The Mayor of Castro Street (21 page)

Bill Sipple hadn't planned to spend the afternoon in front of the St. Francis Hotel when he went to take his afternoon stroll on September 22, 1975. He was surprised to see a crowd of several thousand at the St. Francis and decided to stick around to see the President when he left the luncheon of the World Affairs Council. Since he was living off his SSI disability payments, he didn't have much else to do anyway. Sipple was no longer the handsome kid who looked like the quarterback of Hometown High's football team, the way he looked a decade ago when Joe Campbell so passionately loved him. He had spread out to 224 pounds and looked far older than his thirty-three years. He'd kept his Midwestern conservatism, edging to the front of the crowd to get away from the “damned demonstrators” who were protesting Ford's visit. Sipple took little notice of the gray-haired woman in the blue raincoat next to him.

The crowd started applauding when the President emerged from the hotel. The flash of a chrome-plated revolver caught Sipple's eye. The woman in the blue raincoat was aiming at the President. Sipple lunged. The gun went off as he wrestled the woman to the street. Ford ducked momentarily and then was shoved into the waiting limousine. The bullet had missed him by only a few feet; Billy Sipple had saved the President's life.

The police grabbed the woman and carried her battering ram style into the hotel. Authorities questioned Sipple for three hours. He was so nervous he could barely light his cigarette. He begged the police and Secret Service not to release his name. He didn't want anybody to know who he was or where he lived. He just wanted to be left alone. The officers were incredulous. The guy was a certifiable hero and he wanted to keep it a secret.

“How did you guys get here, anyway?” Sipple asked reporters who appeared at his door a few hours later. Because of the recent capture of Patty Hearst, the national media already were crawling over San Francisco. Coming just three weeks after “Squeaky” Fromme's attempt on Ford's life in Sacramento, the Sara Jane Moore assassination attempt was a major story. Sipple, however, insisted he wanted to avoid the limelight. He had done what anybody would have done. The papers carried a story of the humble hero, the disabled ex-Marine who, by accident, had his moment in history.

*   *   *

“Harvey, whether he wants to come out is
his
decision,” pleaded Frank Robinson. Harvey wanted to leak an item to the press saying Sipple was gay. Robinson was amazed that Milk would take such an important decision in his own hands.

“It's too good an opportunity,” Harvey persisted. “For once we can show that gays do heroic things. That guy saved the President's life. It shows that we do good things, not just all that ca-ca about molesting children and hanging out in bathrooms.”

“Harvey, it's still not right. It's his life we're talking about,” Frank argued. “That decision should be up to him.”

Two days later, the item appeared in Herb Caen's
Chronicle
gossip column:

One of the heroes of the day, Oliver “Bill” Sipple, the ex-Marine who grabbed Sara Jane Moore's arm just as her gun was fired and thereby may have saved the President's life, was the center of midnight attention at the Red Lantern, a Golden Gate Ave. bar he favors. The Rev. Ray Broshears, head of the Helping Hands center and Gay Politico Harvey Milk, who claim to be among Sipple's close friends, describe themselves as “proud—maybe this will help break the stereotype.” Sipple is among the workers in Milk's campaign for supe.

The story made the front pages of newspapers across the country. The
Chicago Sun-Times
headlined Sipple as a “Homosexual Hero” while the
Denver Post
labeled Sipple a “Gay Vet.” Most papers avoided saying Sipple was gay, since the acknowledgment did not come from Sipple himself. Instead, they referred to later talk of Sipple's activities in a gay social organization and Milk's 1975 campaign.

A drained and angry Sipple faced reporters days later. He had just gotten off the phone with his mother, a staunch Baptist. “I want you to know that my mother told me today that she can't walk out her front door, or even go to church, because of the pressures she feels because of the press stories concerning my sexual orientation,” said Sipple. “My sexual orientation has nothing to do with saving the President's life.”

Sipple's mom went into seclusion and would not talk to her son. Sipple went into despair and blamed the newspapers.

