Got Milk?

It was only a matter of time before the new commemorative stamp from the U.S. Postal Service honoring gay rights activist and openly gay San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk, who was assassinated in 1978 along with San Francisco mayor George Moscone, would be attacked by social reactionaries.  The American Family Association slammed the Postal Service for honoring "a very disreputable man" and  for showing hypocrisy for refusing to honor people whose principal achievements have been religious in nature while seeking to honor "positive contributions" to American life . . . as opposed to, according to their way of thinking, negative contributions like fighting for the rights of homosexuals to be as they are.  

Speaking of thinking, the American Family Association ought to play to their strengths. Thinking ain't one of 'em!

Gosh.  As a stamp collector, I haven't seen this much fuss over a stamp before - not the Malcolm X stamp of 1999, not even, yes, the Martin Luther stamp of 1983 (which the Postal Service said was meant to commemorate Luther's contributions to press freedom and religious freedom, but Catholics weren't buying it).  I suppose it won't be long before Darrell Issa starts investigating the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee for approving this stamp as part of his overall attempts to destroy the Postal Service.

Anyway, the American Family Association is urging conservative Christians who receive mail with the Harvey Milk stamp to return it to the sender in protest.  Conservative Christians have nothing to worry about, really.  Most people don't use commemoratives; they use regular stamps with flags on them. As for me, when I run out of the stamps honoring movie directors (how un-American!  We Yanks idolize the people who star in movies, not the people who make them!  That is so French!) that I use on my mail, I'm buying some Harvey Milk stamps (one of which will be for my collection) and use them on my mail.  What do you think of that?

I only hope a Christian payment processor at the credit card company I send a payment to doesn't send back to me a payment with a Harvey Milk stamp, because that could have an impact on my credit rating.  Ha ha, no it won't, because I always pay early.  If I get it back, there'll still be plenty of time to re-send it.