The U.S. Navy, executing on orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, removed the name of gay rights icon Harvey Milk from one of its ships.
“I am pleased to officially announce that the Department of the Navy is renaming the fleet replenishment oiler formerly known as the USNS Harvey Milk to the USNS Oscar V. Peterson,” Hegseth said in a June 27 announcement. “We are taking the politics out of ship naming.”
Stuart Milk, nephew of Harvey Milk and founder of the Harvey Milk Foundation, called the decision — which came on the last weekend of Pride Month — “petty and dishonest,” noting his uncle served honorably during wartime as a commissioned officer.
“Neither the bullets that took his life nor the stripping of his name from this ship will stop my uncle‘s message of hope — unashamed and unafraid — from reaching all that yearn for acceptance and love across the globe,” Stuart Milk said in a statement.
Harvey Milk was assassinated in 1978, not long after winning a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to become the first out gay man elected to public office in California. He resigned from the Navy in 1955, forced to accept an “other than honorable” discharge rather than be court-martial for his sexual orientation.
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told reporters that countless sailors and veterans found Milk’s name on the ship “abhorrent,” a sentiment Hegseth alluded to in his statement.
“People want to be proud of the ship they’re sailing in and so we’re renaming it after a Navy Chief,” said Hegseth.
Meanwhile, the Log Cabin Republicans did not put out a statement on the ship’s renaming, prompting Stuart Milk to quote another slain civil rights leader.
“To all the openly LGB appointees of the Trump administration, let me remind you of this famous MLK quote, ‘In the end, we will not remember the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.’”
RELATED
Stuart Milk: Renaming Navy Ship ‘Antithetical’ To Warrior Spirit
Navy Planning to Scrub Gay Rights Leader’s Name Off Ship
Photo credit: Ted Sahl, Kat Fitzgerald, Patrick Phonsakwa, Lawrence McCrorey, Darryl Pelletier, Wikimedia Commons.
