So Joe.My.God. clued me into this video, but it wasn't the video that caught my eye...
It was the statement by No on 8 that it is being released statewide on the 30th anniversary of Supervisor Harvey Milk's and Mayor George Moscone's murder in San Francisco. It was released on October 27, 2008.
Well, many appreciations to No on Prop 8 for all the hardwork they are doing to defeat Proposition 8 in California, but your history is a little wrong.
Harvey Milk and George Moscone were murdered on November 27, 1978.
For those who don't know, Harvey Milk was the first openly gay or lesbian person elected to (major) public office in the US, and was recently named as one of the 100 most influential people of the century by Time Magazine. Mayor Moscone was a close friend and supporter of Milk and his views on equality. There are some reports of backroom deals, but the long and the short of it came down to this: Dan White, another Supervisor in SF, became frustrated with the Moscone-Milk friendship and decided to kill them both. Fun fun fun. White later got a lighter sentence after his lawyers made the now infamous Twinkie defense -- that twinkies, coca-cola, and depression caused violent mood swings and meant that he could not have been guilty of premeditation.
California recently tried to pass an annual holiday -- Harvey Milk Day on May 22 -- in honor of his place in gay history (it would be the only annual holiday that honors a person for their contributions to the LGBT rights movement, by the way), but the Governator vetoed it.
The above screenshot is from the upcoming movie, Milk, by Gus Van Sant starring Sean Penn about the man and the events precipitating his death.
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