Hope Speech

“My name is Harvey Milk and I’m here to recruit you.”

Milk starts his speech with a divisive quip, playing on the idea promoted by homophobic groups that gay people converted straight people to their way of life. With this rhetorical move, he introduces himself as gay and mocks the stereotype he and his audience would have personally experienced. This joke opens the floor for the centerpiece of Milk’s discussion: combatting stereotypes with openness.

“Unless you have dialogue, unless you open the walls of dialogue, you can never reach to change people’s opinion. In those two weeks, more good and bad, but more about the word homosexual and gay was written than probably in the history of mankind.”

Awareness is necessary to change people’s perspective. If gay people are not acknowledged as a visible, human presence and force, the social perspective on them will not change. Milk uses hyperbole at the end of the quote to remind his audience that they occupy a unique historic moment capable of immense social change. Even if there are setbacks in the movement or negative rhetoric, Milk encourages his audience to maintain hope that the perspective will shift to their benefit if they refuse to silence themselves.

“What we must do is make sure that 1978 continues the movement that is really happening that the media don’t want you to know about. That is the movement to the left.”

This version of the speech was delivered in June 1978, so Milk’s goal with this line is to sustain his audience’s fervor for promoting gay rights and visibility.