The Department of Defense is observing LGBTQ+ Pride Month by stripping the name of gay rights leader Harvey Milk from a Navy ship.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the name change, Military.com reports. The timing during Pride Month is intentional, an official with the department told the outlet. The official announcement is set for June 13, but Military.com obtained a memo from the Office of the Secretary of the Navy that outlined plans to rename the ship. The Defense Department source said Hegseth instructed Navy Secretary John Phelan to implement the renaming in keeping with the restoration of so-called warrior culture.
The USNS Harvey Milk was launched in November 2021, when Joe Biden was president. It was the first military ship named after an out gay person. It is a replenishment oiler, bringing fuel to other ships at sea. It was the second in a group of oilers named after civil rights icons, the first being the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis. Milk’s name was selected in 2016 by then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, and the oiler was built by General Dynamics.
The Navy is also recommending the renaming of other ships in this group, CBS News reports. They include USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, USNS Harriet Tubman, USNS Dolores Huerta, USNS Lucy Stone, USNS Cesar Chavez, and USNS Medgar Evers. Renaming of ships is rare, and the documents reviewed by the news outlets don’t say what the new names will be.
Milk, a gay man, was the first out member of the LGBTQ+ community to be elected to public office in California and one of the first in the nation. He was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977 and had an extensive career in activism, including a successful fight against a California ballot measure that would have barred gays and lesbians from teaching in the state’s public schools. He and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were assassinated in 1978 by a disgruntled former city supervisor, Dan White.
Milk had joined the Navy in 1951 after graduating from college. He attended Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, and later was a diving instructor in San Diego. In 1954, he was threatened with a court-martial for committing a “homosexual act,” but he decided to resign rather than face trial. He received an “other than honorable” discharge and left the Navy with the rank of lieutenant junior grade. In 2021, the Navy asked his nephew Stuart Milk, who has carried on his uncle’s legacy as an LGBTQ+ rights activist, if he wanted the discharge upgraded, but Stuart Milk said it should stand as a reminder of the unfair treatment gay service members and others received.
The renaming of the USNS Harvey Milk and other ships reflects the hostility of Hegseth and Donald Trump to the LGBTQ+ community and diversity in general. For instance, shortly after being confirmed as Defense secretary, Hegseth issued a directive banning staff from spending work time or resources on identity celebrations such as Pride Month, Black History Month, and Women’s History Month. Plus the Defense Department is expelling transgender people from the military.
“This is absolutely shameful. Harvey Milk was a hero. He was a veteran who served our country. He died for our community,” gay California state Sen. Scott Weiner said on social media. “Brave LGBTQ veterans worked for years to achieve the naming of a ship for Harvey. Now Trump & Hegseth are wiping it away due to straight up bigotry. They’re determined to erase LGBTQ people from all aspects of public life.”
U.S. Rep. and House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi issued a statement to CBS News denouncing the renaming plans. “The reported decision by the Trump Administration to change the names of the USNS Harvey Milk and other ships in the John Lewis-class is a shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American Dream,” said Pelosi, who represents a San Francisco district.
“Our military is the most powerful in the world — but this spiteful move does not strengthen our national security or the ‘warrior’ ethos,” she continued. “Instead, it is a surrender of a fundamental American value: to honor the legacy of those who worked to build a better country.”
While the Navy may be erasing Milk, his legacy will endure elsewhere. The Harvey Milk Foundation, established by Stuart Milk, works for LGBTQ+ rights around the world. May 22, Harvey Milk’s birthday, is observed as Harvey Milk Day in California. And there are plans to honor him and other LGBTQ+ leaders with improvements to Harvey Milk Plaza in San Francisco.
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