What the Silence Couldn't Kill

Honoring Harvey Milk, Jonathan Joss, and the Queer Lives Still Under Fire

Hope will never be silent ~ Harvey Milk

Welcome back, bold hearts, to another installment of Pride on the Page.

If you’ve been here already—thank you for returning. If this is your first time with us—welcome. Today marks Day 4 in our month-long celebration of LGBTQ+ heroes, voices, and history. Each day, we lift up names that have too often been buried or erased. And each day, we resist that erasure—together.

Whether you are here to learn, reflect, or amplify, your presence matters. The stories we share become fuel for action, and that ripple starts with you. Thank you for investing in your own education—so you can inform, inspire, and impact the world around you.

Today, we turn our gaze to a man who never stopped believing in people, even when they gave him every reason to stop.

---

💔 From Closet to Castro: Harvey's Early Life

Harvey Bernard Milk was born in 1930 to a middle-class Jewish family in Woodmere, Long Island. From an early age, he knew he was different—but like many of his generation, he buried that truth deep. He played football. He wrote for the school paper. He kept the secret that shaped his soul.

After college, Milk joined the U.S. Navy during the Korean War. Commissioned as a lieutenant (junior grade), he served on a submarine rescue ship and worked as a diving instructor in San Diego. But in 1955, like so many queer service members of the era, he was forced to resign and accept an “other than honorable” discharge—simply for being gay.

What followed was a decade of disconnection. Harvey worked as a schoolteacher, a financial analyst, a Broadway production assistant. He dated men quietly, cautiously. When he came out to his parents, the reaction was silence. By the time he moved to San Francisco in the early 1970s, he had been effectively cut off from his family.

It was in the Castro—a fledgling gay neighborhood—that Harvey Milk found home. He opened a small camera shop. He built friendships. And for the first time in his life, he lived openly.

But even there, joy was tempered by pain. Two of his long-term partners died by suicide—devastated by the stigma and isolation of being gay in America. Harvey knew that pain intimately. He knew what it meant to stare into a mirror and see not a person, but a problem.

Rather than break him, that grief became his fire.

---

🗳 Building a Coalition of the Marginalized

Harvey Milk didn’t enter politics for glory. He did it because no one else was doing it. The LGBTQ+ community in San Francisco was growing, but its political power was nonexistent. Even in a city known for its flamboyance, there were no openly gay public officials. The few who held office did so in secret.

Milk ran four times—for State Assembly and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He lost three races before finally winning in 1977, becoming the first openly gay man elected to public office in California.

He didn’t just win. He transformed what it meant to hold office as a queer person.

In less than a year on the Board of Supervisors, Milk pushed through landmark renter protections for working-class San Franciscans, advocated for free public transportation for seniors and youth, and forged alliances between LGBTQ+ residents and other marginalized groups—laborers, immigrants, people of color.

Most famously, he became the leading voice against Proposition 6, the Briggs Initiative, which sought to ban gay and lesbian teachers from California’s public schools. He fought it with everything he had—and he won.

Milk believed in the politics of visibility. He told his community:

“Every gay person must come out. Come out to your parents, your relatives... your friends... your neighbors... your fellow workers.”

Coming out was how the lies were shattered. It was how the tides would turn.

---

🔫 A Bullet and a Closet Door

On November 27, 1978, former Supervisor Dan White entered San Francisco’s City Hall through a basement window with a revolver. First, he murdered Mayor George Moscone. Then, he walked down the hall and shot Harvey Milk five times—twice in the head.

Milk was just 48 years old.

The trial that followed was a devastating betrayal. White’s defense team argued that his mental state was compromised—a defense now known as the “Twinkie defense” because they cited his junk food consumption as evidence of depression. The jury convicted him of voluntary manslaughter.

He served just five years.

The city erupted. The LGBTQ+ community, and the broader progressive movement, took to the streets in what became known as the White Night Riots. It was not random violence. It was righteous rage.

Harvey Milk never lived to see the AIDS crisis, but he had already armed his people with the language and the urgency they would need to survive it. His friend and aide Cleve Jones would go on to co-create the AIDS Memorial Quilt, using Milk’s tactics of visibility and mourning to demand a nation take notice.

