Harvey Milk: Gay People Will Not Win Their Rights by Standing Silently in the Closet

by Michael Jones · 2008-11-24 03:45:00 UTC
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Milk Quote 3Every National Coming Out Day, I'm reminded of these words below from Harvey Milk. I think back to the years before I was out, and how afraid I was that my coworkers, friends, family members, neighbors, classmates, and even the random people walking down the street might, God forbid, one day know I'm gay. Those awkward journal entries as a high school kid, hoping no one would find out about me, or that I would magically be cured.

Many years later, I read Milk's words below with a confidence that he is right - coming out of our closets is the single most important thing LGBT people can do in the struggle for gay rights.

Those people I was afraid of? Well, they're almost all still in my life in some capacity. Sure, some of them took the news hard. (One, in particular, held my hand and started praying to Jesus when I told her. I believe she also called the 700 Club and asked them to pray for me. If only YouTube existed back in 1997...) But by putting a face and name to the word "gay", I like to think that I moved my family, friends, coworkers and others to see gay rights in a new way, even if it was a struggle at first. And, as Harvey alludes to in this quote, it's by moving those around us to act and support LGBT rights, or even see LGBT rights in a slightly more personal way, that we make real strides in the movement for equality.

To Harvey's quote, said at the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade of 1978, on the ninth anniversary of the Stonewall riots, as California debated a constitutional amendment to ban gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools:

My name is Harvey Milk, and I want to recruit you. I want to recruit you for the fight to preserve democracy from the John Briggs and Anita Bryants who are trying to constitutionalize bigotry...

On this anniversary of Stonewall, I ask my gay sisters and brothers to make the commitment to fight. For themselves, for their freedom, for their country...Gay people, we will not win our rights by staying silently in our closets...We are coming out. We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions. We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I'm going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out. Come out to your parents, your relatives.

Anyone else thinking about the images of LGBT people and straight allies pouring into the streets after the passage of Prop 8 to fight for their freedom, for everyone's freedom, to marry? Man, how Harvey Milk can inform these times we live in.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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