comingoutjournal:

Harvey Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978)

Harvey Bernard Milk (May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978) was an American politician who became the first openly gay or lesbian person to be elected to public office in California, and the first openly gay man elected to public office in the United States when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Politics and gay activism were not his early interests; he was not open about his homosexuality and did not participate in civic matters until around the age of 40, after his experiences in the counterculture of the 1960s.

Given the hatred directed at gay people in general and Milk in particular—he received daily death threats—he was aware of the likelihood that he may well be assassinated. He recorded several versions of his will, “to be read in the event of my assassination.” One of his tapes contained the now-famous statement, “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.” His nephew, Stuart Milk, a teenager at the time, and close with his uncle, came out, along with countless others across the nation, on the day his uncle was killed. Shortly after Milk’s death, people marching for gay rights in Washington, D.C., chanted “Harvey Milk lives!”

Dan White, Milk’s assassin, was acquitted of murder charges and given a mild sentence for manslaughter, partly as a result of what became known as the “twinkie defense.” His attorney claimed that White had eaten too much junk food on the day of the killings and thus could not be held accountable for his crimes. He was sentenced to less than eight years in prison on May 21, 1979—the day before what would have been Milk’s 49th birthday—igniting what came to be known as the White Night Riots. Enraged citizens stormed City Hall and rows of police cars were set on fire. The city suffered property damage and police officers retaliated by raiding the Castro, vandalizing gay businesses and beating people on the street.

Despite his short career in politics, Milk became an icon in San Francisco and a martyr in the gay community. In 2002, Milk was called “the most famous and most significantly open LGBT official ever elected in the United States”.Anne Kronenberg, his final campaign manager, wrote of him: “What set Harvey apart from you or me was that he was a visionary. He imagined a righteous world inside his head and then he set about to create it for real, for all of us.” Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.

Read more about Harvey Milk here: 

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Milk
• http://milkfoundation.org/about/harvey-milk-biography/

— Note: This is the 4000th post of Coming Out Journal and I am honored to dedicate this one for Harvey Milk. —

collective-history:

A sculpted and polished phallus found in a German cave is among the earliest representations of male sexuality ever uncovered, it is approximately  28,000 years old. 

Its life size suggests it may well have been used as a sex aid (dildo). 

In addition to being a symbolic representation of male genitalia, it was also at times used for knapping flints

BBC

(via asgardian-feminist)