California leaders denounced studies Tuesday that the Trump administration is making ready to strip the identify of slain homosexual rights chief Harvey Milk from a naval ship honoring his legacy, calling it a slap within the face for the LGBTQ+ group simply as Pleasure month begins.
Milk was elected as a San Francisco supervisor within the Seventies, turning into one of many first brazenly homosexual elected officers within the nation. After he was assassinated in San Francisco Metropolis Corridor in 1978, he turned an icon of the homosexual rights motion, with photographs of his face turning into synonymous with the battle for homosexual rights.
Milk had served within the Navy previous to turning into an activist and political determine, and LGBTQ+ advocates and repair members fought for years to have his legacy formally acknowledged by the Navy.
The outlet Navy.com first reported Tuesday afternoon that Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth had ordered the Navy to rename the USNS Harvey Milk, an oiler in-built San Diego as a part of a sequence of vessels named for civil rights leaders. It was launched in 2021.
The Pentagon wouldn’t affirm or deny that the ship can be renamed.
In an announcement to The Instances, chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell mentioned Hegseth “is dedicated to making sure that the names connected to all [Department of Defense] installations and belongings are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, our nation’s historical past, and the warrior ethos,” and that “any potential renaming(s) might be introduced after inside evaluations are full.”
The Pentagon wouldn’t say whether or not such a evaluation had been launched for the USNS Harvey Milk. The Navy referred inquiries to the Pentagon.
The elimination of Milk’s identify can be in step with a broader push by Hegseth and different leaders within the Trump administration to take away formal acknowledgments of queer rights and different applications or messages selling range, fairness and inclusion throughout the federal authorities.
Leaders in California — the place Milk is usually hailed as a hero — had been fast to denounce the thought of stripping his identify from the vessel.
Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on the social media platform X that Trump’s “assault on veterans has hit a brand new low.”
San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk speaks to reporters in October 1978, weeks earlier than he was assassinated.
(James Palmer / Related Press)
Trump and Hegseth have additionally issued a sweeping ban on transgender folks serving within the navy.
“Harvey Milk wasn’t only a civil rights icon — he was a Korean Conflict fight veteran whose commander known as him ‘excellent,’” Newsom mentioned. “Stripping his identify from a Navy ship received’t erase his legacy as an American icon, but it surely does reveal Trump’s contempt for the very values our veterans combat to guard.”
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) echoed Newsom together with her personal touch upon X.
“Our navy is probably the most highly effective on the planet — however this spiteful transfer doesn’t strengthen our nationwide safety or the ‘warrior’ ethos,” she wrote. “It’s a shameful, vindictive erasure of those that fought to interrupt down boundaries for all to chase the American Dream.”
State Sen. Scott Wiener, who’s homosexual and as soon as represented the identical district as Milk on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, mentioned in an interview with The Instances that the transfer was all “a part of Trump’s systematic marketing campaign to eradicate LGBTQ folks from public life.”
“They need us to go away, to return within the closet, to not be a part of public life,” Wiener mentioned. “And we’re not going wherever.”
After graduating from school, Milk enlisted within the Navy in 1951 and was stationed in San Diego. In accordance with the Harvey Milk Basis, he resigned on the rank of lieutenant junior grade in 1955 “after being formally questioned about his sexual orientation.”
He moved to San Francisco in 1972, opened a digicam store on Castro Road, and shortly bought into politics — rallying the rising native homosexual group to combat for rights and construct strategic alliances with different teams, together with organized labor and town’s massive Asian and Pacific Islander group.
Milk was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1977, and helped lead efforts to defeat a 1978 poll initiative that will have barred homosexual and lesbian folks from instructing in public colleges statewide — a significant political win for the LGBTQ+ group.
That very same 12 months, Milk was assassinated alongside Mayor George Moscone at Metropolis Corridor by former Supervisor Dan White. His killing cemented his standing as an icon of the homosexual rights motion.
Wiener known as Milk “an absolute hero” who “died for our group” and deserves the consideration of getting a naval vessel named after him.
“A bunch of LGBTQ veterans labored for years and years to realize this objective of naming a ship for Harvey, and to have that taken away so casually, proper throughout Pleasure month, is heartbreaking and painful,” Wiener mentioned.
Eradicating his identify would imply greater than scrubbing a stenciling off the facet of a ship, Wiener mentioned, “particularly now with the assaults on our group, and so many younger LGBTQ folks [seeing] a lot negativity in the direction of our group.”
Milk was a “very seen position mannequin for younger queer folks, and he gave folks hope in a approach that hadn’t occurred earlier than from any high-profile queer chief, and he was murdered due to his visibility and management for our group,” Wiener mentioned, and for younger queer folks right this moment “to see the identify of a homosexual man on the facet of a navy vessel, it’s very, very highly effective.”
U.S. officers first introduced in 2016 {that a} ship can be named for Milk, in addition to for abolitionist Sojourner Reality, Chief Justice of the USA Earl Warren, Atty. Gen. Robert F. Kennedy, suffragist Lucy Stone and U.S. Rep. John Lewis.
At an occasion marking the beginning of development on the ship in 2019, Milk’s nephew Stuart Milk mentioned the naming of the ship after his uncle “sends a worldwide message of inclusion” that didn’t simply say the U.S. will “tolerate everybody,” however that “we rejoice everybody.”
