The life story of the visionary and charismatic political activist Harvey Milk. Milk was the first openly gay candidate ever elected to political office in California, but after only serving eleven months as city supervisor of San Francisco, Milk, along with the popular mayor George Moscone, was assassinated by deranged ex-supervisor Dan White. White's unusually lenient sentencing for double murder (five and one-half years with no psychiatric counseling) based in part on his now infamous "Twinkie defense" (junk food altered his brain chemistry), provoked violence and rioting from an outraged public.