Statement from California Family Council on HR 93 and the moral inconsistency at the heart of Sacramento
In March of this year, the California legislature did something remarkable. After the New York Times published a years-long investigation documenting that United Farm Workers co-founder Cesar Chavez sexually abused two underage girls, Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas, daughters of UFW organizers, in the 1970s, lawmakers acted within days. The Senate passed AB 2156 by a unanimous 37-0 vote with an urgency clause, the Assembly approved it earlier that same week, and Governor Newsom signed it before the March 31 holiday. Cesar Chavez Day became Farmworkers Day.
The legislature was right to act. California Family Council is grateful to see Cesar Chavez facing accountability for decades-old allegations of abuse. The young women he harmed deserved the truth, and Californians deserve a state that does not name holidays after men who sexually abused minors.
What followed was just as remarkable. In San Fernando, the city council held a special meeting and voted to remove Chávez’s statue, which came down immediately afterward. Mayor Joel Fajardo said the urgency was to “let our children know that we took this seriously.” Fresno State covered its Chávez statue with black tarp and then plywood before removing it. The city of Fresno voted unanimously to begin reversing its 2023 decision to rename a major corridor after Chávez. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass renamed the city’s César Chávez Day holiday “Farm Workers Day” and announced a review of city landmarks bearing his name, while a City Council motion began a formal review of city-owned assets. A bronze bust came down in Denver. A statue was covered and then removed in Milwaukee. Another was dismantled at the Dallas Farmers Market. The Associated Press identified more than 130 locations or objects in at least 19 states named after Chávez, and public officials across the country continue to reassess those honors.
Our state should not be declaring holidays in honor of men who sexually abused minors. One standard. Applied honestly. To everyone.
Democrats and Republicans renounced him together. Statues fell. Streets were renamed. Schools reconsidered. The principle was simple and bipartisan: a man who sexually abused minors should not be publicly honored, no matter how celebrated his other accomplishments.
That is the standard California has just established. We agree with it.
Now apply it to Harvey Milk.
Harvey Milk is one of several public figures with a California state-designated school observance, and state law specifically sets aside May 22 as Harvey Milk Day, encouraging public schools and educational institutions to conduct commemorative exercises about his life and accomplishments. HR 93, currently before the Assembly, would once again commemorate May 22 as Harvey Milk Day.
The facts about Milk and minors are not new, and they are not contested by hostile sources. They come from Randy Shilts, an openly gay journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle and Milk’s most sympathetic biographer. In The Mayor of Castro Street, Shilts devotes an entire chapter to Milk’s sexual relationship with Jack Galen McKinley, an emotionally troubled 16-year-old boy, when Milk was 33. The relationship is on the record. It has been on the record for more than forty years. It is in libraries across California.
If the McKinley relationship happened today, it would be statutory rape. The age gap and the power dynamic would end a public career before sundown. By the standard California applied to Cesar Chavez last March, Harvey Milk Day cannot survive.
So we ask the Assembly a simple question. Why does the same evidence produce opposite results? Why did allegations against Chavez prompt an emergency Assembly vote, a 37-0 Senate vote, and the personal signature of the governor within a single week, while documented evidence about Milk, in print since 1982, produces an annual resolution of praise?
There are only two possible answers. The first is that California has one standard for men whose politics the legislature dislikes and a different standard for men whose politics it celebrates. The second is that some sexual abuse of minors is tolerated while others are not, depending on the identity of the abuser. Neither answer is defensible. Both should embarrass every legislator who voted to rename Cesar Chavez Day.
The Chavez decision was the right one. It cost the legislature nothing in principle and earned it credit for moral clarity. The Milk decision is the test of whether that clarity was real.
California Family Council urges every member of the Assembly to vote NO on HR 93. We are grateful to see Cesar Chavez facing accountability for decades-old allegations of abuse. We strongly urge all legislators to apply the same rigorous standard to Harvey Milk. Our state should not be declaring holidays in honor of men who sexually abused minors.
One standard. Applied honestly. To everyone.
Contact your Assembly member and tell them to vote no on HR 93.