Sipple's mom wasn't the only curiosity, Milk soon discovered. President Ford had been expected to publicly thank Sipple. Ford thanked the Secret Service who had pushed him into the limousine after the bullet rang out, but once stories surfaced about Sipple's gay connections, Ford would say nothing to Sipple. Just months before, Ford had actually sent a note of apology to a carload of kids who had rammed his car; now, he refused to thank the guy who had probably kept his skull from getting blown apart by an assassin's bullet because it looked like he might be gay. The board of supervisors similarly did not pass a resolution honoring Sipple, even though such measures were routinely doled out for the slightest achievement. Harvey shot off an angry telegram to Ford and lectured reporters that the lack of gratitude was an even better story than the thwarted murder attempt. Harvey talked to his labor friend Stan Smith and Smith organized a luncheon at which Sipple was awarded a plaque on behalf of the Building and Construction Trades Council. Weeks later, a brief note of thanks came from the White House. Sipple autographed a copy of it: “To Harvey, a good friend. Oliver W. Sipple.”

*   *   *

Bill ran into Joe Campbell after the assassination attempt. Joe barely recognized the man he had once tried to commit suicide over. Bill showed Joe his room full of plaques and honorary certificates. Joe still wasn't sure, however, if Bill really remembered exactly who Joe was.

*   *   *

Sipple later sued the
Chronicle, Post,
and
Sun-Times
for invasion of privacy. A San Francisco Superior Court judge threw the case out with a summary judgment, citing obvious First Amendment grounds. Sipple was represented in court by John Wahl, personal attorney of the man who leaked the news in the first place, Harvey Milk.

*   *   *

Sipple's attempt at legal remedy bucked the national trend of the gay movement in the mid-seventies. Homosexuals were still something of a curiosity to the public, but the taboo that had long kept a lid of media silence on the subject was lifting. Newspapers were full of stories about improbable people who turned out to be gay. Elaine Noble, an acknowledged lesbian, started the parade when she was elected to the Massachusetts House of Represnetatives in 1974. Minnesota State Senator Allan Spear was so inspired by Noble's example that he sat down with a
Minneapolis Star
reporter a few weeks later and told her that he was gay too. The story headlined the next day's paper. The series of coming outs hit high gear nationally after Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich went up to his commanding officer in March 1975.

“I have a letter I want you to read,” Matlovich said. “I think you'd better sit down.”

“I'll stand.”

“I think you'd better sit down.”

“I'll stand,” the captain maintained, taking the letter. He couldn't believe what he read. Matlovich, a decorated military man, stated he was a homosexual; he was inviting a legal challenge to the regulations forbidding gays from serving in all branches of the military. The captain sat down.

“What does this mean?”

“It means
Brown
vs.
the Board of Education,
” Matlovich said.

The captain tried to give the letter back to Matlovich. “A similar letter is being delivered to the Secretary of the Air Force,” the thirty-two-year-old sergeant said. “So I think you'd better give it to the colonel.” A letter wasn't really being delivered in Washington, but Matlovich thought that comment would ensure delivery. By August, Matlovich's face landed on the cover of
Time
magazine over the headline: “The Gay Drive for Acceptance.” A television network soon began filming a docu-drama on the case.

Former Green Bay Packer linebacker Dave Kopay startled the sports world four months later when he openly discussed his homosexuality with the
Washington Star
for their series on homosexuality in sports. Kopay was the first professional athlete to come out publicly; his memoirs hit
The New York Times
best-seller list. Other celebrities followed the ritual of sexual confessionals. Pop super star Elton John said he would “only draw the line at goats.” Even Tab Hunter told
Washington Post
reporter Sally Quinn about living with his male “friend and secretary.”

The revelations had little immediate political impact, but they underscored the extent to which the social pressures for staying in the closet had crumbled during the early 1970s. After all, disclosing homosexuality used to mean disgrace, despair, and, to some, even suicide. Now it meant book contracts, documentaries, the TV talk show circuit, and newsmagazine cover photos. The risks involved with coming out were drastically decreasing. Even more significantly, youngsters who had never even heard the term homosexuality were now seeing a diverse range of public figures talking freely about being gay on television news shows and front pages.

