San Francisco has long held a reputation as the 'Gay Capital of the World', with more of its citizens identifying as lesbian, gay. bisexual or trans than anywhere else in the United States. Every year the city hosts a huge pride celebration, with over 200 contingents taking part in the 2022 parade. A figure key in San Francisco's LGBTQ+past is a man called Harvey Milk - one of the first elected officials to be open about their homosexuality in the history of the United States. Milk's career saw him fight passionately for LGBTQ+rights, memorably campaigning against John Briggs' Propositiion 6 and introducing legislation that protected the rights of queer persons within San Francisco. However, on 27 November 1978 Milk was assassinated in a brutal killing that shocked and horrified the city that he loved so much
HOPE WILL NEVER BE SILENT
Milk was born in the suburbs of New York on the 22 May 1930 to Jewish parents William Milk and Minerva kams. The youngster struggled with his parents' Judaism and would eventually drift away from the religion, though Milk's biographer Lillian Faderman maintains that its cultural values remained important to him throughout his life. From a young age Milk was aware that he was homosexual. A keen lover of opera, it was in the standing
