Salt Lake City may name street for gay civil rights leader

[W!nston]

Salt Lake City may name street for gay civil rights leader
Associated Press | By LINDSAY WHITEHURST | October 11 2015

FILE - In this April 1977 file photo, San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, left, and Mayor George Moscone are shown in the mayor's office during the signing of the city's gay rights bill. Officials and LGBT advocates are proposing naming a Salt Lake City street after Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States. If passed, the move would be the latest illustration of the progressive nature of Utah’s capital city despite being located in a conservative state. (AP Photo/File)​

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Salt Lake City could soon have a street named after pioneering gay leader Harvey Milk, an idea that reflects the progressive bent of the city that's home to the Mormon church and capital of a conservative state.

City officials say they have been working with LGBT leaders on the initiative, which would place Harvey Milk Boulevard near thoroughfares named for civil rights icons such as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez.

If approved, the name would go on 900 South, about a mile and half from the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Temple Square was the site of protests in 2008, after the Mormon church supported efforts to pass a short-lived gay marriage ban in California.

But Salt Lake City also has supported an active lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

An annual gay pride parade is the second largest in the state — second only to a yearly celebration of Mormon pioneers. When a judge overturned Utah's gay marriage ban in December 2013, Mayor Ralph Becker presided over unions of same-sex couples who flocked to wed in the hours after the ruling.

"We've had so many tremendous victories this year alone, and I think Harvey really set the tone for the LGBT movement — how to be successful and organize us politically," said Troy Williams, executive director of Equality Utah.

Williams said he first sat down with Becker more than a year ago. The idea could come before the City Council before the end of the year, said Councilman Stan Penfold, the first openly gay council member.

"My hope is that we can send a message as a city that we acknowledge that kind of movement," Penfold said. They are still working on what part of the street will bear Milk's name, he said.

Milk became one of the first openly gay men elected to public office in the U.S. when he won a seat on San Francisco's board of supervisors in 1977. His uncompromising calls for gays to come out of the closet inspired a generation of activists, but he was assassinated at City Hall along with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone by a disgruntled former city supervisor in 1978.

The activist's life was memorialized in the Oscar-winning 2008 movie "Milk," and he's also been honored with a commemorative stamp and a posthumous Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. The San Diego City Council approved naming a street for Milk in 2012, something officials said was a first.

"Harvey is a true icon for the LGBT community. He set the standard for coalition building and collaborative leadership," Williams said. "He is our Martin Luther King Jr."

SOURCE

"He is our Martin Luther King Jr."

And some day there should be a street in every city named for him

 

[gorgik9]

Well I'd like a movie titled "Kameny" or a Kameny Street after Frank Kameny , the guy who in the early 1960s founded Washington Mattachine together with Barbara Gittings and a few others. They changed the gay movements identity from the old homophile movement begging for understanding to the modern movement articulating political demands. Kameny's message in his stentorian voice wasn't "please be nice to us", it was "we're American citizens, now you start treating us like citizens!"

Kameny was a controversial figure in the 1960s just like King was in the Black Civil Rights movement; Kameny like King was controversial among his own and he wrote a fiercly controversial article in the gay magazine "The Ladder" in 1965, where he demanded that the gay movement should immediately stop supporting all the more-or-less phony "science" about the causes of homosexuality.

I guess such a demand would be almost as controversial today as it was in 1965. And Kameny would still be right.

But then again, it seems Americans love their heroes to be shot dead like Lincoln and King, rather than dying from old age at an age of over 85 like Kameny.

 

[W!nston]

I'm not surprised by human nature. Assassination is a more fashionable demise than old age. Celebrities die every day and most pass from the headlines long before that. Lincoln, King and Milk are still making news today. The manner of their death being a factor in that.

There are so many unsung heroes in the history our Gay Equality Movement here in America. Not to mention those in other countries. New ones are born everyday. So what is wrong with naming a street after Harvey Milk the man who was elected to a local political office. He's not the perfect champion but who is?

I almost forgot to mention: I think the interesting part of the story isn't WHO the street may be named but WHERE the street is ... Salt Lake City, UT ... I hope it's the street where the Mormon Tabernacle is loacted, lol.

 

[gorgik9]

Please don't get me wrong, Sniffit, I'm not saying it's in someway wrong to honour Harvey Milk, definitely not.

I'm "just" saying, that before someone could even think about there could be gay politicians making a difference in San Fran or anywhere, there had to be a Frank Kameny, a Barbara Gittings, a Jack Nichols, a Liege Clark and a Washington Mattachine (founded in 1961 if I remember correctly) to change the fundamental ideas about what a gay movement should be, what they should do.

And remember what unfathomable victories Kameny and his friends already had secured before Milk could start doing gay politics: Kameny fought president Eisenhower's ugly executive order from 1953 that any person working in the federal administration who had been cought committing a single homosexual act, anytime, anywhere, must be unceremoniously sacked. Kameny fought this super shitty piece of legislation - and in spring 1969 (a few months BEFORE Stonewall) for all practical purposes he fuckin' won. He fuckin' won, not against some shitty fundamentalist church, but against the high and mighty fuckin' American federal state!!!!

And then, a few years later, and with psychlogist Evelyn Hooker and psychiatrist Judd Marmor as his central allies, Kameny and his friends managed to press the American Psychiatric Association to stop defining homosexuality as a mental illness in the psychiatrist "Bible", DSM.

So before there could be a Milk, there had to be a Kameny.

 

[W!nston]

You are right my friend. I won't argue with the need to recognize the founders and leaders of the Gay Equality Movement.

I think it's time Hollywood take the Gay Equality Movement seriously. I think we need the same consideration the Black Equality Movement has received for 50 years. I think it's time the stories of these pioneers should come to life in film. That would go a long way towards a better understanding of what we've all been subjected to by the government, religion and society in general. It's appalling that it has not been done already.

#Gay Lives Matter