My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 409 - You Were Exactly Right

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

This week, Georgia tells Karen about the life, assassination and legacy of Harvey Milk. For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes.

This is exactly right. Hello! Oh, wow. Welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Heart Start. That's Karen Kilgarif. This is one of our special holiday episodes. Yeah. A story each, a nice donation, so we can take a couple minutes off to celebrate the holidays with our families. And yet still stay with you in your childhood bedroom while you work through some serious

shit. And guess what? We'll be doing the same. So, hey, we're with you. It's like we're together always. Always. So, hey, we have an announcement to make. We are no longer working with Wendry Amazon. Yes, and that, among other things, means no more early release episodes, which means everybody is listening together just like the good old days. I love that. So, exactly right has always been owned and operated by me and Karen. We're so proud of that. So thank you guys for sticking by us, we appreciate you. We really can't wait to see what's next for exactly, right? Also, thank you to our staff.

We have, I mean, we talk about them all the time, but the staff at exactly, right, the people that make this network go, I mean, we just couldn't be doing any of this without them. We have an amazing group of people that we work with and for and we're so proud of the work they do. And yeah, we just, we feel like the future is ours. Also, here's some more good news.

We are continuing our weekly holiday donation tradition. This week, we are donating to the ACLU, specifically for their work, for the rights for the LGBTQ community. The ACLU works to ensure that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people can live openly without discrimination and enjoy equal rights, personal autonomy, and freedom of expression and association. If you want more information about the work that the ACLU does for the LGBTQ community, you can go to ACLU.org

and to help them out with that work, we're gonna give $10,000. And if you have any extra this holiday season or afterwards to give, we'd love for you to give to. Yay! Hooray! Hooray! Gay rights!

That's right. Hey, speaking of, should I get right into my story? Oh my god, the fastest ever, yes. Because? And yes, I plan this. This is the story of Harvey Milk. Are you serious? How?

Have we... You're already tearing up. How have we not covered this? I mean, this is a hometown story of mine. There's a hometown for you, yeah. Such a big deal. And one of my favorite documentaries. Oh, I was literally just watching it.

It's amazing. It's called The Times of Harvey Milk. Yeah, it's timeless. And there's firefighters from San Francisco in this story too, right? So like, absolutely hits home. So please chime in. Hannah was like, how have we not done this story? I was like, how have we not in this story too, right? So like, absolutely hits home. So please chime in. Hannah was like, how have we not done this story?

I was like, how have we not done this story? How have we not done this story? Because it is legendary. He's a legend. The tragedy of this life being cut short and the other lives involved. Oh, I'll just let you get to it. The tragedy of this life being cut short

is on par if not more so to me than RFK, because the good that this person did and was going to continue to do, obviously, like in such a short amount of time, I mean, is nothing short of a superhero. Yeah. And if it wasn't for that documentary, like I feel like watching that documentary, I was downloaded with the, like I just wouldn't have known it in any other way, obviously, right? They never taught that in school. Right.

When I was growing, I mean, of course they didn't, it was so backwards. And I didn't understand how close we were to it at that time. It was like he threw up a full-blody block and turned sentiment within San Francisco, which is a very at the time, it was a very segregated and very kind of like the Irish are over here, the Chinese are in Chinatown.

And no one's thinking of anyone. None of the minorities in that neighborhood are getting rights at all, especially not in Castro and with gay people. Of course, yeah. You know, it's so crazy. I was going to say that I didn't learn about this story in school, which is a shame. I learned about this from a dead Kennedy's album,

a dead Kennedy song called, I Thought the Law and I won. It just gives you all this, you know, in this punk rock form information about this. And I was like, who's this Harvey Melk? Who's this guy? Like, what's this Twinkie defense, you know, and that's how we fucking learned about it is through punk rock. Like that's how shitty our fucking school system is is I had to learn about history through Jealousy Opera. And that's also how important punk rock was. And it, and I guess is, but like especially at that time,

