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Gay ‘Power’ Here

Gay ‘Power’ Here
Credit...The New York Times Archives
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December 13, 1978, Section A, Page 27Buy Reprints
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Harvey Milk was shot and killed in San Francisco on Nov. 27 by Dan White. Mr. White also shot and killed Mayor George Moscone. Mr. Moscone wasn't homosexual. Harvey Milk was. He was the first openly acknowledged homosexual ever to be elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, in a city with a homosexual population that is large but not so large as New York's.

I am not a crying man but I had tears in my eyes, as well as shivers of pride, while I was in San Francisco that week, all for a man I had never known and only vaguely heard about.

Thirty thousand people gathered outside City Hall with lit candles in memory of Mayor Moscone and Mr. Milk. Five thousand gathered inside and outside of Temple Emanu‐El, and 6,000 did the same at the Opera House, with Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. in the front‐row center, for memorial services for Mr. Milk. There Anne Kronenberg, a lesbian and Mr. Milk's administrative assistant, spoke of. his constituents, who loved him. “Harvey understood the necessity of all working together,” she said. The Rev. William H. Barcus of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, who had recently disclosed his own homosexuality to his congregation,c, expecting the worst but warmly supported instead, asked: “If you were shot down tomorrow, would the people you love know you as well as you knew Harvey?” Then Dr. David A. Kessler, psychiatrist on the staff of the University of California Medical School and the Langley‐Porter Psychiatric Clinic, and president of the Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights, a group of more than 250 homosexual doctors and psychiatrists, spoke. “Harvey asked us all to come out to our families and friend, to the people we work with and to those we shop. from ... so that we can shatter the myth. once and for all, that we were freaks, weirdos, or sickies Harvey Milk fought for us. Now it is our turn to fight for him.” Inside the Opera House, 4,000 people rose as one to shout.

The new Mayor, Dianne Feinstein. had said, outside City Hall: “The fact of his homosexuality gave Harvey an insight into the scars which all op. pressed people wear... He believed that no sacrifice was too great a price to pay for the cause of humanTights.”

I returned to New York to discover that our City Council, on Nov. 29, had again, for the eighth year, rejected homosexual human rights. Councilwoman Ruth Mesiinger said. that the homosexual civil‐rights bill, which the Council refused to release from committee for full Council consideration, involved the rights of “an estimated 10 percent of the population; on this basis there is a homosexual in one of every three families in every state in the country.” She said there were estimated one million homosexuals in the city.

I am back in New York, missing, very much, the sense of community I felt in San Francisco. I call several of my friends, but no one is home. I know that most of my friends are at the bars or the baths or the discos, tripping out on trivia.

We haven't had an acknowledged homosexual member of the City Council representing our constituency. But, gruesomely, I wonder if what happened there should happen here would Gov. Hugh Carey be in the front row? He has refused to even meet with the New York Political Action Council, a homosexual professional group organized to interview all candidates on homosexual issues. Would City Councilwoman Aileen Ryan make a laudatory speech of tribute? On Nov. 29, she had said that adequate consideration had been given to the legislation and urged defeat of the motion.

What temple here would open its doors? The legislation was actively opposed by Jewish organizations.

Would our one million homosexuals march with lit candles? Or would we join with San Francisco's 100,000 homosexuals on July 4, 1979, in their march on Washington that Harvey Milk was planning at his death?

Where are our one million homosexuals?

Several months ago, I listened to Lieut. Gov.‐elect Mario Cuomo speak to the homosexual Greater Gotham Business Council. He said that until homosexuals organized, until we prepared accurate demographics on our numbers and our purchasing power, we would get nowhere, that political power — and therefore rights — is based on numbers and money.

I heard Percy Sutton say essentially the same thing two years ago at a very sparsely attended anti‐Anita Bryant rally. Mr. Sutton said, in effect: You don't know hoW many of you there are; until you do, you'll get nowhere. The City Council was right. We are not ready for our rights in New York. We have not earned them. We have not fought for them. California homosexuals mobilized an entire state to defeat the Briggs Amendment, which would have banned the hiring of homosexual teachers in public schools. New York City's one million homosexuals cannot mobilize a city.

Harvey Milk, William Barcus, Anne Kronenberg, Dr. David Kessler — we have no one like you here.

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