Over the past couple of days, various members of the religious right have attacked Milk's recognition and maligned his name in an effort to make him into a monster and ruin efforts to give him public recognition.
In 2009, Milk's birthday was declared a state holiday in California. Naturally some fools got upset. Recently, Jerry Cox of the Arkansas Family Council made the erroneous charge that the holiday would force students to hold "mock gay weddings" and "cross dress."
This morning Bryan Camenker of the Massachusetts hate group, Mass Resistance, said that Milk was a child molester.
But an effort which takes the proverbial cake is the following video:
All of this nonsense reminds me of how some folks acted when Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday became a national holiday. Some folks said - and still say - that King's birthday shouldn't be a national holiday because he was a "communist" and a "womanizer."
It's all a bunch of tripe.
Harvey Milk was an awesome man. He had fire, spirit, and intelligence.
He taught a generation of lgbts to fight for what should be ours in the first place - our rights as Americans.
Like so many other great figures of American history, he was taken from us too soon (by an assassin's bullet), but his influence continues to reverberate throughout the country.
And no lie or scorning of his reputation will ever take that away.
