Harvey Milk

Milk is the most famous name here, and his legislative record was short because his time in office was: eleven months on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors before his assassination in November 1978. In that time he sponsored the city's 1978 ordinance banning discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in housing and employment, and joined the statewide coalition that defeated the Briggs Initiative, which would have required California schools to fire gay teachers, by more than a million votes. That campaign, run by many organisers besides Milk, showed that a gay rights vote could be won at the ballot box.