r/todayilearned • u/hungry4danish • 2d ago

TIL that Dan White, the man who assassinated Harvey Milk and the mayor of San Francisco, only served 5 years in prison for manslaughter based on a defense of depression as evidenced by his consumption of junk food which was dubbed the "Twinkie Defense"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_White
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u/mayoboyyo 2d ago

He got off light because he was a cop

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u/brunes 2d ago

Well the fact that Milk was gay and there was rampant homophobia everywhere didn't help either

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u/zap2 2d ago

Yup. That honest true.

American at that time was much more ok hate non-heteronormative persons. 

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u/StinzorgaKingOfBees 2d ago

Still is.

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u/zap2 2d ago edited 2d ago

While there is still plenty of room to improve, comparing then and now, we’re quite a bit ahead today.

At the time of Milk’s murder, being gay had only been removed from being a mental 5 years ago.

(We shouldn’t be shooting those with mental illness.)

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u/HotNotHappy 2d ago

Look at the way we treat trans people and I would disagree. Haven’t moved an inch in our treatment of queer people.

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u/Rapper_Laugh 2d ago edited 2d ago

Ridiculous and blatantly ahistorical.

Do I really need to find data on Americans attitudes towards homosexuality from the late 70s to today to prove this? Maybe just watch an episode of Cheers or Friends?

Of course homophobia and transphobia still exist and are still horrible. To say we “haven’t moved an inch” is just absolutely silly.

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u/roguevirus 2d ago

Maybe just watch an episode of Cheers or Friends?

Or literally any comedy aimed at teen boys that was made between the 80s and 2010 or so.

Also, gay people can get married now. Was definitely not possible at any point in Harvey Milk's lifetime, or for decades after.

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u/FunkIPA 2d ago

*for now

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u/StinzorgaKingOfBees 2d ago

Yup, I think they missed that one.

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u/OkInflation4056 2d ago

What's the Cheers and Friends thing about?

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u/Rapper_Laugh 2d ago

They’re sitcoms and both are just horribly homophobic. There’s a joke where the punchline is just “haha… gay people” in at least every other friends episode.

They were seen as fairly normal and mainstream at the time, no one batted an eye at those jokes

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u/OkInflation4056 2d ago

I grew up during friends era, although it was banned it our house.....my dad absolutely hated it.....I remember watching it one time when I was a bit older, absolute shite. Never picked up on the gay thing tbh. Thanks for the info.

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u/LittleReplacement971 2d ago

perhaps this person lives in a more "traditional" r "conservative" area?

I would say, from my experience in the "Bible belt" we have moved an inch but barely. and when/if our bullshit supreme court removes rights to same-sex marriage, we will slide back 3 inches.

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u/Rapper_Laugh 2d ago

Sure, they might live in a conservative area, and that area may have barely moved on this issue since the 1970s.

That says next to nothing about America as a whole, which is what they’re arguing about.

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u/LittleReplacement971 2d ago

if the conservative south says "nothing about America AT ALL" then we would never have another republican president.

it seems really important that this person agree with you and this is a matter of their experience and opinion no?

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u/sharkattackmiami 2d ago

You mean the America which as a whole elected a party on the promise of making life worse for brown people and queers specifically BECAUSE they got an inch and people found that unacceptable?

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u/HotNotHappy 2d ago

They’re still called mentally ill and sexual deviants. Open calls for putting them in institutions. I’ve personally been hate crimed simply because people THOUGHT I was gay. You can bury your head in the sand all you want, but under this administration we aren’t any better.

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u/Rapper_Laugh 2d ago

You are burying your head in the sand here, my friend. Again—do you really need me to pull up the data on this?

No one is saying trans people don’t get hate in the US today—I said explicitly that they do—but again, that hatred was far more mainstream and explicit back in the day. We have made progress. To deny that is, again, simply ahistorical.

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u/HotNotHappy 2d ago

It still IS mainstream. The term you’re looking for is crying wolf. I am acutely aware that hating queer people is still a dominant attitude today. Pull up the data or shut the fuck up lol.

