Should May 22 Be Observed as a National Holiday?

May 22 is Harvey Milk Day. Do you think Harvey Milk Day should be made into a Federal Holiday since MLK Day is a Federal Holiday, and since both men were assassinated for what they believed in, it would be fair to designate May 22 as a Federal Holiday. America is a land of diversity and I think Harvey Milk Day should be declared a Federal Holiday. The President can issue an Executive Order for a one-time Federal Holiday but it is up to Congress to approve a permanent Federal Holiday.

What is your opinion?

 

We have enough holidays.
We should be looking for ones to remove, not add.

 

Starting with MLK day.

 

Why am I not surprised to see you say this?

On topic: We really ought to remove Columbus Day, merge Memorial Day and Veteran's Day, and create Harvey Milk Day.

 

No. A gay man being elected to a minor position in San Francisco in 1978 was not even the key moment in gay rights nor a national figure.

Virtually no one has ever heard of him. Why wouldn't the first WOMAN elected to Congress be a national holiday? The first Latino? What about the first Native American? For that matter, the FIRST black elected to Congress?

The number of martyrs for civil rights in the USA is a list hundreds of names long and if as low as minor local officials then goes into the thousands.

 

Interesting topic - hadn't thought of this before.

Harvey Milk's martyrdom should be remembered and his work honored by this society. But remember that liberal mayor George Moscone who was straight should also be honored. Furthermore, when White was interviewed by the police he admitted that he intended to kill several other SF elected officials. This means his crimes were not directed exclusively at Milk and were not just an act of homophobic bigotry. His crimes were premeditated, but he had a history of depression which mitigated the capital punishment charges against him. Ultimately he committed suicide.

MLK's work impacted nationwide and was the lone victim in 1968. No one else was targeted, unlike Milk the scope of whose work was limited to SF.

 

Nope, for one thing homosexuality isn't a "race", homosexual activity is a choice and "gay" is an adopted identity.

As far as homosexual attraction itself, I'm not 100% what causes it - fact is there's no hard consensus in the social sciences; there's also no consensus that people are even born completely "gay or straight" versus on a "spectrum" - my theory's that everyone is technically bisexual; some might swing one way more than others - but if they were completely isolated from the other sex they'd probably be drawn toward the same sex; such as prison inmates who end up turning gay due to years of isolation from women

But trying to equate homosexuality with "race" is completely absurd.

- - - Updated - - -

Nope, Columbus day is awesome.

 

Who is trying to equate homosexuality with a race?

This explains why Columbus day isn't awesome.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day

 

Personally I think that progressives who have a problem with him should move back to Europe and donate their property to the Native Americans.

If they're willing to live here then they owe him respect.

Not to mention some of the Indian tribes that were defeated by the Europeans were worse than the colonists, such as the Aztecs, who were so ferocious that other tribes sided with the Spaniards against them.

 

Personally I am a conservative libertarian. And I tend to have a problem with slavery, child molestation, and various other horrible acts committed by this guy.

Why?

Yes, but it doesn't really change the fact that Columbus was a blood thirsty child molesting greedy slave trader.

True some Indian tribes were blood thirsty, and pour of their minds. But that means we should celebrate somebody that was every bit as bad?

There are figures in history that can and should be celebrated. But Columbus isn't one of them.

Sorry, all that guy was, was the first Spaniard to come to the western hemisphere. He wasn't the first person or even the first European. He didn't discover anything.

 

Columbus was a genocidal lunatic and I see no reason to glorify him for what he's done.

 

and Milk had sex with a 16 year old boy

 

And Jerry Lee Lewis married his 14 year old cousin, what's your point?

 

San Francisco could have a city holiday for him.

 

You mean the USSR did not murder 60 million of its own people? Better rewrite all those history books.

- - - Updated - - -

Then you have bought your ticket back to Europe or wherever your ancestors came from? You are going to return your stolen property back to the descendants of the native Americans? If not, I expect you to change your signature to "I am a hypocrite"

 

Absurd.

Equating Reverend Martin Luther King to Harvey Milk is ridiculous, King was a man and a civil rights crusader and a humanitarian who changed the nation, Milk was a failed politician and a man of no consequence and who was elevated through false PR from the gays who needed a martyr so they could promote their gay "victim" theme. He was not even killed because he was gay, he was killed by a disgruntled man who wanted his job back.

If we are going to have holidays for no good reason, I say lets have a holiday celebrating my therapy dogs who have done more to bring joy to people than Milk.

I declare this Saturday to be "Battle3's Dogs Day". I'll feed them some MilkBones if it will make you feel better.

 

Ironic.

