Leading the Gay Pride Parade. A.P. photo. Front photo by Dan Nicoletta

A belated heartfelt happy birthday to Harvey Milk, killed in 1978 for daring to come out of the closet, be who he was and insist on his rights, who would have turned 89 on Wednesday. To commemorate this year's Harvey Milk Day, established in 2010 by his nephew Stuart Milk and the Harvey Milk Foundation, the California Senate unanimously passed a resolution honoring "his critical role in creating the modern LGBT movement" and a legacy that "left an indelible mark on the history of our nation." Born May 22, 1930, Milk was a middle-class Jewish kid from New York who played football, joined the Navy, worked on Wall Street and for Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign before finding himself a new American Dream - reinvention.

In 1977, he became the first openly gay elected official in California - and one of the first in the country - when he won a spot on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. At the still-onerous time, Anita Bryant was vowing to "Save Our Children" and John Briggs was pushing a ballot to ban gay and lesbian teachers, a measure Milk helped defeat by tirelessly debating Briggs around the state. "If I turned around every time I was called a faggot," he once said, "I'd be walking backwards, and I don't want to go backwards." In these similarly dark times, his life-giving message resonates more than ever: "You stand up and fight."