really actually going, oh, I'm gonna say something that's actually gonna matter. Yeah, yeah, so very cool. Thank you, dead Kennedys. Good job. Who are from the Bay Area as well. So the main sources I used for this story are the documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk,

which is on Max, and a book called Harvey Milk, His Lives and Death by Lillian Faterman and the rest of the sources can be found in the show notes. So early life Harvey Melk is born in 1930 in Woodmeer, New York, which is a small town on Long Island, his grandparents owned a modest dry goods store that became Long Island's first department store, and were some of the founding members of the Woodmiers still thriving Jewish community. They helped to build its first synagogue, but their son, Harvey's father William, is the family rebel. William had gone off to fight in World War One and came back with a tattoo, which is like bad enough for any kid, but in Jewish culture, just very frowned upon. Isn't it, you can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery if you have a tattoo? That's right. So goodbye Jewish cemeteries to me. I mean, I don't know

how it works these days. You know, I'm sure they have to be lenient somewhat on those, like at least for non-conservative cemeteries. Please rabbis in the listening audience if you have any information about any updates or or not. We'd love to hear about it. And Georgia would love to talk to you about joining your congregation community. So the congregation it's congregation. Okay so it's 1918 the tattoo is a huge deal. Still William winds up working in a family store but he has a fraught relationship with Harvey's grandparents which also makes him a volatile father to Harvey and Harvey's brother Robert when they eventually come around. Harvey's mother is named Minerva, which bring it back. So good. Many. And everyone

calls her a mini. How cute is that? She's an early feminist and had been one of the very first women to enlist in the first women's branch of the Navy in World War One. Wow. So now you're starting to see where he gets his politics from. Yeah. Many is passionate about social justice and community service and passes his passion on to her younger son, Harvey, who is such a cutie in the documentary as a kid with his big ears and just like the skinny little, you know, Jewish kid.

It's very cute. As a child, Harvey spends all of his free time and pocket money seeing movies at Widmir's little theater, but one day he tells his brother that he loves going to the movies, not really because of the features or the shorts or the newsreels. He doesn't care about watching stuff, but because the owner of the theater holds a raffle for the children before each screening. And when Harvey wins the raffle, he gets to run up to the front of the theater and ham it up in front of the audience while he elects his prize. So he just likes being on stage.

Sure. By the time he's a teenager, Harvey knows he's gay, but doesn't tell any of his friends or family. The summer after Harvey graduates high school, he's arrested in Central Park for sunbathing with his shirt off in an area that's known for cruising. Hmm. It's the late 40s. That's how illegal it was to even consider LGBTQ. It's like arrested for sunbathing in an area. Yeah, just like the suggestion of the potential for. Right. So in the late 1940s, nearly all of New York's gacing is conducted in some degree of secrecy.

So cruising is a way for gay people to meet each other when they can't just go to a bar or a club and walk up to someone. Harvey is arrested as part of a general police sweep of the area and winds up being released without facing charges, but the incident stays with him. Harvey enrolls in the New York State College for Teachers in Albany. He winds up being one of the very few men in the entire school,

and this actually hadn't always been the case, but it's 1947, so all the men who would have filled the upper classes were at war when they would have enrolled. So he's one of the very few men. Harvey himself had been too young to enlist. In college, Harvey writes a column for the student newspaper and champions causes like integration of fraternities and sororities, like he's already politically minded. He does well in some subjects badly and others and isn't

really sure he wants to be a teacher in the first place, so he graduates in 1951 and joins the navy. And the navy has a reputation of attracting a lot of gay men and Harvey finds that to some extent the stereotype is true. The war is over, so he's posted for four years in San Diego, which has a thriving gazing. And for the first time, is a bit unsure of what he wants to do with his life. So he returns home to Long Island and gets a job teaching high school history in a town near Roehe grew up. Harvey enjoys working with high school kids and his sense of humor makes him a huge hit with them.