 

It wasn't directed at "whitey" it's directed at Christopher Columbus. Most "Indians" died from pestilence. In the grand scheme of things he didn't really kill that many. But he did it with a blade. I don't like murderers. They aren't awesome.

So get your crowbar pull out the nails and get off of your cross.

 

My mom was 15 when her and my dad met and had their first baby. My dad was almost 19.

What is your point?

 

While disease certainly killed many indigenous people of the Americans, the Spanish were particularly brutal enslaving them to the point of rapid death, mass killing those not suited to slave labor, and in the end 100% of the aboriginals of the Caribbean islands - all of them - were not only victims of genocide, but total extinction. There is not ONE original indigenous person of the Carribean. For example, if there were more than they needed and could control, they would drive all the others into a lake and shot them while they were drowning, killing them all. Slave labor was rapidly worked to death as they believed there was an endless supply.

When 100% (literally) of every person in the Caribbean islands was genocided into non-existence, they were replaced with black slaves.

This was the practice of the Spanish across the Americans, until the Pope of the Catholic Church decreed that aboriginals of the Americas have "souls," and therefore while could be enslaved and subjugated, they could not be slaughtered and indescriminately killed literally as livestock and animals.

The "most died of diseases" and "Native Americans did attrocities" claims just don't work. If the actual practices of the American military are explored, it was common practice to attack villages that had never fought white people and literally shoot and bayonette every man, woman and child. This was even done to villages who had treaties with the US government. Typical military tactics in the West were to suprise attack a village while the young men were out hunting, and then use the women, children and old people as human shielded, abusing them at will.

Offering a truce to have peace talks - and then capturing and killing the chief and those coming also was ordinary practice, since most Native Americans tended not to lie and believe promises. The Spanish tended to go beyond this and invite Native American chief's families to peaceful dinners, and then horrifically gang rape and torture their wives, mothers and daughters in front of them, to then hold them hostage while sending the men back to their people with the demand that they submit or their women will continue to be tortured - this all beginning with promising peace talk.

If all of a village were not killed, all men of fighting age were. This left the women defenseless, so "reservations" became rape centers as recruitment for people to join the military, which paid next to nothing. This also was a source of "wives" for settlers, when "wife" really meant "female slave and involuntary sex worker."

The reason millions and millions of Americans say they have a Native American grandmother or great grandmother is because of the systematic rape of Native American females. 99% of the time when a white person says they have some Native American past ancestry it is maternal, not paternal, due to mass rape of Native American females for centuries.

Actually, a very large number of Jews in Nazi death camps also technically died of disease. That is not a mitigating factor in the condemnation of the holocaust. The holocaust against the Jews by Nazi Germany doesn't hold a candle to the holocaust against Native Americans.

Columbus day is historically false and it the beginning of the greatest mass extermination and even extinction of humans in known world history by a factor of 100+. It should be eliminated and possibly replaced with the day white people landed at Plymouth rock or such. They did not instantly enslave, rape and murder ever native American they came across.

 

This is consistent with nearly all of human history until the last century in the West. People married when they reached puberty.

 

Well they didn't marry until after my dad graduated college. They took a hiatus for a couple of years and hit back together. It's a cool story.

 

Yeah, Milk was a bit of a dirty old man. Nonetheless, a 16 year old is capable of informed consent. Milk wasn't a pedophile or a rapist, just a bit skeevy at times. This doesn't overshadow his accomplishments any more than MLK's extramarital affairs overshadow his.

- - - Updated - - -

That's literally what I'm saying. That number comes from the fraud Robert Conquest and all documents he penned.

Part of that number is obtained by erroneously blaming the USSR's government for the famine caused by natural factors and exacerbated by the Kulaks intentionally destroying their own crops and livestock. The other part is gained by labelling every person given the death penalty and every person who died of natural causes while imprisoned in the USSR as being murdered for political reasons.

Soviet Archives have revealed that the purges resulted in only 800,000 arrests, 100,000 of which resulted in a commuted sentence. The vast majority of those people were imprisoned for rape and other violent crimes, though some were nazi collaborators.

The USSR's government certainly did some shady things and was somewhat repressive, but the worst really wasn't worse than the US government of the same time and was much more progressive and humane in many ways.

Why would I do that? It isn't going to fix anything.

And I take it from this comment that you support the genocide of the Native Americans.

 

interesting

what were his "accomplishments" ?

Was it sex with a 16 year old boy?

was it being elected to some small time local position?

I'm not sure that I follow you about his "accomplishments"

Maybe we should have national days for every single town manager or mayor as they hold higher offices than Milk ever did.

Or, is the gay sex what is being celebrated?

 

Milk is significant because he was the first openly gay man to hold public office.