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[Atticus Grinch]

I was too young to remember it first hand -- I vaguely remember Jonestown and Moscone and White Nights but Milk was just someone else who died that week -- but there's gotta be something to the fact that Milk was always a sainted figure, but never was the MLK or Malcolm or RFK. I think at the end of the day people figured that SF becoming accepting enough to elect gay officials was inevitable, and they forget that gays were once second class citizens, even here.

ETA also it's important to consider that Milk was elected in the only district balloting for the Board of Supervisors prior to 2000 in which each supervisorial district elected its own supervisor. (After the assassination the new system was declared "too divisive" and they went back to at-large elections until 2000.) In that historical context, the idea that an openly gay man would win District 5's seat is no more remarkable than the idea that Harold Washington would carry the 8th Ward in 1977. Which doesn't diminish the accomplishment, but it does make it clear that while people considered it an historic moment, it was an intentional consequence of changing from at-large to district elections. I haven't seen the movie, but I suppose the storytelling will minimize the incremental accomplishments of the Alice B. Toklas Memorial Democratic Club, which could have put forward other people to win District 5 in 1977. Whether they might also have won will never be known.