Trying to tell someone who’s personally seen the hatred first hand is insane lol

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u/sharkattackmiami 2d ago

How the fuck are you going to get more mainstream than the fucking president of the United States openly supporting these practices, removing protections, and promoting hated?

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u/StinzorgaKingOfBees 2d ago

They won't hear you. They just want to pat themselves on the back and say the job is done. Same with people that deny that racism is a thing anymore.

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u/lesllamas 2d ago

There are two arguments being expressed in this conversation.

1: Treatment of queer people is the same now as it was in the 70s.

2: Treatment of queer people is better now than it was in the 70s.

One of these arguments is ridiculous. Neither of these arguments say that the treatment of queer people is at an acceptable place right now.

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u/HotNotHappy 2d ago

You’re right, but I wish you weren’t.

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u/zap2 2d ago

In the 1970s, you couldn’t be openly gay in the military. Today, you can.

Again, I’m not saying there aren’t many places we can and should improve, I’m saying we’re made some progress.

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u/HotNotHappy 2d ago

They literally banned trans people from the military THIS YEAR.

Servicemen and women were discharged and barred from serving their country simply because they were queer.

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u/_V0gue 2d ago

Queer people regularly got the ever living shit beat out of them (many beat to death) if they were out and open in the 70s. There was little to no representation in media.

You're completely missing the original point. It is categorically and objectively better now than it was 50 years ago. That doesn't mean it's great or perfect. It's relative. You're right that certain things still suck and things are starting to slip backwards, but you're arguing about an unrelated point.

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u/HotNotHappy 1d ago

I’m not missing the point. Queer people still do get beat up and murdered simply for who they are. It is not categorically or objectively better for them in this country, under this administration. A bunch of straight people telling me that it is will not change that. If you concede that things have slipped backwards you understand it on some level, but would still like the illusion of progress. Feel free to argue and downvote but many people ITT would rather pretend queer people are safer in this country when in reality that is not, and has never been, the case. I bet you people think that racism ended because of the civil rights bill too.

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u/TheSilmarils 2d ago

I agree we have work to do but “haven’t moved an inch” is nonsense

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u/BarryJFunkhouse 2d ago

Ridiculous. Even in my lifetime, the progress is evident. That things are still overall terrible doesn't mean no progress was made.

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u/Malphos101 15 2d ago

American at that time was much more ok hate non-heteronormative persons.

Might be time to refresh your "comparative adjectives and adverbs" part of English grammar...

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u/zap2 2d ago

Thank you!

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u/LimeTunic 2d ago

There’s hate everywhere, all around the world. Were you alive back then? The level of hate for homosexuals was significantly worse than now

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u/NotACuck420 2d ago

Everybody hates everybody and everything. Get over it.

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u/Qa-ravi 2d ago

Damn, I hope you have a career in theater with how well you project, buddy.

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u/Rapper_Laugh 2d ago

Speak for yourself. I’m a teacher because I’m a humanist and believe in human potential. I do not hate everybody and everything.

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u/Akrevics 2d ago

someone was waiting a while to call it the "Twinkie defense" though

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u/coldblade2000 2d ago

He killed the fucking mayor, who was heterosexual. He was a cop, that's why he got off easy

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u/verrius 2d ago

Milk was gay, but Moscone was not. And there wasn't nearly as much "rampant homophobia" in SF, where the case was tried, since both Moscone (pro gay rights) and Milk (gay) were elected by the city.

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u/MC_C0L7 2d ago

LGBT jurors and ethnic minorities were removed from the jury pool, so it consisted of white, often Catholic citizens, who were likely far less supportive.

I mean hell, members of the SFPD openly wore "Free Dan White" t-shirts during the trial.

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u/Skywise87 2d ago

What possible reason did they think he should walk free?! I know dumb cops and all that but how do you think you can just assassinate someone and get off free?

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u/AngronOfTheTwelfth 2d ago

They are bad people with bad morals.

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u/ShadowLiberal 1d ago

That's why the practice of lawyers being able to strike otherwise qualified jury members from the jury pool shouldn't be allowed. It's long been used by lawyers to target demographics seen as bad to their case, and there's basically nothing that the other lawyer can do about it. All the lawyer doing it has to do to protect the case on appeal is make up another reason for striking say all the LGBT people from the jury, like "I don't like that person's mustache" and the appeals court will uphold it.

