# George Moscone Born November 24, 1929 in San Francisco; died November 27, 1978 in San Francisco City Hall. American politician, two-term California State Senator (1967-1976), Majority Leader of the California State Senate (1967-1975), and the **37th Mayor of San Francisco** (January 1976 until his assassination in November 1978). ## State Senate Moscone's California State Senate tenure produced several pieces of landmark legislation: - **The 1975 California Consensual Sex Bill** — repealed California's criminal sodomy statute, decriminalizing gay sexual conduct between consenting adults. Moscone was the bill's lead Senate sponsor; the legislation was signed by Governor Jerry Brown and was one of the most significant pre-Stonewall-era state-level gay-rights advances - **The California Coastal Act** (1972) — establishing coastal-protection planning across the state - **Education-funding reform**, anti-poverty programs, and labor-rights legislation through eight legislative sessions ## Mayor of San Francisco Moscone won the November 1975 mayoral race in a runoff against John Barbagelata — a contest that polarized the city along emerging culture-war lines. Moscone's coalition consisted of organized labor, the city's growing gay community, Black and Latino voters, and environmentalists. His mayoralty (January 1976-November 1978): - **Appointed [[Harvey Milk]] to the Board of Permit Appeals** in 1976, the first openly gay city commissioner in U.S. history (before Milk was elected to the Board of Supervisors) - **Restructured the Board of Supervisors elections** from at-large to district elections — the change that enabled Milk's November 1977 victory in District 5 - **Diversified the city government** with appointments of women, gay people, and people of color in numbers unprecedented for the city - **Created the first municipal commission on the status of women** in 1976 ## Assassination On the morning of **November 27, 1978**, former Supervisor Dan White entered City Hall through a window (bypassing the metal detectors), met first with Moscone in the Mayor's office, and shot him four times. White then walked to the office of Supervisor [[Harvey Milk]] and shot Milk five times. Both men were killed. The motive: White had resigned his Supervisor seat earlier that month, regretted the resignation, and was lobbying Moscone for reinstatement. Moscone — after consulting with Milk and other progressive supervisors who opposed White's reinstatement — had decided to appoint a different supervisor. White's trial and the resulting manslaughter verdict in May 1979 produced the [[White Night Riots]] in San Francisco. White was paroled in 1984 after five years and committed suicide in 1985. ## Place in the Vault Moscone is a critical figure in the [[Queer Liberation Ecosystem]] not because he was personally gay (he was straight, with a wife and four children), but because his political alliance with the emerging San Francisco gay community produced the institutional foundation that allowed [[Harvey Milk]]'s electoral career to happen. Moscone is the canonical American example of a **straight political-ally figure** whose policy positions, appointments, and coalition-building produced concrete LGBTQ-rights advances — and who paid for that alliance with his life. --- ## See Also - [[Queer Liberation Ecosystem]] - [[Queer Liberation Timeline]] - [[Harvey Milk]] - [[White Night Riots]]