The remarkable gay-straight political coalition created by Harvey Milk & George Moscone
It was an unlikely partnership.
George Moscone was a straight Catholic school graduate who grew up in an Italian-American neighborhood in San Francisco, handsome and naturally charming, a lawyer who first ran for office at age 30. Harvey Milk was the gay, Long Island-born son of Jewish parents, teased as a child for his prominent ears, a brash camera shop owner who didn’t run for office until his 40s.
Yet the two men found that not only did they like each other, they could also help each other politically—Milk by convincing the increasingly influential gay community to vote for Moscone, and Moscone by appointing Milk and other allies to positions of influence and by backing equality legislation. Moscone’s allyship gave the burgeoning movement lift at a critical time.
As the half-century anniversary of Pride approaches in June, it’s worth looking at one of the first gay-straight political partnerships of the modern era, one that would make it safe to advocate for the LGBTQ community from the outside.
Moscone was born in 1929 at the start of the Great Depression. His parents separated when he was 9 and he was raised by his mother, who struggled to support the family. He starred on his Catholic high school’s basketball team and got through college on a basketball scholarship. He then put himself through law school and did a stint in the Navy before starting a private law practice. Along the way, he married Gina Bondanza, whom he had known since grade school, and they eventually had four children.
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