When it comes to being queer, there is a sixth-sense that lets you know you are different early in life. I can speak to it personally. And Harvey Milk was no different in realizing and yet hiding his sexuality since childhood.
I remember discovering this title on the spine of a book that was not to remain on the shelf for long. I was browsing in a bookstore near the street that is Jose Castro's namesake in San Francisco This street now possesses a permanent honorary mayor. I purchased the book and took it with me on the return flight back to Houston.
I read about Harvey's childhood and high-school years on the plane, and about the harassment by the Chicago police. These were the days when you could be arrested for indecent exposure for being shirtless in a public park. Archaic laws were selectively enforced, such as a law stating that male swimmers had to wear swimsuits extending from the navel to the thigh. (As mentioned by Randy.)
Events became history quite dramatically in the late 1970s. Diane Feinstein announced "Today San Francisco has experienced a double tragedy of immense proportions. As president of the Board of Supervisors, it is my duty to inform you that both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot."
Randy writes that Harvey new about the active gay liberation movement in pre-Hilter Germany circulating petitions for equality. And Harvey new, of course, the ultimate fate of homosexuals in Nazi Germany. And he knew about the fate of the Jews.
Harvey guarded the secret of his sexuality throughout much of his life. There was constant and open antisemitism in addition to the burden of the secret of his sexuality.
Randy Shilts gives us a view into that era; Harvey grew up during World War II, after all. He went to college during the 1940s and graduated in the early 1950s. See Far from Heaven, a movie that portrays the forced-closeted lives, lives dictated by homophobia, of homosexuals during the 1950s. I will never forget the scene with Frank's weeping as he tells his wife he was arrested for "loitering" in that movie. (Frank was closeted and cruising at that point in his life.)
Returning to The Mayor of Castro Street: Harvey's jaunts into New York City, starting at a very young age, were motivated by his love of music. The trips provided him the opportunity to discover gay romance, and, the means to its end; Central Park. "Four years later Seventeen-year-old Harvey Milk was arrested in a similar sweep in a Central Park cruising area: the police arrested the shirtless men they found there whom they suspected were gay, charging them with indecent exposure. They ignored the family men standing nearby with their shirts off but their children in tow." -Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the making of the male gay world.
We read about the urban environment necessary, at that time, to pursue a gay life. And we are taken back to the cruising of the 1940s. This was a time when Judy Garland was still performing. Men would be arrested for "loitering" around public restrooms.
One can only imagine living with Harvey's double-bind.
Pleasure can be discovered accidentally. This was a time when it almost had to be. That is only one part of the tragedy in Harvey's life. There is pleasure mingled with sadness.
There is the pre-history that ends up being so important to the final occurrence of history on that fateful day in the late 1970s. The events appear to happen so suddenly.
Randy writes the story of the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the U.S. Harvey had been shunted into paddy-wagons along with other harassed homosexuals in New York, long before his political career began. He would be concerned about gay rights later in life.
Harvy Milk lived in New York, and then San Francisco. He worked as a teacher but was fearful of being outed.
The Black Cat Bar was a bar in San Francisco. "The Black Cat was at the center of a legal fight that was one of the earliest court cases to establish legal protections for gay people in the United States. " - wikipedia.
Oscar Wilde said: "Its and odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and posses all the attractions of the next world."
Randy's book mentions the Briggs Initiative in California.
The Mattachine Society: in New York, part of the Gay Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, was an early group whose purpose was to protect and improve the rights of homosexuals. It was inspired by a petition for presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace.
And the Band Played on, Conduct Unbecoming, and Familiar Faces Hidden Lives are Randy Shilts' other books.
No comments:
Post a Comment