I mean, can you imagine Harvey Melk standing at the front of your high school history class room and just fucking hamming it up and being so boystrous and gesturing and loud and funny and making class actually fun, right? Yeah, he's very charismatic He's maddening. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and it's hard to find in a high school teacher I feel like because they don't pay right? Right the crush you crush those teachers down But being gay in the 1950s is grounds

for firing a teacher, something Harvey is very aware of. And since he's fairly active in New York's gay scene, he knows that in that rubly summer, we'll eventually find out about a straight identity. So he quits teaching before he can get fired before there's a scandal. He gets a job at an insurance agency and then as an analyst on Wall Street. So he can do it all. But I mean, that kind of loss, the loss of talent because of that prejudice and fear basically, that will come up again. So in 1969, after five years at the Wall Street firm, Harvey's now 39 and he is of of course, bored to death. He's made some friends in the theater world who worked on the Runaway Broadway hit Hair and they're about

to go to San Francisco to stage a production of the musical there. So he up and quits his job and tags along. Awesome. He loves everything about San Francisco. Of course, he loves the culture, which is still very much influenced by the summer of love, which had been two years prior. He loves the gay scene, which is the most open one he's ever encountered. He had not actually participated in New York's Stonewall rights the year before, probably because of his need to keep his identity hidden at his job. But in San Francisco, he starts becoming involved in the gay rights movement and starts to take an interest in local politics. So it wasn't involved in Stonewall, but he's probably very highly influenced by Stonewall. Absolutely. Like a year before, I'm sure I'm sure he wanted to be involved, right?

I bet. Yeah. The only thing he doesn't love about San Francisco is his job, which is another one in finance. His boss keeps telling him to get a haircut, because he's got that long shaggy hair. And he's eventually fired after making a passionate anti-capitalist speech at a televised rally protesting America's invasion of Cambodia. Wow. I'd like to take a moment to say,

yay, to Kissinger's death real quick. Along with the rest of the nation, right? I've never seen so much, like, it is kind of amazing living in this time, where because everyone is so connected with social media, everyone is basically learning incredibly fast about things like that that literally 10 years ago. It was just simply not the case. It was like your badass, like, smart friends were the ones Anthony Bourdain was the one

that was like Fuck Kiss and Jer, he's worst war criminal he's the worst of all time and everyone else is like what's he saying not for and it's like nowadays everyone's like yep we agree that's what everyone's saying don't argue it go look it up before you want to argue that okay in 1971 when Harvey is 41 years old he meets a man named Scott Smith on a trip to New York Scott is only 23 and at first he was rightfully very skeptical of the older guy with the ponytail asking for his number. But in the end, he's won over by Harvey's charm and sense of humor. And before Scott moves to San Francisco to be with Harvey, Harvey writes him a letter

that says, quote, you'll have my love and my cheer, my laughter, my arms, my schmaltz, my joy, my warmth, my heart. So it's a true love. Nice. Those are perfect wedding vows. Oh, yeah. Harvey and Scott moved together into an apartment on Castro Street.

The Castro had once been full of Irish and Italian immigrants who worked in factories and as long shorman, I'm sure your parts of your killgare of clan. My grandfather was a long shorman and he was in the long shorman strike in 1930 and the man who he was locked arms with was shot and killed by the cops. Yeah. Like right next to him? Yep.

Holy shit. Yes. But this time those jobs have dried up as the neighborhood has changed. And so by 1972, it is already established as San Francisco's gay hub. Harvey and Scott open a camera store, which is like, hello, dream job, even though I don't know anything about cameras, where they mostly develop film. As a small business owner, Harvey becomes active in neighborhood events. Every summer, Harvey helps organize a Castro Street fare, which is sort of an early version of a pride parade. So two things happen shortly after the camera store opens.

