Thread: Californians Set to Boycott Harvey Milk Day

Originally Posted by Taxpayer

If it was before he was before the age of consent, then yes it would have been a crime. In his lifetime, no one accused Harvey of this crime. He wasn't investigated, charged, or tried of this crime. It's unreasonable to ask folks to treat him as if he was found guilty of this crime decades after his death and based on nothing more than a vague snippet of text from a sensational book.

Harvey Milk fought for equality. He was a civil rights leader assassinated in public office, in city hall. Harvey was called "the most famous and most significantly open LGBT official ever elected in the United States". He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. It's tragic that folks are willing to speak so carelessly and hurtfully about this man who gave his life in service to others.

Does that mean he has to be perfect, though? Are people formulating a religion around him? Can't he fight for equality and also be flawed? Many leaders were. Look at Jefferson.

Originally Posted by Zosiasmom

You're reaching. Why can't you just say, "Yeh, he had sex with a 16 year old, but I don't care because I don't think 16 year olds are kids" ??? That makes more sense than speculating alternative ways to interpret "lover". I'm mean, at Harvey's age at the time, is 17 really that much better? It's all kinda lecherous and skeevy. You're not helping your case.

Most idols have clay feet.

Besides, it seems consensual unlike Roman Polanski who butt-raped a 13 year old girl forcibly.

I think 16 really is not a big deal considering Mckinnley was a runaway, who prostituted himself before he met Milk. 17 is the legal age of consent.

Do I find it "skeevy"? yes. But not necessarily illegal considering that they were in a 5 year relationship.

I honestly didn't know much about Milk until someone started posting multiple threads in the issue.
Should every person we celebrate have everything in their past considered? If so, our list will be shrinking considerably.

Originally Posted by wolfsgirl

I think 16 really is not a big deal considering Mckinnley was a runaway, who prostituted himself before he met Milk. 17 is the legal age of consent.

Do I find it "skeevy"? yes. But not necessarily illegal considering that they were in a 5 year relationship.

I honestly didn't know much about Milk until someone started posting multiple threads in the issue.
Should every person we celebrate have everything in their past considered? If so, our list will be shrinking considerably.

Probably. It would certainly prevent a lot of drama and angst if people took the time to do so. In fact, the discussion itself would bear more fruit as far as social dialog and cultural exchange than just slappin' a sticker on it and calling the deal "done".

Originally Posted by SFJEFF

Part of the reason that White opposed Milk was because of his being gay, and because he was promoting Gay rights, which conservative Dan White found repugnant.

Oh wait-
maybe you think it was because of twinkies?

It's not only about why Dan killed Harvey, but also about how the trial proceeded:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Milk

Dan White was charged with two counts of murder and held without bail, eligible for the death penalty owing to the recent passage of a statewide proposition that allowed death or life in prison for the murder of a public official.

After White turned himself in and confessed, he sat in his cell while his former colleagues on the police force told Harvey Milk jokes; police openly wore "Free Dan White" T-shirts in the days after the murder. An undersheriff for San Francisco later stated: "The more I observed what went on at the jail, the more I began to stop seeing what Dan White did as the act of an individual and began to see it as a political act in a political movement."

The seated jury for White's trial consisted of white middle-class San Franciscans who were mostly Catholic; gays and ethnic minorities were excused from the jury pool. The jury was clearly sympathetic to the defendant: some of the members cried when they heard White's tearful recorded confession, at the end of which the interrogator thanked White for his honesty.

Schmidt tried to prove that White's anguished mental state was a result of manipulation by the politicos in City Hall who had consistently disappointed and confounded him, finally promising to give his job back only to refuse him again. Schmidt said that White's mental deterioration was demonstrated and exacerbated by his junk food binge the night before the murders, since he was usually known to have been health-food conscious.[134] Area newspapers quickly dubbed it the Twinkie defense. White was acquitted of the first degree murder charge on May 21, 1979, but found guilty of voluntary manslaughter of both victims, and he was sentenced to serve seven and two-thirds years. With the sentence reduced for time served and good behavior, he would be released in five.[135] He cried when he heard the verdict.[136]

Following acquittal from murder, all hell broke loose in San Francisco where citizens rioted.

Originally Posted by Silhouette

And even if it was a legal age at that time, the laws now say it isn't appropriate to have sex, especially sodomy with a child that young today. Also there are laws forbidding sodomy of anyone under the influence [unable to consent] or mentally ill [unable to consent] at ANY age. California has those laws on the books today.

