During the Prop 8 trial in California yesterday, plaintiff Paul Katami, a fitness manager, was asked why he didn’t think domestic partnerships were good enough. He replied with a metaphor of putting a Twinkie at the end of a treadmill and giving the person on the treadmill just one bite, reports Lisa Keen.

“I want that whole Twinkie,” Katami asserted.

There is of course a parallel here with the infamous “Twinkie defense” supposedly used by San Francisco supervisor Dan White during his trial for the murder of Harvey Milk. White’s lawyers implied that his high-sugar junk food diet may have exacerbated the depression that led to the murders. Subsequent coverage of the event made it sound more like the lawyers were arguing that his junk food consumption had led to a sugar-fueled rage; while not quite correct, the media played up the idea of a “Twinkie defense” and it stuck in the public mind.

Katami, in essence, is flipping things around and creating a “Twinkie offense.” I have to think this isn’t coincidental. Katami is a fitness instructor, and the idea of him wanting a Twinkie is a little unbelievable. Even if one grants him a junk food craving, he could have picked from any number of treats. Twinkies, however, have a special resonance in California gay history.

We’ll see if this trial gives them a better connotation.

(Image by Larry D. Moore, used under a Creative Commons ShareAlike License.)