The first is Watergate. The cover-up and President Nixon's lies infuri, Harvey, and he starts paying even closer attention to politics. The second is that a teacher comes in the store asking if she can borrow an overhead projector because her school doesn't have enough. And Harvey is furious that the city can't provide such basic equipment to schools, you know, having been a teacher before I'm sure he's seen all that. These two events inspire him to run for San Francisco's board of supervisors in 1973. So Harvey loses that first election, as well as two others after it. There's just, I think, a ton of candidates, so the vote was kind of split,

and he was kind of an unknown at this point. But in that time, when he loses, he becomes more of a civic leader in the Castro and becomes more well-known. He and Scott, his partner, had been excluded from the city's organization for small business owners because they were gay. So Harvey starts his own group and it attracts a huge number of local business owners. In 1975, Harvey's political odds drastically improve. A man named George Moscone is elected mayor and he wants to change the way local elections work in San Francisco. So, previously, the entire city votes on every seat in the

board of supervisors. So, everyone in the whole city votes for the Castro supervisor. Everyone in the whole city votes for the Presidio, instead of people in the Castro voting in their own supervisor for the neighborhood, people in the presidio, you know, you get it, right? George Moscone wants it to go the other way. He wants supervisors to represent their particular district, which is like, if you live in that district, you give a shit about it and it's people. And you know who's actually taking action to benefit your district as opposed to who wants to get a job and get kickbacks or whatever.

Exactly. That's what I've heard politicians do. They're approved. That's just my opinion. Allegedly. Allegedly politics are corrupt and evil. That's right. This is actually how a lot of big cities like Chicago and New York operate.

So this proposition succeeds. At this point, the nationwide gay rights movement has taken shape. So has, of course, its conservative opposition. One of the first battlefronts is in Florida where a local Miami ordinance outlaws discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Here come the fucking Christian fundamentalists

who but their nose, but doesn't fucking belong and vehemently oppose this law. And they make pop singer Anita Bryant as their poster girl. So she's the spokeswoman for Florida Orange Juice, and this leads gay activists to boycott the product. And it also leads to a famous incident in which an activist throws a pie in her face at an event where she's talking about her plans to open Anita Bryant centers for conversion therapy.

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In 1977, when he's 47 years old with gay rights now, a very prominent issue across the country, Harvey mounts his fourth campaign. But this time, it's just specifically represent District 5 where the Castro is. So now he gets to set his sights on the Castro. It's still a highly contested race, the district is big, and encompasses other neighborhoods as well. There are two other liberal candidates. One of them is a new lawyer who is also gay. So this is actually a particularly romantic election for San Francisco in and of itself. The fourth time is a charm, Harvey wins the election to represent San Francisco's District Five.

He's the first openly gay person to win an election for public office in California. Wow. And the reaction is unlike anything anyone has ever seen from municipal election before. Obviously, it's fucking, what is the word? Historic? Historic?

I want to say monumental and mountainous. No. Important? Important is a good word. Mount Rushmore as? Yes. Well, I mean, it just is a complete sea change of the culture.

It's like truly never before and to the point where it was a lifestyle that was illegal, merely 20, 30 years before. In some places, yeah. So the streets of the Castro are packed with revelers. A news Castro says it looks like New Year's Eve. Harvey's friend and campaign manager and Cronenberg, who is in that documentary, and is like.

My favorite person. I love her. I think I've told you about that part before. I just didn't know her name. Yeah, yeah, she's incredible. She says, quote that part before. I just didn't know her name. Yeah, yeah. She's incredible. She says, quote, the feeling there was just one of such total joy and it was more than just a candidate winning.

It was the fact that all of these lesbians in gay men throughout San Francisco who had felt like they had no voice before, now had someone who represented them. And, quote, it's not all good news, though. The toll of four political campaigns is too much for Scott. And so he and Harvey break up. They remain partners in the camera store though. I don't think Harvey not ever slapped. Like he just seems like someone who was always going and always drinking a lot of coffee and like didn't ever. There's those people, man. There's those, like, they just do it. They go and they have a real internal machine that I cannot relate to in any way.

