The Navy reportedly desires to rename the USNS Harvey Milk

California leaders denounced reviews 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 overtly 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 pictures 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 Army.com first reported Tuesday afternoon that Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth had ordered the Navy to rename the USNS Harvey Milk, an oiler inbuilt 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 could be renamed.

In a press release to The Occasions, chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell mentioned Hegseth “is dedicated to making sure that the names connected to all [Department of Defense] installations and property are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, our nation’s historical past, and the warrior ethos,” and that “any potential renaming(s) will probably 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 could be consistent with a broader push by Hegseth and different leaders within the Trump administration to take away formal acknowledgments of queer rights and different packages or messages selling variety, 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 concept 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 before he was assassinated.

Trump and Hegseth have additionally issued a sweeping ban on transgender individuals serving within the navy.

“Harvey Milk wasn’t only a civil rights icon — he was a Korean Battle fight veteran whose commander known as him ‘excellent,’” Newsom mentioned. “Stripping his identify from a Navy ship gained’t erase his legacy as an American icon, but it surely does reveal Trump’s contempt for the very values our veterans battle to guard.”

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) echoed Newsom along with her personal touch upon X.

“Our navy is essentially 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 Occasions that the transfer was all “a part of Trump’s systematic marketing campaign to eradicate LGBTQ individuals 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 anyplace.”

After graduating from school, Milk enlisted within the Navy in 1951 and was stationed in San Diego. Based on 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 Avenue, and rapidly acquired into politics — rallying the rising native homosexual group to battle for rights and construct strategic alliances with different teams, together with organized labor and the town’s giant 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 may have barred homosexual and lesbian individuals from educating 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 distinction of getting a naval vessel named after him.

“A gaggle of LGBTQ veterans labored for years and years to attain this aim 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 aspect of a ship, Wiener mentioned, “particularly now with the assaults on our group, and so many younger LGBTQ individuals [seeing] a lot negativity in direction of our group.”

Milk was a “very seen function mannequin for younger queer individuals, and he gave individuals hope in a manner 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 individuals right this moment “to see the identify of a homosexual man on the aspect of a navy vessel, it’s very, very highly effective.”

U.S. officers first introduced in 2016 {that a} ship could 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 world message of inclusion” that didn’t simply say the U.S. will “tolerate everybody,” however that “we rejoice everybody.”