Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club
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Based in
San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...
, California, the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club is a chapter of the
Stonewall Democrats Stonewall Democrats, also known in some states as LGBT Democrats, is a caucus within the Democratic Party that advocates for issues that are relevant to LGBT Americans. The caucus primarily operates through individual chapters or political clu ...
, named after
LGBT LGBTQ people are individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning. Many variants of the initialism are used; LGBTQIA+ people incorporates intersex, asexual, aromantic, agender, and other individuals. The gro ...
politician and activist
Harvey Milk Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician and the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Milk was born and raised i ...
. Believing that the existing Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club would never support him in his political aspirations, Milk co-founded the
political club The political club is a membership based organization. Membership of a political club is an outward show of political allegiance. Victorian England In the Victorian era the political club was synonymous with a political party. Parliamentarians t ...
under the name "San Francisco Gay Democratic Club" in the wake of his unsuccessful 1976 campaign for the
California State Assembly The California State Assembly is the lower house of the California State Legislature (the upper house being the California State Senate). The Assembly convenes, along with the State Senate, at the California State Capitol in Sacramento, Califor ...
. Joining Milk in forming the club were a number of the city's activists, including
Harry Britt Harry Britt (June 8, 1938 – June 24, 2020) was an American politician and gay rights activist. Born in Texas, he worked as a Methodist pastor in Chicago as a young man and later moved to San Francisco. There, he worked with Harvey Milk until Mi ...
, Dick Pabich, Jim Rivaldo, and first club president Chris Perry.Shilts (1982), p. 150 The club set forth the following as its organizing statement:
No decisions which affect our lives should be made without the gay voice being heard. We want our fair share of city services. We want openly gay people appointed and elected to city offices—people who reflect the diversity of our community. We want the schools of San Francisco to provide full exposure to and positive appreciation of gay lifestyles. We are asking no more than we deserve: We will not settle for less.


History

One of the club's early actions was to demonstrate at a speech given by Vice President
Walter Mondale Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale (January 5, 1928April 19, 2021) was the 42nd vice president of the United States serving from 1977 to 1981 under President Jimmy Carter. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Minnesota from 1964 to 1976. ...
in
Golden Gate Park Golden Gate Park is an urban park between the Richmond District, San Francisco, Richmond and Sunset District, San Francisco, Sunset districts on the West Side (San Francisco), West Side of San Francisco, California, United States. It is the Lis ...
on June 17, 1977. When Mondale began speaking about human rights in Latin America, demonstrators held up signs demanding a statement on human rights in the United States. When a demonstrator verbally challenged Mondale to say something about gay rights, Mondale angrily left the stage. Harvey Milk, unfazed by previous electoral defeats, established the San Francisco Gay Democratic Club to amass greater political backing. He championed for a restructuring of the Board of Supervisors election from a citywide, at-large setup to a geographical district one. Re-entering the political arena in 1977, Milk aimed to broaden his appeal beyond the gay community by advocating for tax code reforms to stimulate industry growth, the creation of affordable housing, and the establishment of day care centers for working mothers. Following the assassination of Harvey Milk in 1978, the club changed its name to the Harvey Milk Democratic Club in his memory. The club bills itself as one of the largest Democratic clubs in San Francisco. The club was an inadvertent catalyst of a
journalistic scandal Journalism scandals are high-profile incidents or acts, whether intentional or accidental, that run contrary to the generally accepted ethics and standards of journalism, or otherwise violate the 'ideal' mission of journalism: to report news eve ...
for
CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...
. CBS News producers George Crile and Grace Diekhaus manipulated footage of an appearance by
Dianne Feinstein Dianne Emiel Feinstein (; June 22, 1933 – September 29, 2023) was an American politician who served as a United States senator from California from 1992 until her death in 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, she served as the 38th ...
and included it in the 1980 documentary '' Gay Power, Gay Politics''. The National News Council found that this manipulation was a breach of journalistic ethics. With the onset of the
AIDS The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, pr ...
epidemic, the Milk Club was an early advocate of closing down the city's
gay bathhouse A gay bathhouse, also known as a gay sauna or a gay steambath, is a public bath targeted towards Gay men, gay and Bisexuality, bisexual men. In gay slang, a bathhouse may be called just "the baths", "the sauna", or "the tubs". Historically, they ...
s. The club also created some of the earliest
safe sex Safe sex is sexual activity using methods or contraceptive devices (such as condoms) to reduce the risk of transmitting or acquiring sexually transmitted infections (STIs), especially HIV. "Safe sex" is also sometimes referred to as safer ...
education materials in the country.


SFPD Apology

Shortly before San Francisco's annual
Pride parade A pride parade (also known as pride event, pride festival, pride march, or pride protest) is an event celebrating lesbian, Gay men, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) social and self-acceptance, achievements, LGBT rights by country o ...
in 2019, a year that marked the 40th anniversary of the
White Night riots The White Night riots were a series of violent events sparked by an announcement of a lenient sentencing of Dan White for the assassinations of George Moscone, the mayor of San Francisco, and of Harvey Milk, a member of the city's Board of S ...
, the Milk Club's Executive Board penned an open letter calling on the
San Francisco Police Department The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) is the Municipal police, municipal law enforcement agency of the San Francisco, City and County of San Francisco, as well as San Francisco International Airport in San Mateo County, California, San Ma ...
to apologize for historic acts of violence against the city's LGBTQ community, including the ACT UP Castro Sweep in 1989, the White Night riot in 1979, and the
Compton's Cafeteria riot The Compton's Cafeteria riot occurred in August 1966 in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. The riot was a response to the violent and constant police harassment of trans people, particularly trans women, and drag queens. The incident ...
in 1966. During San Francisco's 2019 Pride parade, the SFPD engaged in a violent confrontation with a group of LGBTQ protesters who blocked the parade, calling for an end to corporate sponsorships of Pride. The Milk Club released another letter shortly after, condemning the SFPD's actions at Pride. “The irony of SFPD committing acts of brutality against peaceful protesters of the Resistance Contingent at the San Francisco Pride Parade on the 50th Anniversary of Stonewall is not lost on us,” the Milk Club wrote. “It warrants outrage and swift recourse.” On August 26, 2019, SFPD leadership held a community meeting during which Chief William Scott said, "we the members of the San Francisco Police Department are here to reflect and apologize for our past actions against the LGBTQ community. We want to listen to you and want to truly hear you, we will atone for our past.” While Scott's apology was met with "exuberant applause from the room," some attendees at the meeting expressed their concern about the ways in which the SFPD currently discriminates against LGBTQ people. Anubis Daugherty, a young LGBTQ community member who was homeless for six years, told Scott that LGBTQ people are disproportionately caught up in sweeps of homeless communities in The City. “I was born here, I was raised here,” Daugherty said. “If you want to truly apologize for something you have to stop what you’re doing.”


Notes


See also

* Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club *
National Stonewall Democrats Stonewall Democrats, also known in some states as LGBT Democrats, is a caucus within the Democratic Party that advocates for issues that are relevant to LGBT Americans. The caucus primarily operates through individual chapters or political clu ...


References

* Rutledge, Leigh (1992). ''The Gay Decades''. New York, Penguin. . * * Shilts, Randy (1987). ''And The Band Played On''. New York, St. Martin's Press. .


External links


Harvey Milk Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club official site

Stonewall Democrats official site
{{Authority control LGBTQ liberalism LGBTQ political advocacy groups in California California Democratic Party LGBTQ affiliate organizations of political parties Harvey Milk Democratic Party (United States) organizations 1970s establishments in California