They're like destined for greatness and there's no time for sleeping and eating and, you know, normal functions of life. Like, naps, Jesus. In the class of newcomers to the board of supervisors, there are several other progressive candidates who likely couldn't have been elected without the district-based system. There's also a conservative winner named Dan White.

He's a former police officer and current firefighter who resigns from his firefighting job to sit on the board. Dan had run a campaign around addressing crime, improving transportation, and general, like, you know, all American family values type sentiment. And he, there's interviews with him on the documentary, and he just seems like kind of a small fish and a big pond, you know what I mean? Like he's in the wrong city, state, even. Yeah.

He looks like the average white man in the 70s kind of vibe, where it's like the blonde kind of side part, right? And the long sideburns and kind of like, yeah, you know, family values totally. And he's like 31, which is wild. And this is where Harvey Melk's story becomes a story about city politics. One of Harvey's first acts in office is to sponsor a bill that outlaws discrimination based on sexual orientation. He's just fucking going for it.

Absolutely. The bill has to first pass a vote in a committee chaired by Dan White, the family values board member. And this will be a tough sell, but Harvey tells Dan that if he votes for the gay rights bill, Harvey will vote against a bill that Dan doesn't want passed, which would have had a home for troubled teens built in Dan's district. So Dan keeps his word and he speaks in favor of the gay rights bill at his committee helping it pass, but Harvey doesn't keep his word. On the day the board is supposed to vote on the youth home, Dan walks in confident that it will fail and that he'll return to his constituents triumphant, but at the last minute Harvey changes his vote.

So the home for troubled teens passes. Dan will never get past this and will vote to oppose every other bill that Harvey ever sponsors. Yeah, you made an enemy. Harvey made an enemy by doing that. Does he ever explain what the change was about? I didn't see anything about that,

but I'm assuming you can't go against your values. If you think there should be a place for troubled teens, you're not going to vote no for it. Then you can't say you're gonna. I mean, this, but I think this is the double-blinded politics, right? Yeah, absolutely. Meanwhile, having passed Dan's committee, Harvey's gay rights bill is approved by the board and everyone except Dan votes in favor of it. It's a huge moment for Harvey

and for gay people in San Francisco and around the country. It's one of the first and most meaningful local laws of its kind, and it means that people can't be fired from their jobs for being gay. Can you imagine? I mean, it's just, yeah, you can get fired from any job because you're gay, period.

Well, and that was one of the most powerful parts of this documentary, which obviously we really want you guys to watch, because it's so good. So people are canvassing in the street, explaining to the neighborhood, people what this bill actually is. And they're coming up to, in the documentary, I believe it's like an older Chinese couple. And the person canvassing is like, do you mind if I tell you a little bit about this bill? And he's like, so if it starts with they can fire teachers because they're gay, then

can't they eventually fire them for any other reason that they have found to be, this is how it starts. Exactly. And you watch this couple listening to this person, explaining this to them and being like, oh yeah, we know about this kind of discrimination. And they basically canvassed in this way of like going, let's stop this kind of thinking now in its tracks.

That was a really beautiful moment because, you know, canvassing is so scary to me the idea, but to do it in such a way of like, with compassion and just the basics. Yeah, like trying to educate and being like understanding of where the other people are coming from, like either you don't want to hear this because you believe it's against your beliefs. Like on the face of it, if you're talking about, do you love gay people in that couple? It's just like, we don't know what we're talking about. The answer has to be no.

And then the person's like, no, no, no, let's like, let's expand this to what it really could be. And then it's kind of like, oh, you're right. Yeah. This is a bill about equality for everyone. Yeah. You know, that's what it comes down to. The protection.