The new openness touched all walks of American life. The ruling by the American Psychiatric Association that homosexuality no longer represented a disease shattered the old psychiatric justification for summarily banning gays from government jobs so, in July 1975 the United States Civil Service Commission struck down their sweeping policy of refusing gays any civil service job in the country. The same year, ten cities and three counties enacted gay civil rights ordinances. Congress took up the federal gay rights bill for the second time in gays' ongoing efforts to amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation.” The measure mustered twenty-three co-sponsors; gay lobbyists confidently predicted that by the 1981 session, a comprehensive national gay rights bill would move to the President's desk.

The optimism seemed well founded to the gay moderates. They congratulated themselves on the gentlemanly tactics that were winning so much more success than the obnoxious outbursts of scruffy gay liberationists who kept demanding that
everybody
should come out of the closet. The optimism came in part because no organized opposition to the gay rights drive had yet emerged. Some individual opponents certainly existed, often because politicians were still skittish about discussing a topic polite people had previously kept out of decent conversation. But the gay rights drive had more the markings of a chic social cause than a burning controversy. The lack of organized opposition left the gay reformers in the dangerous situation of believing their own propaganda—that the success of the gay rights movement was both imminent and inevitable. It was only a matter of waiting patiently until our liberal friends came along; they could not be rushed.

Harvey Milk and the handful of activists who still clung to the gay liberationist credo held more apocalyptic visions of the future. Milk thought the gay reformers were like so many southern ladies from a Tennessee Williams play, always depending on the kindness of heterosexuals. In a pinch, Milk thought, the liberals would always act solely to save themselves; they would always urge gays to wait and be patient; the time would
never
be right. The answer, Milk thought, lay in seizing power for gays. Power, not polite lobbying, would win the gay cause. Every day of waiting would only increase the suffering wrought by a society that, Milk believed, still fundamentally hated homosexuals and still prodded gays to hate themselves.

*   *   *

Jim Bruton, on one of his visits from Anchorage, and Harvey were talking in the back of Castro Camera one night after the store had closed when the phone rang. As soon as Harvey heard the voice, he rolled his eyes impatiently at Jim.

“It's Jack McKinley,” he said.

He paused and listened further.

“He says he's going to kill himself.” Jim knew it wasn't the first time Jack had called San Francisco with such a threat. Once he had even claimed to have cancer of the anus, probably figuring that disfigurement of that part of his anatomy would upset Harvey's aesthetic sense.

“Tell him not to make a mess,” Jim suggested.

“Jim said not to make a mess,” Harvey deadpanned.

Jack hung up.

nine

Harvey Milk vs. The Machine

We feel that San Francisco is alive and reaching out for world conquest, a city reincarnated and ambitious for the future.

—From review of the newly dedicated San Francisco City Hall,
The Architect,
October 1916

 

The phoenix rising from the flames.

The image fluttered gracefully, in the center of the golden-bordered San Francisco flag, above the classical pillared portico of San Francisco City Hall.

Harvey realized again how much he loved San Francisco's grand City Hall as he arrived at its wide granite steps that brisk January morning in 1976. With a rotunda higher than the nation's capitol, flanked by wide colonnades of Doric columns, the grandiose edifice was meant to symbolize San Francisco's resurrection after the massive earthquake and fire of 1906. The French Renaissance structure was considered one of America's most majestic public buildings when it was dedicated in 1916, the centerpiece of a stunning network of ornate Beaux Artes structures that surrounded the Civic Center plaza.

Harvey glanced at the Grecian friezes on the pediment over the entrance and walked through the oversized doors, with their golden grilles, through the lobby and the sun-bathed expanse of marble beneath the massive rotunda, ringed by Corinthian columns and lighted from the clerestory under the copper dome. Harvey always paused here, looking at the engraved medallions high above him depicting Liberty, Equality, Learning, and Strength. A giant terraced staircase of California marble lapped gently into the center of the magnificent hall. Harvey never took an elevator when he came to the mayor's office, always choosing to walk up this grand staircase, slowly making his entrance.