Horn, Thomas: Impression of Moscone

Abstract

Thomas Horn: When Mayor Moscone became mayor, he changed really the attitude, I think, vis-à-vis the Gay community, and I remember the one time that I met him. It was 1977 or 1978 and I had just moved to San Francisco and I didn’t know very many people so I had joined a group called the Golden Gate Business Association which was a gay business association. Like a gay chamber of commerce. At one of the monthly meetings I saw the notice that Mayor Moscone was coming to speak. I thought that was pretty remarkable because I was from Albuquerque, New Mexico, and it wouldn’t have happened in Albuquerque. So I went and it was a remarkable evening, and he was happy to be there. He was paying as much attention, as much respect to that group as he would have had it been a hotel worker’s union or major donors. When the meeting was over he stuck around and shook hands with everybody that wanted to and talked with everybody that wanted to, and I went up and I remember introducing myself and shaking hands, and saying that it was a real wow moment for me because it wouldn’t have happened in Albuquerque. Jon Rubin: What was your impression just as a person? Thomas Horn: Well he was so happy, and people would give him hard questions. They would say “Well, why aren’t you doing this? Why isn’t this being done? Why isn’t the police department responding?” He would take the hard questions, but he wouldn’t come back with a hard answer. You knew that he wanted there to be progress, and that he wanted there to be evolution, but in the context of what San Francisco had been for the decades probably before, things don’t happen overnight, and he communicated that. But you could see that he was sympathetic to the issues that were being raised, and wanted to move San Francisco in that direction.

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Type

Interview

Relation

The Moscone oral history interviews are part of the George Moscone Collection, MSS 328.

Contributing Institution

Holt-Atherton Special Collections and Archives, University of the Pacific Library

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