Yeah, protection of it. Thank you. When Mayor Moscone signs the bill into law, he uses a purple pen handed to him by Harvey, as reporters take pictures of both of them. Harvey's a big ham in front of the camera. Like, the photos of him are pretty incredible. When the reporter asks Dan what he thinks about the bill,

Dan White says quote, this bill lets a man in a dress be a teacher. People are getting angry, end quote. So there's that. address be a teacher, people are getting angry." So there's that. Forza incorrect. Inaccurate, it's just a bummer because it's still with us if not stronger now. And that sucks.

Harvey is also instrumental in the campaign against a state ballot measure that would ban gay people from being teachers at all. This is a big one. The Bill's proponents use a lot of the same talking points that the far right state politicians are using today saying that gay teachers will somehow teach homosexuality to their students. Harvey famously responds to this by saying, quote, how do you teach homosexuality like you teach French?" End quote.

As part of the campaign against this ballot measure, Harvey famously encourages California's gay people to come out to their family and friends. To make them realize that gay people aren't nefarious villains, but people that they know and love. This popularizes the phrase, quote, come out, come out wherever you are as a gay right slogan. The ballot measure fails by a landslide and Harvey throws a huge party on Castro Street. He generally thrives in his role as supervisor while Dan White seems to be floundering. He has trouble keeping up with all the background reading supervisors need to do for each bill

and he's not allowed to work in two city jobs at once so he can't be a firefighter kind of losing his identity. He's making significantly less money as a politician. He tries to make up the lost income by opening a baked potato stand at Pier 39, but the business doesn't do well. Sorry, I just have to say, why can't we have that now? That's exactly what I thought. Like a walking baked potato. Yes. Could you just remove ourselves from the topic at hand and say a baked potato stand. How about that outside of Costco?

Right. Your hot dogs over here. How about some baked potatoes? It's just, it's so hard to get a hold of them. That's at a nightclub. If there's, there's got to be a baked potato truck in like fucking Austin. I know there is, but can we bring it to L.A. we need a baked potato truck and like fucking Austiners. You know there is, but can we bring it to LA? We need a baked potato truck.

A baked potato truck. Please, because we can't just go to steak houses all the time. No, wait till then. That's like literally the only place you can get them now is a steakhouse. We're bycressing. Let's get back to the topic of hand. We can get something horrible as about to happen

as it always does in these stories. So the business fails. Harvey, on the other hand, is a close ally of the mayors, who seems like a good dude, and is popular with the other board members. How could you not like this guy? He just seems so curious and fun. Some of them poke fun at Dan White for patchalantly refusing to support any bill that Harvey has anything to do with, like it's clear what he's being a baby about it.

So on November 10th, 1978, Dan White submits his resignation to Mayor Moscone. He said he'd rather go back to being a firefighter, but only four days later, he reconsideres, and he tells his supporters he's gonna try to get the mayor to reappoint him to his position. But then what happens is four days later, on November 18th,

the Jones Town massacre takes place. In the middle of all of this, it's crazy that this is part of that like story that these are just momentous things upon momentous things. The 70s were truly insane. Like in every way. But yeah, this piece of San Francisco history is beyond. It's just like unbelievable. Yeah. And this, of course, sends shockwaves through San Francisco because it had been home to the People's Temple cult before it moved to Guiana.

So there's, I think, a huge majority of the people who were in Jonestown were from the Bay Area. Yes. Like, if not, you know, if not all of them, most of them. The other big thing is one of San Franciscoitan's Disgrows representatives in Congress, Leo Ryan was one of the visitors to Jonestown, the day of the Jonestown massacre. He was one of the people who was coming in to check it out on their way escaping to the plane. He was shot and killed. Yeah. So that's a big deal. The people's temple had actually been

political allies to Mayor Moscone and to Harvey as well. So they had volunteered with both campaigns and without their support. Moscone cannot afford to alienate San Francisco's sizeable gay vote by reappointing Dan to his position. So when Dan goes back and says he wants his job back, he knows it'll ruffle the feathers of kind of his only ally left, you know. So he says no to Dan White. So on Monday, November 28th, San Francisco's city officials returned from their Thanksgiving break. And later that day, Mayor Moscone is scheduled to appoint Dan White's replacement. That morning, Dan sneaks into City Hall through a window in the basement and goes to the mayor's office.

