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NewsHomosexuality, Politics - U.S.Wed Nov 28, 2018 - 5:50 pm EST

Fact-check: Harvey Milk’s homosexuality

had nothing to do with his murder
california, dan white, daniel flynn, george moscone, harvey milk, homosexuality, jim jones,
jonestown, left-wing myths, lgbt, liberal media bias, mainstream media, murder, san francisco

November 28, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – This Tuesday marked the 40th anniversary of the murder
of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, a Democrat who made history as the state’s first
openly homsexual elected official and has since been elevated to a martyr, despite the details of
his life and death differing greatly from the popular narrative.

“On Nov. 27, 1978, Supervisor Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan
White, a former police officer and former city supervisor who had clashed with Milk over
LGBTQ issues,” NPR’s Scott Schafer wrote this week, after stating that Milk’s advocacy for
“gay rights” had “angered many.”

Tim Fitzsimons of NBC News reported that when “Milk began to press for a city-wide ordinance
to protect gay rights, his eventual killer and fellow city supervisor, Dan White, gave a quote to
The New York Times, decrying the ‘demands’ of ‘large minorities.’” Over the years, various
left-wing activists have explicitly claimed that Milk was murdered specifically for being gay
and/or advocating LGBT causes.

According to the author of a book on the subject released last month, White actually had mixed
positions on LGBT-related policies and maintained a friendly relationship with Milk before his
descent into violence.

“I interviewed White’s campaign manager, chief of staff, and business partner, a gay man, who
rejects this thesis,” columnist Daniel Flynn told FrontPage Magazine in an interview last month.
“White occasionally supported liberal causes, including some gay-rights measures, and generally
thought of Milk as a friend during his short time on the board —particularly in the first few
months.”

In the interview and a 2009 piece for City Journal, Flynn details how a “cash-strapped” White
had resigned from the city’s Board of Supervisors on November 10, but demanded his seat back
four days later. Moscone agreed, but Milk convinced him to renege on his promise to reseat him,
after which White snapped and sought revenge against two people he saw as conspiring against
him.

Even more shocking to the conventional narrative is Flynn’s revelation that Milk, the subject of a
fawning 2008 film starring Sean Penn, was an associate of infamous cult leader Jim Jones, the
subject of a new Sundance documentary. Flynn’s new book, Cult City, details the relationship
between the two men.

Jones provided Milk “with a printing press, gave him hundreds of campaign ‘volunteers,’ yielded
the Peoples Temple pulpit to him, and provided free publicity to him in the Peoples Forum
newspaper,” Flynn wrote. In exchange, Milk publicly vouched for him.

“Rev. Jones is widely known in the minority communities here and elsewhere as a man of the
highest character, who has undertaken constructive remedies for social problems which have
been amazing in their scope and effectiveness,” Milk wrote in a letter to President Jimmy Carter
earlier in 1978 on behalf of Jones’ claims of paternity to the 6-year-old son of one of his cult
members.

Jones’ exploits came to a head on November 18, 1978, when he forced more than 900 people to
commit suicide in the infamous Jonestown massacre, just nine days before Milk’s death.

Also omitted from most recollections of Milk’s life are his alleged sexual relationships with
underage boys.

Milk was attracted to “boyish-looking men in their late teens and early 20s,” Randy Shilts, a
friend of Milk’s who was also homosexual, wrote in a biography. “Harvey always had a
penchant for young waifs with substance-abuse problems.” One of his young lovers was
allegedly Jack Galen McKinley, a 16-year-old runaway from Maryland. Jones also had a
relationship with a 25-year-old alcoholic named Jack Lira, who eventually killed himself.

Nevertheless, the federal government under the Obama administration honored Milk with not
only a postage stamp, but a Naval ship bearing his name.