No on Propositions 6 and 7: Historicizing Multi-issue Challenges to Anti-Lesbian and Gay Propositions

In Gus Van Sant’s 2008 film Milk, famed gay politician Harvey Milk is shown leading the fight against California’s Briggs Initiative, which sought to ban lesbian and gay schoolteachers.  Many others – particularly lesbian organizations – were central in defeating Briggs, yet their relationship to the election was more vexed.  For people such as Meg Barnett of Lesbians Against Police Violence (LAPV), 1978 resulted not only in the defeat of Briggs (Proposition 6), but also the expansion of California’s death penalty (Proposition 7).  Realizing that lesbian and gay empowerment might develop alongside currents of disenfranchisement, LAPV developed multi-issue activist agendas.  This paper examines activism to defeat Propositions 6 and 7 and related work by LAPV, as well as Dykes Against Racism Everywhere (DARE) in New York.  Finally, it asks what this story can tell us about the unsuccessful fight to defeat Proposition 8 in 2008.