Harvey Milk would have been 79 years old today

With all that’s going on in our world today in the LGBT equal rights movement, it is so important to remember Harvey Milk who was such a gift to us when he was alive and remains one through his powerful legacy. He was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

He fought hard against discrimination – including Proposition 6, a ballot initiative that would have made firing gay teachers—and any public school employees who supported gay rights—mandatory. It lost by a million votes. As a supervisor, Milk was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for the city but just 11 months into his term, he and Mayor George Moscone were murdered at City Hall by former Supervisor Dan White.

Milk was just 48 years old and had been a gay rights activist for less than a decade. There was so much still ahead.

His campaign manager Anne Kronenberg wrote of him: “What set Harvey apart from you or me was that he was a visionary. He imagined a righteous world inside his head and then he set about to create it for real, for all of us.”

Thank God for the passion of Dustin Lance Black who found a way to write a script so special that it won an Oscar and for director Gus Van Sant who directed the fine film made from the script. And Sean Penn brought Milk to life in a stunning way and win his second Academy Award for best actor for it.

It was such a wonderful tribute to a very special man who was able to make such a huge impact in such a short time.