California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is asking for feedback via Twitter on various bills including including AB 2567, which would designate May 22 Harvey Milk Day.

The bill encourages schools and other educational institutions to recognize Harvey Milk on that date through appropriate commemorative exercises. The bill however does not pressure educators to indoctrinate children into the “homosexual lifestyle,” nor does it teach cross-dressing or same-sex attraction, despite what others would have you believe.

Last year Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed a similar measure, saying that Milk’s commemoration should be restricted to San Francisco only and not state wide. Recently however President Barack Obama awarded Harvey Milk with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a national honor, which certainly ups the stakes.

If you would like to encourage Gov. Schwarzenegger to pass the AB 2567, feel free to send the tweet below, courtesy of Change.org:

@Schwarzenegger: Sign the Harvey Milk Day bill! He gave his life, the least you can do is give him a day. #p2 #LGBT

On the same day Harvey Milk was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, SaveCalifornia.com president Randy Thomasson held a press conference outside San Francisco City Hall denouncing Harvey Milk and the honor he was bestowed.

Thomasson and SaveCalifornia.com has also been very vocal in opposing a bill that would proclaim May 22 as Harvey Milk Day. From the SaveCalifornia.com website:

Please veto SB 572, “Harvey Milk Day,” due to major problems with this bill:

NO PARENTAL PERMISSION: While schools and school districts get to choose whether to hold “Harvey Milk Day,” SB 572 does not let parents choose whether their children will participate. The bill has no opt-in or opt-out. Yet polls show most parents oppose their children participating in “Harvey Milk Day.” Fathers and mothers deserve your respect and your veto.

INDOCTRINATES CHILDREN AS YOUNG AS 5 YEARS OLD: Harvey Milk Day would promote the “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender” agenda of Harvey Milk to up to six million children in public schools, including kindergarteners. These kids aren’t old enough to be taught about sex, but now they’ll be taught about same-sex “marriages,” cross-dressing and same-sex desires? This is highly inappropriate.

OVERLY BROAD: SB 572 is written so broadly, the pro-Harvey Milk “exercises” could include gay-pride parades on campus. The “exercises” are not defined, so the sky is the limit. Under SB 572, what will children in public schools be taught and how will children’s minds be “exercised?” The answer is whatever Milk believed or is said to have believed about religion, sexual experimentation, marriage, politics, etc.

OPPOSED BY A STRONG MAJORITY OF CALIFORNIANS: In March 2009, San Francisco TV station KPIX commissioned a poll, which found that a majority of Democrats, independents, Republicans, liberals, moderates and conservatives all opposed a statewide “day of significance” honoring Harvey Milk in schools or in any other state observance. Only 19 percent supported an official “Harvey Milk Day.”

Just a toybox full of hate… isn’t it?

A San Francisco Muni train dedicated to the late Harvey Milk has been taken out of service due to anti-gay graffiti discovered inside the trolly. Muni officials believe the defacing took place near the end of Pride Month in June. From the Bay Area Reporter:

Muni officials did not learn of the homophobic graffiti, however, until this week. The news came just days prior to President Barack Obama posthumously awarding Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony Wednesday, August 12.

Following calls by the Bay Area Reporter inquiring about the graffiti, Muni officials removed trolley car #1051 from the F-line late in the afternoon of Monday, August 10. Transportation officials said they had ordered the car to return to a storage yard so it could be inspected.

“It is disturbing to see that the panels had the slurs for some time without us removing it. We will do what we can to see what happened to try to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” said Judson True, spokesman for the SFMTA. “Especially in this historic week we want to be sure to honor Milk’s legacy on this streetcar so we will do everything we can to remove any graffiti and get the dedication panels back in place as quickly as possible.”
…

Openly gay Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who chairs the countywide San Francisco Transportation Authority, also expressed disappointment this week at learning the placards had been left aboard the trolley car.

“I will certainly pursue it with Muni. It shouldn’t be that difficult to get something removed, repaired, and replaced. You don’t leave this stuff up or leave it unaddressed,” said Dufty, who joined a delegation of San Franciscans that traveled to Washington D.C. this week to see Stuart Milk, the former supervisor’s openly gay nephew, accept the presidential honor on behalf of his family.

Thanks to Jamison Wieser for drawing attention to the graffiti by posting photographs online. It’s really sad that no one in our community reported the defacing sooner.

In a ceremony at the White House today, Barack Obama honored slain gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk and lesbian tennis great Billie Jean King with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Obama on Harvey Milk:

“His name was Harvey Milk. And he was here to recruit us. All of us.  To join a movement and change a nation. For much of his early life he had silenced himself. In the prime of his life, he was silenced by the act of another. But in the brief time in which he spoke, and ran and led, his voice stirred the aspirations of millions of people. He would become after several attempts, one of the first openly gay Americans elected to public office, and his message of hope, hope unashamed, unafraid, could not ever be silenced. It was Harvey who said it best. “You gotta give them hope.”

Complete list of recipients below the clip. Obama speaks of Milk around the 8:08 mark.

Medal of Freedom Recipients

Nancy Goodman Brinker
Founder of Susan G Komen for the Cure, a prominent US organisation that raises money for breast cancer research

Dr Pedro Jose Greer Jr
Physician and founder of organisations that provide medical care to Miami’s poor and homeless

Stephen Hawking
Cambridge University physicist and author of popular science books. Hawking is severely disabled from motor neuron disease.

Jack Kemp
Republican politician and retired professional football player who passed away in May. A longtime member of the House of Representatives, Kemp was the party’s 1996 vice-presidential candidate.

Senator Edward Kennedy
Younger brother of President John F Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy, Kennedy is known as a “liberal lion” in the US Senate for his championing of healthcare reform and civil rights.

Billie Jean King
Retired professional tennis player and one of the first openly lesbian sports figures. King defeated former number one player Bobby Riggs in the celebrated 1973 “battle of the sexes” match.

Reverend Joseph Lowery
Civil rights leader and co-founder with Martin Luther King Jr of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Lowery gave the benediction at Barack Obama’s inauguration.

Joe Medicine Crow
The last living war chief of the American Indians of the US Great Plains, according to the White House, and the author of seminal works of American Indian culture and history. While a soldier in the second world war, Medicine Crow stole 50 Nazi SS horses from a German camp.

Harvey Milk
The first openly gay elected official of a major city, Milk, a San Francisco supervisor, was assassinated in 1978. He is revered as a founder of the gay rights movement.

Sandra Day O’Connor
The first woman on the US supreme court, appointed by President Ronald Reagan.

Sidney Poitier
The first African-American to win an Oscar for best actor, Poitier starred in the first mainstream movies to portray romantic interracial relationships.

Chita Rivera
A prominent Hispanic singer and actress, Rivera played Anita in the film of West Side Story. She has won two Tony awards and been nominated seven more times.

Mary Robinson
First female president of Ireland, and a former UN high commissioner for human rights.

Janet Davison Rowley
A Chicago geneticist and cancer researcher, Rowley identified the genetic basis of leukaemia, lymphoma and other cancers.

Desmond Tutu
A South African anti-apartheid leader and Anglican archbishop emeritus. Won the Nobel peace prize in 1984 for his efforts at racial reconciliation.

Muhammad Yunus
Pioneer of microloans – small, low-interest loans to the poor extended without collateral. Yunus won the Nobel peace prize for his Grameen Bank’s efforts in his native Bangladesh and elsewhere.