On this day
In 1978, an estimated 350,000 descend upon San Francisco's
City Hall at the end of this years' Gay Freedom Day march, spurred on by
several recent gay rights defeats and the new threat of Proposition 6
(aka "The Briggs Initiative.")
Harvey Milk tells the crowd, "I want to
recruit you. I want to recruit you for the right to preserve your
democracy from the John Briggs and The Anita Bryants who are trying to
constitutionalize bigotry. We are not going to allow that to happen. We
are not going to sit back in silence as three thousand of our gay
brothers and sisters did in Nazi Germany. We are not going to allow our
rights to be taken away and then march with bowed heads into the gas
chambers. on this anniversary of Stonewall, I ask my gay
sisters and brothers to make the commitment to fight. For themselves.
For their freedom. For their country."
BIRTHGAYS (and the occasional straights)
* 1875 - Irish "The Garden God" author Forrest Reid
* 1935 - Firebrand author, activist, and icon Larry Kramer
* 1942 - Canadian writer Michel Tremblay
* 1963 - singer / controversialist George Michael
Q.UOTE "Punks, and raging queens, those are the words used that celebrates
them. I think the word they don't like is sissy." -- Loretta Devine
A LIFE EXPLORED
"The Mayor of Castro Street : The Life and Times of Harvey Milk" by
Randy Shilts
Randy Shilts's acclaimed story of Harvey Milk, the man whose personal
life, public career, and tragic assassination mirrored the dramatic and
unprecedented emergence of the gay community in America during the
1970s. His is a story of personal tragedies and political intrigues,
assassination in City Hall and massive riots in the streets, the
miscarriage of justice and the consolidation of gay power and gay hope.
PROJECTIONS
"The Times of Harvey Milk"
