A bill passed by the California legislature seeks to designate May 22 as Harvey Milk Day.
A bill introduced in the California legislature in February 2008, AB 2567, sought to officially designate May 22 as Harvey Milk Day in the state of California. As described by the Bay Area Reporter:Assembly Bill 2567, authored by openly gay state Assemblyman Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), would require the governor to proclaim May 22 each year as Harvey Milk Day, recognizing the anniversary of the late San Francisco supervisor's birth. Milk was the country's first [openly] gay man to win elective office when he won a supervisor seat in 1977. A disgruntled Dan White, who had resigned his board seat, killed Milk a year later in his City Hall office along with then Mayor George Moscone. A movie about the gay pioneer's life, simply titled Milk, will have its worldwide premiere in San Francisco [on] Tuesday, October 28. Leno's bill honoring Milk would encourage public schools and educational institutions to conduct commemorative exercises to mark his birthday. Should the bill become law, it would not result in a paid state holiday.AB 2567Of Leno's bill, [one] message said, 'Homosexual activists intend to use Harvey Milk Day to force school children to celebrate his life and learn more about homosexuality.' Leno said the characterization is totally inaccurate. 'There's no requirement of any school to do anything,' Leno said. 'We hope that Harvey Milk Day would provide for an opportunity for teachers to share with their students why the governor has declared May 22 to be a special day ... We believe that with this additional information, LGBT students would have ever more reason to be proud of who they are and that straight students would understand this has been a civil rights battle, and thereby raising their consciousness as well, likely decreasing the amount of violence and bullying that goes on.'Although AB 2567 was passed by the state legislature, on 30 September 2008 it was vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.In February 2009, Mark Leno (now a state senator) introduced another bill in the legislature to designate May 22 as Harvey Milk Day in California. That bill (SB 572) was passed by the Senate on 14 May 2009, and this time around, on 12 October 2009, Governor Schwarzenegger signed it:The Republican governor vetoed similar legislation [in 2008]. In the interim, Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and was the subject of a movie for which Sean Penn won the Academy Award for best actor. In his [2008] veto message, the Republican governor said Milk should be honored locally by those who were most impacted by his contributions. He did not write a signing message [in 2009] saying why he flip-flopped.
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