---

⚓ Harvey Milk and the Ship That Bears His Name

Harvey Milk served this nation in uniform—and he was discarded for it. In 1955, when his homosexuality was discovered, he was given no ceremony, no thanks—just a quiet, dishonorable end to what could have been a long military career.

In 2016, the U.S. Navy sought to right that wrong. They named a new replenishment oiler—the USNS Harvey Milk—in his honor, recognizing not just his military service but his historic role in the fight for civil rights.

But this Pride Month, the Department of Defense made a chilling announcement: the ship would be renamed. Pete Hegseth, the new Secretary of Defense, stripped Milk’s name from the vessel as part of his effort to “restore warrior culture.”

Let’s be clear: this isn’t about warriors. It’s about erasure.

Hegseth, who served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, has positioned himself as the face of militarized masculinity. His resume may be longer, but it is no more honorable. While Milk was ousted for his identity, Hegseth builds his brand by trying to strip others of theirs.

The message is simple: be silent, or be erased.

And we will not comply.

---

🕯 Why Harvey Still Matters

Harvey Milk’s life was not one of uninterrupted triumph. It was a life of hardship. Of rejection. Of navigating a world that treated him as disposable. And yet—he persisted.

What defined him was not ambition, but service. He fought for others, even when he was still healing himself. He stood in rooms where he was unwanted and refused to shrink. He gave people the courage to live honestly by living honestly himself.

He didn’t see himself as a hero or a martyr. He saw himself as a public servant.

His life, and his loss, taught a generation to refuse invisibility. And today, as his name is stripped from ships, from textbooks, from timelines—we are reminded just how dangerous his visibility still is.

That’s why we remember. That’s why we resist.

---

💔 Another Life, Another Bullet

This week, we lost another queer voice to hate. Jonathan Joss, the Native American actor best known as the voice of John Redcorn on King of the Hill, was shot and killed in front of his home. But this wasn’t random violence—it was a hate crime.

For months, Jonathan and his husband had endured a campaign of terror. Their home was burned to the ground. Their pets were murdered and left on their lawn. They reported the crimes. The police did nothing.

Then, earlier this week, a man began shouting anti-gay slurs at Jonathan’s husband. When he pulled a gun, Jonathan stepped in front of him—literally putting his body between love and hate.

Like Harvey, Jonathan was vibrant, creative, beloved—and silenced.

The war on queer existence isn’t just historical. It’s ongoing. And it demands your attention.

And for LGBTQ+ people of color—especially Black, Indigenous, and Two-Spirit individuals—the danger is compounded. They face higher rates of violence, systemic neglect, and media invisibility. When these lives are taken, they are too often buried not just in grief—but in silence.

We will not let Jonathan Joss, Marsha P. Johnson, or any of our brothers and sisters of color be forgotten. We will share their stories and their history—because as Harvey taught us, hope is not held in silence. It is carried in the stories we share, rooted deep in our hearts.

---

---

📣 Call to Action: Come Out for Harvey

“Every gay person must come out. Come out to your parents, your relatives... your friends... your neighbors... your fellow workers.” —Harvey Milk

Harvey Milk believed in the revolutionary power of visibility. In 1978, when California faced the Briggs Initiative—a ballot measure that would have banned gay and lesbian teachers from public schools—Harvey knew exactly what had to be done.

He didn’t call for riots.
He didn’t call for revenge.
He called for courage.

He asked people to come out.

Because it is far harder to demonize a group once you realize they are your child. Your neighbor. Your co-worker. Your friend. The path to justice, Harvey believed, was paved person to person, heart to heart, through the simple, radical act of honesty.

And that’s still true today.

So here is your call to action:
Come out—for Harvey.

🌈 If you are LGBTQ+, share your story—loudly, proudly, safely.
🌈 If you are a friend or ally, come out as an ally. Speak up. Show up.
🌈 If you're not ready for words, show it in deeds. Lift up queer voices. Fight for their rights. Make them visible.

Every time you make the struggle of LGBTQ+ Americans human, you make it harder to erase them.
Every time you speak truth in a world built on silence, you honor Harvey’s legacy.

Let your words be louder than the bullets.
Let your presence be brighter than their shadows.

It’s time to come out—for Harvey.

Until our Next Bold Move,
~Lady LiberTea

---