In the latest move to eradicate wokeness from the United States military, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered US Navy ship be renamed so it no longer honors a gay rights activist. Springing into action, Navy Secretary John Phelan has assembled a working group to come up with a new name for what is now the USNS Harvey Milk, and they're expected to announce the new honoree by the end of the month.
"[Secretary Hegseth] is committed to ensuring that the names attached to all DOD installations and assets are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, our nation’s history, and the warrior ethos," said Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell. Pentagon sources tell various outlets the move was deliberately timed to coincide with Pride Month. Earlier this year, Hegseth summarized his campaign to overhaul the military's culture: “No more pronouns, no more climate change obsessions, no more emergency vaccine mandates, no more dudes in dresses."
The Harvey Milk is a replenishment oiler capable of hauling 156,000 barrels of petroleum products. With the news breaking as Pride Month commences, there's sure to be a backlash. The ship is a John Lewis-class oiler, one of several vessels in the class named after 'civil rights icons.' Other existing and future ships in the class are named after Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Robert F. Kennedy and Thurgood Marshall. Honorifics for Milk are doubly controversial, given claims in a biography by a San Francisco Chronicle reporter that Milk had a sexual relationship with a runaway 16-year-old boy.
Milk was himself a junior Navy officer serving on a submarine rescue ship during the Korean War. According to his nephew, Stuart Milk, Harvey was spotted in a park popular with gays. When confronted with an allegation he'd participated in a "homosexual act," Milk confessed, then signed an affidavit about having oral sex with many men. He was soon on the receiving end of a different kind of discharge -- an "other than honorable" one ejecting him from the Navy. In Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death, Lillian Faderman detailed Milk's gay exploits while in the service, in one passage noting, "Decked out in his navy uniform.
In 1977, Milk went on to become one of the country's first openly-gay elected officials by winning a San Francisco Board of Supervisors seat. A signature accomplishment was his successful sponsorship of a bill outlawing discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodation on the basis of sexual orientation. In 1978, he and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, a former member of the Board of Supervisors who'd cast the only dissenting vote against the bill.
The most notable incident in the Harvey Milk's history came as it was docked in San Francisco in March 2024, getting set to deploy, when pro-Palestinian protesters sprinted to the ship at a San Francisco port and chained themselves to the gangway in an attempt to thwart the loading of supplies.
While facing headwinds in federal courts, Hegseth and the Department of Defense have been earnestly battling wokism on another front -- seeking to identify and discharge trans service members. The Pentagon has also been eradicating all manner of policies, programs and communications that refer to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).
