The Mayor Of Castro Street Sparknotes

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Book Review on The Mayor of Castro Street


The Mayor of Castro Street is an inspiring yet emotional and tragic story that takes a look at Harvey Milk’s life and the way it influenced the Gay Liberation Movement. The book goes into detail about Harvey as a person and how that affected his political campaign. In this review I’ll be going over what the book was about, the fear gay people felt and how unfair things were for people in the LGBT community in the 1970’s.


The Mayor of Castro Street takes place in the 1970’s and focuses on the life of a man named Harvey Milk. The book starts out in Harvey’s early childhood. From a young age, Harvey knew about his sexuality but kept it a secret. As Harvey got older he started to date a few guys, …show more content…

““Anger had no place among homosexuals of those years, only fear. Not only fear of the police but fear of himself”(Shilts, 4). Being gay was such a bad thing back then that even gay people feared themselves. I think a lot of people ask the question “well how come no one ever just spoke up and fought back?” In reality, it’s not that simple. People of the minority carried immense fear and felt such a burden about it because there’s nothing they can do it “fix” it. I also think it’s important to remember that Harvey always kind of knew he was going to be killed because of what he believed in. “This is Harvey Milk… This is to be played only after the event of my death by assassination… I fully realize that a person who stands for what I stand for, an activist, a gay activist, becomes the target or potential target for a person who is insecure, terrified, afraid or very disturbed with themselves”(275). This is just a pattern in history. You can look at almost any person who fought for justice in a social movement and a lot of them end up dead. If not dead, almost all have had multiple death threats thrown their way. Harvey knew this fact and he knew that it was a possibility. It goes to show how scary standing up for what you believe in is and why it’s not as easy just to fight …show more content…

Anita Bryant was an Anti-Gay Activist with no past political history yet, she was still a huge reason a lot of people in the 70’s were anti-gay. “Bryant’s background… hardly gave her credentials as an authority on homosexuality...Unfortunately, gay activists had little knowledge about how the media works. Bryant was pretty… if baited too far, she did marvelously telegenic things… that was all she needed. As far as the media… was concerned, she was an authority on homosexuality”(156). Even though she had little knowledge about what gay people were actually like and gave out untrue statistics multiple times, because she was pretty and famous, it basically gave her a right to talk about subjects she was uneducated on. It just shows how unfair gay people had it because they were in the minority. It also again, shows the demonization of the LGBT

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