Rum, buggery and the lash
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All aboard HMS Raging Queen
Said Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro during Saturday’s ceremony. “That’s the kind of naval leader that we need.”
The politician had a proclivity for male minors, who included 16-year-old Jack Galen McKinley. Milk’s biographer Randy Shilts wrote about the predator’s runaway lover McKinley in his biography, “The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk.”
“Sixteen-year-old McKinley was looking for some kind of father figure. … At 33, Milk was launching a new life, though he could hardly have imagined the unlikely direction toward which his new lover would pull him,” Shilts wrote.
According to his biographer, Milk would prime troubled, underage boys and young men with booze and drugs, then coerce them into sexual acts. One of his young boyfriends, 25-year-old Jack Lira, was just another “young waif with substance-abuse problems” for Milk to prey on, according to Shilts. The young man hanged himself from Milk’s back porch at the politician’s Henry Street residence in 1978.
Milk’s questionable morals manifested in his political career as well. Milk’s early campaign was funded in part by Jim Jones, infamous cult leader of the Peoples Temple and orchestrator of the mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana on November 18, 1978. Milk openly praised the cult, spoke at the Temple on numerous occasions, and wrote Jones personally.
“Rev. Jim, it may take me many a day to come back down from the high that I reach today. I found something dear today,” Milk wrote to Jones after he hosted a rally at the Temple. “I found a sense of being that makes up for all the hours and energy placed in a fight. I found what you wanted me to find. I shall be back. For I can never leave.”
Jones was also a known sexual molester and abused his male followers often. You’d think celebrated gay rights activist Milk learned his lesson after 900 of Jones’s followers were brutally massacred in Guyana, but he didn’t. He doubled down on his support for the cult leader.
After the mass suicide, Milk called Jones’s commune “a great experiment that didn’t work. I don’t know, maybe it did.”
First Mate Spunk: Alright, please, everybody, please! Welcome aboard The Raging Queen! Now, of course, I can’t possibly introduce everybody, so you’re just going to have to wear your little name tags. And if that’s the worst thing you’ll wear on this voyage, you’re lucky. Now, before I introduce Captain Ned, there’s some quiche over here, some salad, and some banana bread in the bowl, and there should be a brie around, if someone hasn’t eaten it. And now, here is our own Captain Ned!
[ Captain Ned steps up ]
Captain Ned: Thank you, Mr. Spunk. Gentlemen, we have on board a young man whose name is Miles Cowperthwaite! And I have promised his guardian to teach him the man’s life at sea! To show him man’s ports, such as Key West and San Fransisco! I expect him to be treated manfully! Well, Miles, have you anything to say?
Miles Cowperthwaite: [ stsnds, cheerful ] Well.. I’m very grateful for this opportunity, Captain Ned! Up ’til now, my life has been the most degrading, pathetic, soul-destroying, humiliating, awful grovel.
[snip]
[ fight breaks out; Captain Ned intervenes ]
Captain Ned: Is this how men act on a man’s ship? Where is your manliness? Fighting on deck is a serious breach on my articles of strict discipline! I’m afraid the guilty party is in for a very severe punishment!
Sailor #1: Captain.. I did indeed take Mr. Spunk’s spot. I’m ready to accept my punishment..
First Mate Spunk: Captain! I threw the first blow. If anyone is to be punished, let it be me. I ask only that whatever you do, please don’t put me in a tight-fitting Lassie costume and make me eat from a monogrammed dog dish.
Sailor #2: [ entering ] Captain, I encouraged this fight – punish me! Make me wear nipple-pinching clothespins, sir!