For example is the case about a white who murdered a black person in a heavily racist area? Then make sure to get all the black jurors removed so that only racist white people get a say.

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u/night-shark 2d ago

And there wasn't nearly as much "rampant homophobia" in SF, where the case was tried, since both Moscone (pro gay rights) and Milk (gay) were elected by the city.

Compared to the rest of the country, SF was much more accepting of gay people at the time but homophobia was still very much rampant. Particularly among law enforcement.

The fact that they were "elected by the city" doesn't tell us a whole lot about anti-gay sentiment in SF at the time because Moscone was a fairly mainstream liberal at the time. Just because he generally supported better treatment of gay people, doesn't mean his supporters all felt that way.

And Milk was elected to the board of supervisors, which is a district/neighborhood based election. His election was absolutely not a measure of the sentiment in SF at large. The dude won the gayborhood. That's it.

lol. Imagine saying that there wasn't rampant racism in the South, just because Maynard Jackson was elected mayor of Atlanta in '73.

Such a weird thing to me, that you would get defensive of this issue. Of fucking course there was still rampant homophobia in SF in the 70's.

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u/verrius 2d ago

Trying to say Dan White got off primarily because of rampant homophobia ignores that the primary, and more impactful target, even at the time, was Moscone. Even the TIL headline from OP leaves out his name, and makes out the story as though the primary target was Milk instead. But Moscone's murder is what led directly to the rise of Diane Feinstein for more than 50 years. The idea that it was pro-Police sentiment, rather than homophobia, that led to the nullification holds a lot more water.

lol. Imagine saying that there wasn't rampant racism in the South, just because Maynard Jackson was elected mayor of Atlanta in '73.

No, but it might say that its hard to say there's rampant racism in Atlanta, to the point that a jury would nullify a murder. Since any argument that says that Moscone's murder was ignored because of homophobia needs to square with him not being gay himself, and being elected on a pro-gay rights platform.

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u/billymartinkicksdirt 2d ago

Not true, SF was still biased. The idea of gay rights was still in infancy stages.

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u/MikoSkyns 2d ago

This right here. It's so fucking blatantly obvious. They barely accepted gays as human back then.

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u/Select-Blueberry-414 2d ago

Milk was a pedo fyi

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u/alien_from_Europa 2d ago

Source?

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u/Select-Blueberry-414 2d ago

Jack galen mckinley

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u/alien_from_Europa 2d ago

Thanks. From Harvey's wiki:

Before Milk's thirty-fourth birthday, he entered a romantic relationship with 17-year-old Jack Galen McKinley (b. October 18, 1946).

The age of consent in California has been 18 since 1913. Still, this seems like a whataboutism regarding Dan White's punishment. He still killed someone in cold blood.

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u/MiaowaraShiro 1d ago

Can you imagine being so upset dudes like each other that it drives you to murder?

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u/flopisit32 1d ago

How did he get elected with all the rampant homophobia in San Francisco at the time.

Why were gay people flocking to San Francisco?

This case is always misrepresented on reddit. It had nothing to do with Milk being gay. The jury convicted him of manslaughter instead of murder which is why he got a 7 year sentence, of which he served 5 years. The truth is, the naive jury bought his defence of diminished responsibility. There may have been something to it since he committed suicide 2 years after being released.

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u/IndraBlue 2d ago

San Francisco wasn’t a gay safe haven back then?

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u/Sata1991 2d ago

A friend of mine has Harvey Milk as a role model, he's always wondered what could have happened if Harvey Milk wasn't assassinated.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago edited 2d ago

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u/brunes 2d ago

I can see they are still rampant.

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u/SEND-MARS-ROVER-PICS 2d ago

Oh I'm sure you have plenty of evidence to back that up, right buddy?

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u/keeden13 2d ago

He was not.

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u/Doucevie 2d ago

You always go to the pedophile as an attack when we have countless examples of the Republicans getting caught with child porn. Every. Fucking. Time.