He asks the secretary if he can see the mayor. Everyone has dismayed that Dan is showing up just a few minutes before the mayor, and his new appointee are supposed to go before the press, but Mayor Misconey tells the secretary just to send Dan in. After a brief conversation, Dan White pulls out his Smith and Wesson revolver from when he was a police officer, which is loaded with hollow-point bullets and shoots Mayor Masconey twice in the chest and twice in the head. The mayor's office is big and contains several rooms, so this isn't like one wall over from the secretary, so she does hear the shots, but she runs through the window thinking a car is backfired,

because it's not happening right next to her. Right. So Dan walks quickly out of the mayor's office to his own office. He still has the keys, the keys work. He reloads and then he goes into Harvey's office. Dan asks Harvey to come speak with him in his office. Harvey hesitates a second, but follows him. And once in the office, Dan White shoots Harvey Milk three

times in the chest and twice in the head. Then he walks out of the office down the stairs and leaves the building. The president of the board of supervisors is future United States Senator Diane Feinstein. Diane hears the shots and runs into Harvey's office. She checks for a pulse, but he has already died. That evening, and you can watch the video of this, a visibly shaken Diane Feinstein makes an announcement to the press. I saw that on TV

when I was eight years old. You did. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It was that kind of thing. We watched the seven o'clock news. Like that was just how it was. But it was like, I can remember watching that. It's jarring. She is so shaken. You don't see that anymore of people being the ones that go to speak. Because it's like, she found her friend, her friend, and then had to be the one that went and spoke.

Yeah. And the mayor, she's just something unthinkable has just happened. And then she's the one that has to deliver the one that went and spoke. Yeah. And the mayor, she's just something unthinkable has just happened. And then she's the one that has to deliver the news. And you can hear the press and the people respond. It's crazy. It's the craziest moment. It is. It is a crazy moment in history.

And as President of the board, she is now acting mayor of San Francisco. She says that both mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Melk have been shot and killed. The reporter's gasp, you can hear someone yell out Jesus Christ. That night a seemingly spontaneous candlelit march starts in the Castro and goes to City Hall. Thousands and thousands of San Franciscans attend. Joan Bias leads the enormous crowd in singing amazing grace. In the days that follow,

there are several public and private memorials for both Mayor Masconey and Harvey. One of them is arranged by Diane Feinstein at Temple in Manu L, the most prominent synagogue in San Francisco, but its chief rabbi does not believe in gay rights, so a different rabbi has to perform the service. So, it's discriminated against even in death. So very shortly after killing Harvey Melch and George Moscone, Dan White turns himself into the police. He's charged with first-degree murder. Dan White's trial becomes infamous for the quote, twinkie defense. People remember his defense team as saying he was at diminished capacity due to

eating too much junk food. That was their argument. They basically had him dead to rights. He turned himself in. I think he confessed when he turned himself in. Yeah. It was that kind of thing where at the time I feels like he was just like, I did this and there's no question. Yeah. Right. Like, so what does a defense do in that scenario? And it's like, they cooked up this thing that was like a true hail Mary kind of like, we got to put something out there. Yeah.

Because other than that, they're just sending their client to prison. Right. We got to do something. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, this defense team does mention Twinkies, but in the context of the fact that Dan was very depressed, they say Dan was deeply depressed when he committed the assassinations and they point to his poor diet as evidence of his depression. Still the press goes wild talking about Twinkies and it's what most people remember about

the trial. Ultimately, the diminished capacity argument works and Dan White is found guilty of manslaughter. Yeah. He sentenced to seven years in prison for assassinating two innocent people, point blank. The mind boggles. Well, it's this idea that like Harvey Milk fought for those rights, he got people to believe in those movements.

