Harvey Milk

Cleve Jones can cite the exact moment when Sean Penn morphed into Harvey Milk. It occurred during filming of a crucial scene in Gus Van Sant's multiple-Oscar-nominated biopic "Milk," which stars Penn as the former San Francisco supervisor, one of America's first openly gay elected officials. After honing his political skills as a flamboyantly courageous, bullhorn-toting community organizer, the so-called Mayor of Castro Street decided to run for office.

Targeting districts that voted heavily in favor banning same-sex marriage, gay-rights activists took to the streets throughout Los Angeles County on Saturday and made personal appeals for legalization. Organizers said they hoped to humanize their cause by having gay and lesbian couples share their struggles with residents. "We become human when we tell our stories, that is why across the state we're going out and talking to people who aren't with us," said Marc Solomon, marriage director of Equality California, the state's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy organization.

Robert Epstein and Richard Schmeichen's Academy Award-winning 1984 documentary is a powerful and incisive study of the political career and assassination of one of the nation's first openly gay elected officials (Harvey Milk, to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors).

The self-outing of state Sen. Roy Ashburn, who confessed that he is gay on a right-wing talk-radio program Monday, was undoubtedly agonizing -- not only for Ashburn but for his family (the divorced senator has four daughters). But although we sympathize with Ashburn and hope he can turn his life in a more positive direction following this revelation, there's really no excusing his political hypocrisy. Ashburn, a Republican from conservative Bakersfield, has a deeply anti-gay voting record.

President Obama, attempting to spotlight those who have acted as "agents of change," announced Thursday that he would bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor, on a cast of living and deceased figures widely known in politics, the arts and sciences, sports and social movements. The 16 honorees named by the White House include Harvey Milk, the San Francisco supervisor who led an early movement for gay rights in public life and was assassinated.

Eighteen years ago this month, Harvey Milk, the gay San Francisco supervisor, was shot several times and killed by an off-balance, homophobic fellow supervisor, Dan White, who also murdered San Francisco Mayor George Moscone.

. Harvey Milk, the slain gay-rights activist made more famous by the recent Oscar-winning film "Milk," didn't make Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's cut for the a statewide day of recognition last year. But on Tuesday, Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver announced their selection of Milk, one of the first openly gay man elected to public office in the state, into the California Hall of Fame. In 2008, Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation to proclaim May 22 -- Milk's birthday -- a date of "special significance."

Photographer Daniel Nicoletta remembers when he met Harvey Milk at the Castro Camera shop in 1974. The young Nicoletta was looking for a place to develop some Super 8 film he had shot for a class when he happened to wander by Milk's modest camera store in San Francisco. "He was so friendly and very gentle. Unbeknownst to me, I was being cruised," Nicoletta recalled. "I was barely out at the time, so I was pretty naive." So began a friendship that lasted four years to 1978, when Milk was gunned down at his San Francisco office.

It has been 13 1/2 years since San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk was gunned down, along with Mayor George Moscone, in San Francisco City Hall. But Milk's remains have yet to find a final resting place, and for the last six years the ashes of the first avowed homosexual elected to office in California have sat in an urn in a corner of a vault in the office of the Congressional Cemetery here.

David Souleles was 13 on Nov. 27, 1978, the day Dan White climbed through a window into San Francisco City Hall and shot to death Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. The event that devastated the city and its gay community had little meaning for Souleles at the time. He has only a vague memory of the news reports. But since then, Souleles, now 20, has acknowledged his own homosexuality and become a leader in the gay community as co-chair of UC Irvine's Gay and Lesbian Student Union.

Re "Lame-duck calls," Editorial, Oct. 13 I was disappointed with your editorial opposing Harvey Milk Day. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger should be commended for helping to advance equality. Milk was a transformative leader at a time when LGBT people's most basic humanity was denied. One of the first openly gay elected officials, he mobilized thousands to defeat discriminatory policies. Like my grandfather, Cesar E. Chavez, Milk was an advocate for social justice causes that have shaped California.

The legacy of Harvey Milk has had a very good year. Three decades after California's first openly gay elected leader was gunned down in San Francisco City Hall, Milk has been celebrated by an Oscar-winning film, named to the state Hall of Fame and lauded by President Obama. But despite those posthumous accolades, a legislative push to create a day of recognition for Milk became one of the most contentious issues in the Capitol this year. The proposal, which passed the Legislature on Thursday, is among more than a dozen gay rights bills offered in the aftermath of Proposition 8, last November's ballot initiative that outlawed same-sex marriage in California.

. Harvey Milk, the slain gay-rights activist made more famous by the recent Oscar-winning film "Milk," didn't make Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's cut for the a statewide day of recognition last year. But on Tuesday, Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver announced their selection of Milk, one of the first openly gay man elected to public office in the state, into the California Hall of Fame. In 2008, Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation to proclaim May 22 -- Milk's birthday -- a date of "special significance."

President Obama, attempting to spotlight those who have acted as "agents of change," announced Thursday that he would bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor, on a cast of living and deceased figures widely known in politics, the arts and sciences, sports and social movements. The 16 honorees named by the White House include Harvey Milk, the San Francisco supervisor who led an early movement for gay rights in public life and was assassinated.

Photographer Daniel Nicoletta remembers when he met Harvey Milk at the Castro Camera shop in 1974. The young Nicoletta was looking for a place to develop some Super 8 film he had shot for a class when he happened to wander by Milk's modest camera store in San Francisco. "He was so friendly and very gentle. Unbeknownst to me, I was being cruised," Nicoletta recalled. "I was barely out at the time, so I was pretty naive." So began a friendship that lasted four years to 1978, when Milk was gunned down at his San Francisco office.

ACTOR Sean Penn -- without a doubt With Sean Penn, there is forever the sense that he has demons of his own to beat back before he can slip underneath the skin of whatever character is awaiting dissection on the table in front of him. The knives are always at the ready, the guns loaded, the enemy awaits. And so it felt with "Milk" that there were wounds that he needed to suffer through first to excavate the soul of the slain San Francisco politician and gay-rights activist Harvey Milk.

It is not a nice night, especially for anyone preparing to present an opera portraying the life and assassination of the first well-known gay-activist politician in California. The evening is cold and damp. An interview with composer Stewart Wallace and librettist Michael Korie takes place at a quiet restaurant, a place for the harried composer (who is working day and night finishing the laborious orchestration) and librettist to relax. But it is a tense night, anyway.

Gay students who attend this cozy third-floor Greenwich Village high school did not live through the launch of the national gay rights movement, which unfolded a few blocks away, and until recently many knew little about the man their school was named after: Harvey Milk.

Much already has been said, written and blogged about the merits of Sean Penn's performance as Harvey Milk. About his uncanny channeling of Milk's nasally eloquence, his skill in replicating Milk's puckish intelligence and his striking physical resemblance to the former San Francisco supervisor, underscored in recent newspaper ads touting Penn for this year's best actor Oscar. But what about Penn's expressive use of his body? His clenched-fist joy in the scene where Milk becomes one of America's first openly gay elected politicians?

Cleve Jones can cite the exact moment when Sean Penn morphed into Harvey Milk. It occurred during filming of a crucial scene in Gus Van Sant's multiple-Oscar-nominated biopic "Milk," which stars Penn as the former San Francisco supervisor, one of America's first openly gay elected officials. After honing his political skills as a flamboyantly courageous, bullhorn-toting community organizer, the so-called Mayor of Castro Street decided to run for office.