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The story concerns the life of Harvey Milk, a gay city supervisor in San Francisco, who was gunned down, along with George Moscone, the mayor, on November 27, 1978. Their killer was Dan White, a former policeman and fellow supervisor, who was convicted of the deed.
The opera begins with the killing of Milk and then flashes back to his childhood in New York, beginning with his trip as a fifteen-year-old by himself to the Metropolitan Opera, where he wonders about a group of "men without wives." When he follows them to Central Park, the youngster is entrapped and arrested by a plainclothes policeman, which leads him to confront his own sexuality and the hostility of others to those who are different, his fighting back, which is urged upon him by his friend Scott Smith and, ultimately, his murder by Dan White.
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