Gay icon gay rights. Milk's image as a positive role model led to him becoming the namesake for the first high school designed primarily for gay teenagers, the Harvey Milk High School, in the East Village of New York City. The portrayal of those efforts in the critically acclaimed film "Milk" earned Sean Penn an Oscar and comparisons to the contemporary battle over the anti-gay ballot initiative Proposition 8 raging in California at the time of the film's release in 2008. An ironic icon is Anita Bryant, who worked to oppose homosexuality. During the 1970s, Bryant led a national campaign, "Save Our
Harvey Milk boasts that it is the largest Democratic organization in San Francisco. In New York City, Harvey Milk High School is a school program for at-risk youth that concentrates on the needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender students and operates out of the Hetrick Martin Institute. In July 2016, US Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus advised Congress that he intended to name the second ship of the Military Sealift Command's John Lewis-class oilers, USNS "Harvey Milk". All ships of the class are to be named after civil rights leaders. In 1982, freelance reporter Randy Shilts completed his first book: