but those who are blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us’s: without hope the us’s give up. I know that you can’t live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. And you, and you, and you, and you have got to give them hope.”
Milk received many death threats during his political career, prompting him in 1977 to record a will to be read if he was assassinated. “If a bullet should enter my brain,” he said, “let that bullet destroy every closet door.”
Later Developments: White’s “Twinkie defense”
White turned himself into police the day of the shootings. During his trial for murder, White’s lawyers argued that he had diminished capacity due to depression. As evidence for his depression, they said that he had been eating a large amount of junk food in the weeks leading up to the shootings, which was uncommon for the physically-fit White. The defense used by White would become known derisively as the “Twinkie defense.”
The jury, comprised mostly of conservatives, showed sympathy to White and convicted him only of manslaughter. The gay community was outraged, marching through the streets in protest.
White served five years in prison and was released in 1984. Still depressed, he was unable to get his life back in order and committed suicide on Oct. 21, 1985.
Briggs Initiative
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
California Proposition 6 was an initiative on the California State ballot on November 7, 1978,[1] and was more commonly known as The Briggs Initiative.[2] Sponsored by John Briggs, a conservative state legislator from Orange County, the failed initiative would have banned gays and lesbians, and possibly anyone who supported gay rights, from working in California's public schools. The Briggs Initiative was the first failure in a conservative movement that started with the successful campaign headed by Anita Bryant and her organization Save Our Children in Dade County, Florida to repeal a local gay rights ordinance.
Proposition 6 is a central plot point in the 2008 film Milk.
Singer and Florida Citrus Commission spokesperson Anita Bryant received national news coverage for her successful efforts to repeal a Dade County, Florida ordinance preventing discrimination based on sexual orientation. This success sparked additional efforts to repeal legislation that added sexual orientation or preference as a protected group to anti-discrimination statutes and codes. In a step beyond repeal of anti-discrimination measures, Oklahoma and Arkansas banned gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools.[3][4]
The idea for the Briggs Initiative was formed during the success of the repeal of the Dade County anti-discrimination language. The initiative stated that any teacher who was found to be “advocating, imposing, encouraging or promoting” homosexual activity could be fired. It was the first attempt to restrict gay and lesbian rights through a ballot measure.[2]
[edit] Campaign
Hurting from recent losses, the gay and lesbian community got organized. A huge coalition of predominantly progressive grassroots activists was formed into a campaign led by Gwen Craig and Bill Krause[5], who were appointed to their positions by openly gay San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk,[6] teacher (later Supervisor of SF Board of Supervisors) Tom Ammiano, activist Hank Wilson, and many others, under the slogan "Come out! Come out! Wherever you are!", mobilized to defeat the initiative. In what became the "No on 6" campaign, gay men and lesbians went door to door in their cities and towns across the state to talk about the harm the initiative would cause.
Gay men and lesbians came out to their families and their neighbors and their co-workers, spoke in their churches and community centers, sent letters to their local editors, and otherwise revealed to the general population that gay people really were "everywhere" and included people they already knew and cared about. In the beginning of September, the ballot measure was ahead in public-opinion polls, with about 61% of voters supporting it while 31% opposed it. The movement against it initially succeeded little in shifting public opinion, even though major organizations and ecclesiastical groups opposed it. By the end of the month, however, the balance of the polls shifted to 45% in favor of the initiative, 43% opposed, and 12% undecided.[2]
Some gay Republicans also became organized against the initiative on a grassroots level. The most prominent of these, the Log Cabin Republicans, was founded in 1977 in California, as a rallying point for Republicans opposed to the Briggs Initiative. The Log Cabin Club then lobbied Republican officials to oppose the measure.
The former state Governor (and later US President) Ronald Reagan moved to publicly oppose the measure. Reagan issued an informal letter of opposition to the initiative, answered reporters' questions about the initiative by saying he was against, and, a week before the election, wrote an editorial in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner opposing it.[7]
The timing of Reagan's opposition is significant because he was then preparing to run for president, a race in which he would need the support of conservatives and moderates who were very uncomfortable with homosexual teachers. As Lou Cannon (Reagan biographer) puts it, Reagan was “well aware that there were those who wanted him to duck the issue” but nevertheless “chose to state his convictions.” Extensive excerpts from his informal statement were reprinted in the San Francisco Chronicle of September 24, 1978.[citation needed] Reagan's November 1 editorial stated, in part, “Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual's sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child's teachers do not really influence this.”[7]
It is notable that politicians as diverse as Reagan, Gerald Ford, and (at the end of the campaign) then-president Jimmy Carter all opposed the bill.[8]
Shortly before the election, after the polls had changed in the opponents' favor due to the mobilization of thousands of activists across the political spectrum, the initiative was defeated by more than one million votes. The anticipated landslide for the initiative became a landslide against the initiative, losing even in Orange County, in the largest shift of public opinion ever recorded within such a short time frame.[citation needed]
