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Saturday, May 17, 2008
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National News |
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| National News | |
| BILL WOULD CREATE
HARVEY MILK HOLIDAY
IN CALIFORNIA California Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, will introduce a bill in the state legislature to make Harvey Milk's birthday a state holiday. If the measure passes, May 22 would become a "nonfiscal" holiday, which means it should not cost the state any money. Milk, born in 1930, settled in San Francisco's Castro district in 1972 and opened a camera store. He went on to pioneer a populist Gay-rights movement in the city and, in 1977, was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the equivalent of a city council. Milk was the first openly Gay elected official in any large U.S. city and only the third openly Gay elected official in U.S. history - after Elaine Noble, who was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1975, and Kathy Kozachenko, who was elected to the Ann Arbor, Mich., City Council in 1974. Milk and Mayor George Moscone were shot to death inside San Francisco City Hall on Nov. 27, 1978, by then recently resigned city Supervisor Dan White, who was angry that Moscone wouldn't let him un-resign and that Milk had lobbied Moscone not to reappoint White. White's lenient sentence for the killings (seven years and eight months with parole) led to the famed White Night Riots in San Francisco on May 21, 1979. White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter on the grounds of diminished capacity, which, his lawyer argued, resulted from depression exacerbated by eating too much junk food. This bizarre argument became known as the "Twinkie defense." In the White Night Riots, a large crowd of Gay people gathered at City Hall the evening of White's sentencing and burned police cars, broke windows of cars and stores, and destroyed the overhead electric wires that power city buses. More than 160 people were hospitalized as a result of the melee. BUSH TELLS BARNEY FRANK HE'S "OPEN-MINDED" TOWARD GAYS President George W. Bush has told openly Gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., that he's "open-minded" toward Gays. It happened January 28 in the House Speaker's lobby after Bush's State of the Union address, according to the Boston Globe. Before the address, Bush walked up to Frank, who was chatting on his cell phone, and told Frank to say hello to whomever he was talking to. Frank relayed the message to his boyfriend on the other end of the line. After Bush's address, Frank decided to tell Bush who Bush had said hello to. Frank tracked down Bush and said, "Mr. President, by the way, the person I was talking to when you said to say hello was my boyfriend." Frank told the Globe that Bush responded, "Well, I hope you said how open-minded I am." Bush is a strong supporter of amending the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage and of the military's anti-Gay Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy - even as he is friendly with Mary Cheney, the openly Lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney. Mary and her longtime partner, Heather Poe, had a baby together last year, about which Bush commented: "I've always said that we ought to review law to make sure that people are treated fairly. On Mary Cheney, it's a personal matter for the vice president and his family. I strongly support their privacy on the issue, although there's nothing private when you happen to be the president or the vice president, I recognize that. I know Mary. And I like her, and I know she's going to be a fine, loving mother." KENNEDY ENDORSES OBAMA, BOTH MENTION GAYS U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., endorsed Barack Obama for president of the United States January 28. "With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion," Kennedy said. "With Barack Obama, we will close the book on the old politics of race against race, gender against gender, ethnic group against ethnic group, and straight against Gay." Accepting the endorsement, Obama mentioned Gays too. "The dream has never died," he said. "[It] lives on in those Americans - young and old, rich and poor, black and white, Latino and Asian and Native American, Gay and straight - who are tired of a politics that divides us and want to recapture the sense of common purpose that we had when John Kennedy was president of the United States of America. That is the dream we hold in our hearts. That is the kind of leadership we long for in this country. And that is the kind of leadership I intend to offer as president of the United States of America." John F. Kennedy's daughter Caroline also has endorsed Obama. Writing in The New York Times January 27, she said: "Over the years, I've been deeply moved by the people who've told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama. "My reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and the three are intertwined," Caroline Kennedy said. "All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals. Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible. "We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Obama." With assistance from Bill Kelley |
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| picture: Mark Leno | |
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