Assassinated in 1978 by a fellow politician, Harvey Milk died in San Francisco, after achieving prominence as the first openly gay politician in the United States. Milk was two years into serving his first term on the city's legislative body, the Board of Supervisors. Having attracted national attention, his brief political career had symbolic significance for the nation's gay community. Then, in November, fellow board member Daniel White killed Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone inside City Hall. White's unusual trial defense--he blamed junk food for making him kill--reduced his conviction to manslaughter, and a light sentence produced outrage and rioting.
Born on May 22, 1930, in Woodmere, New York, Milk was the son of a retail-clothing family. Enlisting in the Navy, he served in the Korean War and later became an investment banker in Manhattan. A conservative in the 1960s, he campaigned for the Republican politician Barry Goldwater. Milk's life changed dramatically in the early 1970s when he moved to San Francisco where he opened a camera shop in the gay Castro Street commercial district. A liberal in 1973, he boldly ran for the city board at a time when the nation largely frowned upon gay people and no national gay rights political groups existed. On his third bid in 1976, he was elected.
Milk's political career had symbolic and practical weight. For gays, the election seemed to promise legitimization of their issues and the emergence of political power. Outspoken and eager for media attention, Milk delivered in this area. Pragmatically, he also helped to pass the city's first gay civil rights ordinance. He was regarded as a populist leader, responsive to gay and straight issues alike.
Although frequently the target of death threats, Milk hardly expected to be in danger from a fellow politician on the board. In late 1978, White, a conservative ex-cop who had resigned from the board over a salary dispute, sought to be reinstated. Mayor Moscone refused to reseat him. The mayor's motive was political: he wanted a liberal majority on the board. On November 27, 1978, an incensed White sneaked into City Hall and shot Moscone twice in the head. Finding Milk, he killed him this way, too. Hours later, he turned himself in to police.
At trial, however, White's attorneys blamed the killings on their client's appetite for Hostess Twinkies. This assertion, which entered legal history as the "Twinkie Defense," cited junk food's chemical effect for exacerbating a depressed person's emotional and mental instability. While observers had expected murder convictions, the jury only convicted White of the much lesser crime of manslaughter, and he got five years in prison with parole. In response, furious gay San Franciscans rioted, and battles with police left more than 160 people hospitalized.
San Francisco memorialized Milk in numerous ways, including naming a branch of the Public Library after him. Paroled in 1985, White committed suicide. Rejected ultimately by the courts, the Twinkie Defense was subsequently not a viable criminal defense.
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