1977: Having run unsuccessfully for public office three times before, Harvey Milk becomes the first openly gay person elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Shortly before election day, MIlk was quoted as saying, “I think of the fourteen-year-old boy or girl in Des Moines who realizes his or her own homosexuality.  The parents throw them around.  Schoolmates taunt them.  The state calls them criminals.  They may end up being alcoholic closet cases–but one day, they’re going to open up a paper and see that an openly gay person was elected to the San Francisco Board. That’s going to give them hope.”  Hope became a major theme of Milk’s brief tenure in public office.
–Source: Rutledge, Leigh W. The Gay Decades: From Stonewall to the Present : The People and Events That Shaped Gay Lives. New York, NY: Plume, 1992.  Print.