Opinion

Why Doesn’t Obama Condemn Boy Rapist Harvey Milk?

Patrick Howley Political Reporter
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President Barack Obama weighed in on the Bill Cosby sexual assault scandal Wednesday.

“I’ll say this. If you give a woman — or a man, for that matter — without his or her knowledge a drug, and then have sex with that person without consent, that’s rape. And I think this country, any civilized country, should have no tolerance for rape,” Obama said in a press conference when asked if Cosby’s Presidential Medal of Freedom, which he received in 2002 under President Bush.

“He has zero tolerance for rape,” Valerie Jarrett told journalist Mark Halperin.

Zero tolerance? Yeah, right.

Obama honored the late gay rights activist and statutory rapist Harvey Milk in 2009 with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which Milk’s nephew Stuart Milk accepted at the White House.

“Harvey Milk’s voice will forever echo in the hearts of all those who carry forward his timeless message,” Obama said in his official White House citation.

In 2013, Obama’s White House announced the honorific “Harvey Milk Champions of Change” program to recognize openly gay American elected officials.

Harvey Milk had sex with underage boys, as evidenced by his relationship with 16-year old Jack Galen McKinley, who ran away from home before meeting Milk and ended up killing himself.

“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,” Randy Shilts reported in his Milk biography “The Mayor of Castro Street.”

Having sex with a 16-year old is statutory rape. The age of consent in California is eighteen. California’s current statutory rape law was instituted in 1970.

Milk also urged teenager Gerard Dols to run away from home in Minnesota to live in San Francisco, giving him help on how to do so in a letter that he sent Dols. Dols, who did not end up running away to Milk’s city, made the revelation in a 2008 interview, as conservative writer Matt Barber noted.

“Don’t tell your parents,” Milk told Dols.

Will Obama make a statement suggesting that Milk’s Medal of Freedom be revoked? Will the White House discontinue its “Harvey Milk Champions of Change” program?

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