🏳️🌈🏺2-Gay in History🗳️🏳️🌈
Less than a decade after Stonewall, gays & lesbians were starting to love more openly in major cities, especially New York & San Francisco, but a backlash was growing. In 1978, California State Senator John Briggs asked voters: Should public schools fire gay & lesbian teachers, or any school employee, who “promoted” homosexuality? Proposition 6, aka the Briggs Initiative, looked like it would pass. Polls had it way ahead.
Harvey Milk had finally made it onto the San Francisco Board of Supervisors less than a year earlier, but as the country’s highest-ranking openly gay elected official, he knew he needed to lead. He debated Briggs up & down the state. But his message was simple: Come out to your parents, your coworkers, your neighbors. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Briggs was campaigning against a faceless bogeyman, a threat to children. Milk gave them a familiar face. Opposition spread as LGBT people told their loved ones. Even then-Governor Reagan(🖕) came out against it.
On Election Day 1978, Prop 6 went down by roughly 58 to 42, less than a month before Harvey was killed.
But that bittersweet victory was followed by three decades of near-universal losses. Voters rejected our rights in more than 30 statewide gay rights votes, including California’s Prop 8, thirty years after Briggs.
Then, exactly 34 years after Prop 6 failed, Maine, Maryland, & Washington became the first states to approve marriage equality by popular vote. Milk’s message paved the way.
Once enough people knew one of us, they voted for us. This is why trans folks are the new target. They make up far fewer people than gay people, & so few people personally know someone who is transgender.
Virginia has its own chapter in this story. Twenty years ago, 57% of Virginia voters approved the Marshall-Newman Amendment banning same-sex marriage. It has been unenforceable for a decade, yet it is still in our state constitution. Tomorrow, Tuesday, November 3, we get to vote on removing it & replacing it with an affirmative right to marry regardless of sex, gender, or race.
Harvey Milk won by getting people to show up & be seen. Show up, be seen, VOTE.
