I’m not someone who gets offended easily—not like the perpetually outraged left. But I’ll be honest: I was offended when Barack Obama, in his first year as president, posthumously awarded Harvey Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He showered him with praise and followed up the accolades with a commemorative postage stamp, and later the U.S. Navy named a ship after Milk. Thankfully, that ship won’t carry his name much longer—Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is putting an end to that disgrace.
I wrote an editorial cartoon this week, published at Townhall and nationally syndicated through my syndicate, about this very issue.
— Margolis & Cox (@MargolisandCox) June 6, 2025
In schools and media, he is often portrayed as a martyr whose fight for equality is beyond reproach. But there’s another side of Milk’s legacy, one conveniently ignored by those who wish to uphold him as a hero without blemish: his troubling relationships with underage boys.
Consider Milk’s well-documented relationship with Jack Galen McKinley, who was just 16 when he began a relationship with the 33-year-old Milk. This wasn’t a brief encounter or a misunderstood friendship—Milk openly discussed these relationships, offering no apology or remorse for behavior we rightly condemn in any other context. And yet, many educators and activists insist that highlighting this aspect of Milk’s life is unfair or even homophobic.
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The purpose of this cartoon, of course, was to point this out, and remind the public that despite his reputation as a civil rights icon, Milk was a predator. I think it’s important to keep reminding people of this fact.
Naturally, the cartoon drew the usual outrage. While the readers of Townhall appreciated it, a newspaper editor fired off a complaint to my syndicate, calling it “unsubstantiated gay bashing” and demanding to know, “Why do these bigoted slanderers continue to have a forum?”
I laughed when I saw the forwarded email.
But the truth is, this isn’t funny. I couldn’t care less about the hate mail—it comes with the territory. What actually bothers me is the way Harvey Milk’s apologists continue to whitewash his history. They either ignore or outright deny the well-documented fact that Milk had sexual relationships with underage boys—relationships that should be universally condemned as predatory. Well, almost universally—unless, of course, you’re in the LGBTQ activist class, where everything is permissible.
What’s even more disturbing is how this revisionist history is now baked into our institutions. We’re not allowed to question the myth. The media won’t touch it. Schools won’t teach it. And if you do raise the issue, you’re branded a bigot. That’s the real scandal here. The left doesn’t just want to elevate Harvey Milk—they want to canonize him. And they’re willing to rewrite the past to do it. But the facts don’t lie, and the truth matters—no matter how loudly the mob howls.
That’s why I will never shy away from telling the truth about Harvey Milk. That’s why I thought the cartoon needed to be drawn and published. Because if we don’t speak up, the lies become the history. The truth may not matter to the left, but it matters to us—and it should matter to anyone who still believes in moral clarity. So if you’re tired of being gaslit, if you’re tired of watching predators turned into saints, then speak up. Push back. Don’t let the left rewrite history for their evil heroes.