HIV also didn't exist until Harvey is dead, we're talking about a different culture and time.

Originally Posted by Grokmaster

Statutory rape victims often stay under the control of their typically much older abusers....like the 33 year old Milk, and the 16 year old McKinley.
If it was anytime before the boy was 18, and Milk took the boy out of New York, and to another state, Milk was in glaring violation of the Mann Act, which is a FEDERAL OFFENSE.

If and if.

But as I have pointed out- according to Shilts, that never happened.

Quotes please. Please quote where Shilts says 16 year old minor [age of consent in New York at the time was 17] Jack McKinley and 33 year old Harvey Milk did not travel away from New York at any time while Milk was illegally sodomizing the boy to another state where the age of consent was above 16.

And also, describe how these illegal acts: sodomy on a boy of 16 who was vulnerable, homeless when Harvey met him, on drugs and mentally ill, make Harvey Milk a role model for children in California where the age of consent is 18 today, and where it is illegal to sodomized a person under the influence and/or mentally ill? Forget the timeline because TODAY when kids are being required to admire Milk, these values are reprehensible.

Originally Posted by Silhouette

Forget the timeline because TODAY when kids are being required to admire Milk, these values are reprehensible.

umm, aren't you the one that defended other historical figures in American culture that would be put in prison under today's standards, on the basis of judging them in the context of their time?

And no, sex with an intoxicated or mentally ill individual is not illegal, if you've read the law. I've pointed this out for you many times, not sure why you continue to lie.

And no, sex with an intoxicated or mentally ill individual is not illegal, if you've read the law. I've pointed this out for you many times, not sure why you continue to lie.

Here's what California Law has to say about that. Remember that California also requires children to emulate someone who broke these laws against a minor:

286
(g) Except as provided in subdivision (h), a person who commits an
act of sodomy, and the victim is at the time incapable, because of a
mental disorder or developmental or physical disability, of giving
legal consent, and this is known or reasonably should be known to the
person committing the act, shall be punished by imprisonment in the
state prison for three, six, or eight years. Notwithstanding the
existence of a conservatorship pursuant to the Lanterman-Petris-Short
Act (Part 1 (commencing with Section 5000) of Division 5 of the
Welfare and Institutions Code), the prosecuting attorney shall prove,
as an element of the crime, that a mental disorder or developmental
or physical disability rendered the alleged victim incapable of
giving consent.
(h) Any person who commits an act of sodomy, and the victim is at
the time incapable, because of a mental disorder or developmental or
physical disability, of giving legal consent, and this is known or
reasonably should be known to the person committing the act, and both
the defendant and the victim are at the time confined in a state
hospital for the care and treatment of the mentally disordered or in
any other public or private facility for the care and treatment of
the mentally disordered approved by a county mental health director,
shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison, or in a county
jail for not more than one year. Notwithstanding the existence of a
conservatorship pursuant to the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act (Part 1
(commencing with Section 5000) of Division 5 of the Welfare and
Institutions Code), the prosecuting attorney shall prove, as an
element of the crime, that a mental disorder or developmental or
physical disability rendered the alleged victim incapable of giving
legal consent.
(i) Any person who commits an act of sodomy, where the victim is
prevented from resisting by an intoxicating or anesthetic substance,
or any controlled substance, and this condition was known, or
reasonably should have been known by the accused, shall be punished
by imprisonment in the state prison for three, six, or eight years. http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/di...file=281-289.6

The point being that California holds these crimes TODAY as immoral and yet REQUIRES CHILDREN TODAY to celebrate a man who not only committed these crimes, but made these crimes intrinsic to "all that he stood for"... That's different from Jefferson boinking slaves. He did not make boinking slaves his namesake. They were transgressions, not the hub of what he fought for. See the difference with Harvey Milk? And the bold underscore italic highlight of that fact is that the California Law requiring children to celebrate illegal sex crimes embodied in the man Harvey Milk is the statement within the language of SB 572 that states that all that Harvey Milk stood for embodies the LGBT movement. And if that wasn't bad enough, gays rally to his defense as their representative of their collective value system.

Tell me that requiring kids to emulate this isn't child abuse.. and in direct conflict of California and federal laws against undue sexual influence against children.