"Only one life." Harvey Milk

I seem to have hit a biographical patch for some reason. Biographies are popular. For the famous and infamous, our heroes and villains, we want to penetrate their mystery. Where do artists and politicians and scientists get their inspiration, their ideas? (More than one artist, when asked this question, has responded “If I knew that, I’d go there.”) What makes one person become Abraham Lincoln, another Adolf Hitler? And then there are the people of whom we have heard something or come from a world we are only vaguely familiar with, if at all. Their biographies offer a way into their world and their work. In the end, the biography is yet another attempt to understand the puzzle of human nature, of existence. And so they will never entirely succeed. But the best of them make the journey worthwhile, even if we end up a little short of the destination.

Two biographies I’ve recently undertaken are Randy Shilt’s The Mayor of Castro Street: the life and times of Harvey Milk, and Anthony Reynolds’ Leonard Cohen: a remarkable life. On my to-read pile is Barney Hoskyn’s Lowside of the road: A life of Tom Waits, and the other day I bought Blood Kindred: W B Yeats; the life, the death, the politics by W J McCormack. I’ve finished the first two in this list and was going to write about them both but the entry was getting well above my self-imposed maximum of 1000 words. So here is my response to Shilt’s book, Reynold’s will be next and I’ll get to the others later.

I first came across Harvey Milk by watching a film about Dan White, the man who shot him and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone. Milk in this case was played by Peter Coyote, a good actor who has never become a star. My interest was piqued. I had never heard of Milk (in fact I remember thinking I was mishearing his name) and the manner of the murders and the trial that followed kept his name in mind.

Despite my interest, I have yet to see Sean Penn’s take on the character, but I found this biography on the shelf in my library, so decided to pick it up. And I’m glad I did. What an eye-opener it was for me, coming from a conservative Australian family in a nice suburban middle-class upbringing. I’m not complaining about my life, just observing it meant I did not knowingly encounter a gay man until I was about 21. Working in the theatre, as I do, I have since met a lot more. And in other places obviously. Indeed, dare I say it, some of my best friends are gay.

That said, while I had the occasional glimpse of what homosexuals have to put up with, I had no idea of the struggle they have undergone, or the distance they have come in social and legal acceptance within my lifetime. Obviously that struggle is far from over, but I had no idea of the life that the vast majority of homosexuals were forced to leave, if they could, before what was called the Gay Liberation Movement – repressed, secretive, dangerous, often fatal. If it is not easy to be gay now in our liberal society, being gay in the 50s or before was impossible. The idea that someone would choose that life is laughable.

But it is an idea Harvey Milk and many others had to fight, as well as others equally strange. (Sadly, you still hear it.)  Milk was a leading figure against a law trying to make it illegal for homosexuals to be teachers, on the basis that they would use that platform to recruit youngsters. Again this is not some medieval prejudice but within my lifetime! (41 years and about six months as of time of writing.) He lost that battle but the war went on. His chief message, the theme of his speeches, and one of his favourite words was hope. He saw himself as trying to give hope to those men and women who had none.

Milk achieved much in his short lifetime. If his only achievement was to be the first openly-gay politician elected to office he would be worth remembering, but he did much more. Most of his achievements came from community activism, working with gay and straight alike to achieve civil rights for homosexuals, long before he came to office. He is an inspiration for anyone who wants to change the world.

Milk was murdered and his murderer got away with manslaughter. It’s a depressing end to his story but almost inevitable. He was loud, confrontational and bold. He was always convinced he would be killed by the assassin’s bullet.  Indeed he spoke of it so often you can’t help wondering if it was he who inadvertently gave Dan White the appalling idea. And the trial was a travesty as if to prove how far gay liberation had to go, even in San Francisco. One witness remembers one cop patting ex-cop White as if for a job well done. The Prosecution didn’t present a strong case and White was free in a few years. But he killed himself a few years after his release. But injustices like this can give impetuous to the causes they are designed to repress, and this was no exception.

If as an eight-year-old, this whole story passed me by, it was not just because I was an eight-year-old in Australia. The big story the week of Milk’s death was the Jonestown Massacre, which also had its roots in San Francisco politics. It was an extraordinary time indeed.

Not long before Milk’s death he recorded a political will, which included the memorable line, “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.” Closet doors and violence sadly still have their place in our world but we are progressing, thanks to people like Milk and the many others who followed. He was not alone in the struggle, and has his critics as well as admirers but they all have their voices heard in Shilt’s book. Definitely worth a read, if only to remind us of our recent past.