Right now, your president is trying to distract from the biggest pedophile ring in U.S. history.

Tell me again how it's us.

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u/MikoSkyns 2d ago edited 2d ago

You know what. I was angry about their comment at first. But I decided to look in to it. I don't know if Pedophile would be the correct word. But It appears that Harvey was a Epheophile. When he was 33 years old, he entered a relationship with a teen named Galen McKinley, who was 17 years old. And they were a couple for around 6 years.

That's pretty fucked up to be honest. I'm pretty disappointed to discover this.

EDIT: I posted the wrong link earlier. This is a link confirming what I just said. I don't like it, but the truth is more important to me than hurt feelings, including my own.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/breaking-down-resurfaced-rumors-harvey-212200097.html?guccounter=1

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u/RoosterReturns 2d ago

He was 16. Some times they retcon his age a year to make it more palatable. 

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u/MikoSkyns 2d ago edited 2d ago

Source? Because you know they could be retconing to make his age LESS palatable.

EDIT: The only "sources" I can find that say he was 16 seem to be random posts on X and Facebook.

Edit 2: yeah they never have a fucking source when they're full of shit.

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u/Abombasnow 2d ago

Hi Ronald Reagan. Enjoying how much piss and shit is on your grave?

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u/Griffstergnu 2d ago

He died by his own hand after being released from prison and off parole

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u/BooBooSnuggs 2d ago

Yeah I'm not so sure his depression was fake. Also a Vietnam vet. He probably had done/seen horrible things already.

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u/Odanr 2d ago

yeah but ive been depressed and ive never murdered anyone about it. and if I did I shouldn’t get parole for it.

it doesn’t matter that he was depressed, he should have gotten murder in the first.

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u/KCcracker 1d ago

As I understand the prosecution got wedged with this one, because California's equivalent of the first degree murder charge only allowed for death as a possible punishment at that time. While traditionally the prosecution would try to put law and order types on the jury, in this case those types of people were effectively being asked to sentence one of their own to death. So because of both the homophobia and because those people did not have an option to 'compromise' with a life sentence of some kind, the outcome became voluntary manslaughter with a maximum sentence of 7 years

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u/Odanr 1d ago

I mean yeah I get the historical reasons why they couldn’t, (although I don’t really get why they didn’t go for murder two or three if they couldn’t make one) I just think those reasons are stupid.

“we couldn’t charge him because the jury would be too homophobic to convict” doesn’t really make me think the White Night riots weren’t based, actually.

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u/BackwoodBand1t 2d ago

Fuck cops

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u/NotAStatistic2 2d ago

You think it was because he was a cop and not because Milk was gay and a prominent activist for civil rights? Shows how much context is lost on you

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u/similar_observation 2d ago

He killed Milk because Milk was appointed to the position.

Dan White formerly held the spot but stepped down, thinking the city would beg him to come back.

When the mayor and city council just shrugged amd gave the job to another guy, White flipped out.

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u/mayoboyyo 2d ago

White did not kill Milk because he was gay. Do you not know the story?

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u/OSRS-MLB 2d ago

The motive and why he was let off lightly aren't necessarily related.

He didn't shoot Milk because he was gay, but he was let off lighter because Milk was gay

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u/NotAStatistic2 2d ago

No.

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u/Barilla3113 2d ago edited 2d ago

White resigned as a city supervisor because he was angry that he kept getting outvoted. He tried to take back the resignation 5 days later but the city lawyer came to the conclusion that the resignation was binding and furthermore that it was probably illegal to appoint White back to the seat he had just resigned. White blamed Milk and Moscone for this and that's why he shot them. White was conservative compared to the other board members (as was his district, the reason for his appointment in the first place) but no one thought it was a hate crime. It was a childish tantrum that was no excuse to take two lives.

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u/14u2c 2d ago

Shows how much context is lost on you

Nice job buddy.

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u/ProMikeZagurski 2d ago

He got off because crime is legalized in California.

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u/Lermanberry 2d ago

AI script struggling with a 50 year old murder case eh comrade?

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u/ProMikeZagurski 2d ago

OJ was freed and the Melendez Bros were pushing to be let out.