If Harvey Milk were alive today, he would celebrate his 83rd birthday this week. Sadly, the flamboyant and outspoken San Francisco Board Supervisor was gunned down in his office in 1978. He was 48.
More than 100 people gathered to hear Milk’s nephew Stuart Milk, 52, talk about his uncle’s fight for gay equality on May 20 at Dubsdread Country Club. The Harvey Milk Diversity Breakfast was a benefit for The Center, Orlando’s LGBT advocacy organization.
“The civil rights movement of our time is LGBT rights,” Stuart Milk said in a compelling speech about being your authentic self. “Tolerance is not enough. We need inclusion and acceptance.”
Milk, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, is the founder of the Harvey Milk Foundation, which provides spreads its namesake’s message of LGBT equality around the world. Watermark Media Founder Tom Dyer is a member of the Harvery Milk Foundation Advisory Board and introduced Stuart Milk at the breakfast.
U.S. Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL) talked about the “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” written by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963 which defended a strategy of nonviolent resistance to racism.
Grayson also told the story of Alan Turing, the gay mathematician well known as the father of computer science, who committed suicide after he was arrested for homosexuality and received chemical castration as an alternative to prison in the 1950s.
“Even more than we need martyrs, we need leaders,” Grayson said. “‘The actual goal is to reach his or her full potential-man or woman, black or white, gay or straight.”
Grayson presented Congressional certificates to Milk and Randy Stephens, Executive Director of The Center for their work on behalf of LGBT rights. Council Councilwoman Patty Sheehan read a Proclamation by Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer on behalf of Milk’s birthday.
Photos by Susan Clary and Tom Dyer.
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