SFO’s Terminal 1 tribute to Harvey Milk is imperfect — but still invaluable – SF Gate

But even in this temporary form, the exhibit is towering, unabashed in its queerness and perhaps the first time this writer has ever seen two men locked in embrace on such a large scale at an airport.

On display are larger-than-life photos of Milk: spooning lover Scott Smith, wearing long locks in Manhattan, in his Navy uniform, at political rallies around San Francisco. The images represent a full portrait of Milk’s life not just as the city’s most famous LGBTQ political leader but as a gay man who died too soon. 

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If airport tunnel vision were to kick in, you could completely miss that one of San Francisco’s most notable figures was standing right next to you. You could forget that the terminal was a tribute to Milk at all, in effect turning what should have been a memorial into black-and-white wallpaper.

For most travelers flying in and out of San Francisco, this homage to Milk likely warrants little more than a cursory glance on the walk through to baggage claim. It’s a throughway with a nice view — a tribute to one of San Francisco’s most vital figures that feels like exiting via the gift shop. 

And on a recent August day at the airport, most fliers did just pass by without giving the Milk tribute a glance. Many, understandably, were hustling to catch a flight or get home or to retrieve their luggage.

Sure, it’s a significant step to name a terminal after the legendary city supervisor and LGBT icon Harvey Milk, who was assassinated in 1978 at the age of 48 along with then-Mayor George Moscone by the ousted supervisor Dan White. SFO is the first airport in the world to celebrate a LGBT leader in this way.

The distinction, initially proposed in 2013 by then-Supervisor David Campos, was intended to name the entire airport — not just the terminal — after Milk. If Campos had been successful, Milk would have joined a pantheon of presidents, musicians and fellow civil rights activists who have had that honor.

But as current San Francisco Supervisor Hilary Ronen put it in a Board of Supervisors meeting in 2017, back when she was an aide for Campos, what should have been a cut-and-dry honor was hampered by bureaucracy.

“Us aides thought it would sail through with little fanfare,” she said, according to a CNN report. “That didn’t quite work out.”

Even the lesser honor of the terminal dedication was, evidently, a struggle. “What [Harvey Milk’s family] have seen from the moment I proposed naming of the airport for Harvey up to this point is a real fight to keep Harvey Milk’s name out of the airport,” Campos told the Bay Area Reporter at the time.

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Milk was among the most venerated LGBT rights visionaries in the country. Yet his honor seemed watered downed. 

But for the few that paused and took in the tribute, it seemed illuminating, even emotional.

When I first walked into the Harvey Milk area of Terminal 1, David Beach and his teenage daughter were ambling through. Her flight to Oklahoma was soon to depart, and they would soon split ways.

Beach, a Modesto resident, had a passing familiarity of the late San Francisco supervisor. He had seen “Milk,” the 2008 Sean Penn-fronted biopic that put Milk’s story before a mainstream national, and international, audience. But he was taking the stroll less for himself than for his daughter.

“My daughter just recently came out as lesbian,” Beach said. “So, you know, I’m just trying to understand things more and get informed about things and San Francisco, I guess, is a good place to do it.”

I didn’t anticipate that Beach — a straight man taking the time to support his child — would be the first person I spoke to all day. 

“I want my daughter to be happy, you know,” he said, “support her in any way I can.

“It’s just that her grandparents aren’t really cool with that.”

When she doesn’t live in Modesto, with her dad, his daughter lives in a part of Oklahoma that Beach described as the “Bible belt.”

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An equally compelling, but also more complicated, story unfolded later that day, when I spoke to a man flying leaving San Francisco for Long Beach. A self-identified recent convert to Christianity who considered homosexuality a sin, David King knew little about Milk and was saddened to hear about his killing.

And, as a gay man, I was put off by his initial comments. But he explained.

“I believe in God, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And I do think that gay, being gay is an open sin, but it’s also just human nature is sinful.”

We spent the next few minutes discussing faith, homophobia, sin, politics.

I didn’t agree with all of his opinions, but to have that depth of conversation with a stranger, inspired by Harvey Milk’s memory, felt powerful — intense even.

And, if every day, a handful of the hundreds if not thousands of fliers that pass through this terminal — the only airport throughway in the world named for an LGBTQ leader — have that kind of tough but necessary conversation, maybe the tribute to Milk does feel like a small triumph.