But that doesn't mean that the like status quo was gonna change. Right. And there are plenty of people who saw that progression and went enough of this. But Moscone, you've murdered the liked mayor too. You know what I mean? That to me is something's off there. I just think it's reflective of how actually not progressive those times were as much as people are like the summer of love and everybody's taking action. But it doesn't mean that the average person likes it or wants it or I don't know.

It's so upsetting and it's so again that's like that's like the thing I remember it was always on the news and it was always what people were talking about because it was just so above. I would love to hear about the trial. I mean maybe like the Casey Anthony defense maybe the prosecutors just didn't do a great job of proving murder one. Or I wonder if they thought they didn't have to, because it was like it happened almost in front of everybody. Yeah, totally. Not that they didn't have to, but like they thought maybe it was an open and shut case

and that there would be no possibility that a defense like that would work. Absolutely. So the outrage at this verdict results in California eliminating its diminished capacity law after this. Dan serves five years of a sentence before he is released, but two years after that he dies by suicide. Oh no. Yeah, not a great life. At the very beginning of his term in office, Harvey had tape recorded an audio will. In it, Harvey says says quote, this is to be played only in the event of my death by assassination.

I fully realize that a person who stands for what I stand for, an activist, a gay activist, becomes the target or the potential target of someone who is insecure or terrified, afraid or very disturbed themselves. Knowing that I could be assassinated at any moment at any time, I feel it's important that some people know my thoughts. Obviously, the one thing that should happen, if there is an assassination is, I cannot prevent some people from feeling angry and frustrated and mad, but I hope they will take the frustration and madness, and instead of demonstrating or anything of that type, I would hope that they would take the power.

And I hope that 5, 10, 100, a thousand would rise. I would love to see every gay doctor come out. I would like to see every gay lawyer, every gay judge, every gay bureaucrat, every gay architect come out, stand up, let the world know. That would do more to end prejudice overnight than anybody could imagine. I urge them to do that. I urge them to come out only that way, will we start to achieve our rights." And this idea becomes a cornerstone in the gay rights movement, which made enormous achievements in Harvey's lifetime and makes even more in the decades following his death with his legacy as part of its story. In 2009, President Barack Obama posthumously awards Harvey Melk with the Presidential Medal of Freedom,

the nation's highest civilian honor. And that is the story of Harvey Melk, one of our nation's first openly gay elected officials. Well, great job. Thank you. So awful. I know. Yeah, there's no words for that level of like mind numbing tragedy upon tragedy. And the way it played out, it's just weird that that's in my like, some of my foundational memories are hearing a lot about that story. Yeah.

Because he was a fireman, right? My dad was definitely like paying attention and interested. And that was what I heard people talk about. And it was, yeah, it's terrible. So please join into the ACLU. If you can or get the help you need from them, ACLU.org. And watch the times of Harvey Milk documentary. You will be so happy you did.

There's some amazing real moments that happened. The debate, what I was talking about earlier, is Ann and Harvey being on the live news debate with two guys who were from the Christian Coalition. And they were saying that gay people are pedophiles, and they were like, no, they're not. And they were like, what's your proof? And she goes, she does that rant. It's like the FBI, but the CIA,

she has that accent, is like the best thing you've ever seen. 90 to 95, men, I might add, she's so badass. Straight men, yeah. Yeah, watch that, and let's all get inspired. Let's campaign. Let's be activists. Do this and also let's stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? This has been an exactly right production.

Our Senior Producer is Alejandra Keck, our Managing Producer's Hannah Kyle Crighton. Our Editor is Aristotle Acevedo. This episode was mixed by Liana Squilachi. Our researchers are Marin McClashian and Ali Elkin. Email your hometowns to my favorite murder at gmail.com. Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at my favorite murder and Twitter at my Fave Murder. Goodbye!