June 3 (UPI) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the U.S. Navy to rename one of its ships, honoring the late gay rights activist Harvey Milk, as Pride month gets underway.
The Office of the Secretary of the Navy was instructed to rename the oiler ship USNS Harvey Milk, according to a memorandum reviewed by military.com and confirmed by ABC News and CBS News. A defense official confirmed the timing of the announcement during Pride month was intentional.
According to the memo, the reason for renaming the ship is to provide “alignment with president and SECDEF objectives and SECNAV priorities of reestablishing the warrior culture.”
While a new name for the ship was not revealed, Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan are expected to announce the ship’s new moniker aboard the Navy’s oldest commissioned ship, the USS Constitution, on June 13, according to the memo.
The USNS Harvey Milk was the first Navy ship to be named after an openly gay person. The ship is a John Lewis-class oiler, a group of ships named after prominent civil rights leaders. It was officially named in 2016 at a ceremony in San Francisco, before it was built, and was launched from San Diego Bay in November 2021.
Milk served as a lieutenant in the Navy during the Korean War. He received an other-than-honorable discharge and resigned, instead of facing a court martial over his homosexuality.
Milk became the first openly gay person in the country to be elected to public office when he won a San Francisco supervisor seat in 1977. Milk and Mayor George Moscone were both assassinated a year later. Milk became a San Francisco and LGBTQ icon, and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
The renaming of USNS Harvey Milk would not be the first time the Navy has renamed a ship. In 2023, a Congressionally mandated commission changed the names of two vessels as they removed Confederate ties throughout the military. The USS Chancellorsville was changed to USS Robert Smalls and the research ship USNS Maury became USNS Marie Tharp.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell confirmed Tuesday that changes were underway for several other ships.
“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,” Parnell said in a statement. “Any potential renaming will be announced after internal reviews are complete.”
Among those ships being considered for renaming are the USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, USNS Harriet Tubman and USNS Cesar Chavez, according to CBS News.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the decision to rename the ships “shameful.”
“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,” Pelosi wrote Tuesday in a post on X.
“Our military is the most powerful in the world — but this spiteful move does not strengthen our national security or the ‘warrior’ ethos,” she added. “Instead, it is a surrender of a fundamental American value: to honor the legacy of those who worked to build a better country.”
