California leaders reported Tuesday that the Trump administration is preparing to strip the murdered gay rights leader Harvey Milk from a naval vessel celebrating his legacy, calling it a slap in the face of the LGBTQ+ community, just as Pride Month begins.
Milk was elected as a San Francisco supervisor in the 1970s, becoming one of the nation’s first openly gay elected officials. After being assassinated at San Francisco City Hall in 1978, he became a symbol of the gay rights movement, and the image of his face became synonymous with the struggle for gay rights.
Milk served in the Navy before becoming an activist or politician, but LGBTQ+ supporters and service members had been fighting for many years to ensure his legacy was officially recognized by the Navy.
Autolet Military.com first reported Tuesday afternoon that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegses ordered the Navy to rename the USNS Harvey Milk, an OILER built in San Diego as part of a series of vessels named after civil rights leaders. It was released in 2021.
The pentagon does not confirm or deny that the ship’s name will be changed.
In a statement to the Times, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said Hegses is “working to make sure everything is attached.” [Department of Defense] The establishment and assets reflect the commander’s priorities, the history of our nation, and the spirit of the warriors.
The Department of Defense will not say whether such a review has been launched for USNS Harvey Milk. The Navy introduced the questions to pentagons.
The removal of milk name is in line with a broader push by Hegseth and other Trump administration leaders to remove formal approvals for queer administrations and other programs and remove messages that promote diversity, equity and inclusion across the federal government.
The California leader – milk is often welcomed as a hero – quickly denounced the idea of stripping his name from the container.
Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on social media platform X that Trump’s “attacks on veterans have reached new lows.”
San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk speaks to a reporter a few weeks before his assassination in October 1978.
(James Palmer/Applications)
Trump and Heggs also issued a ban that was wiped out to transgender people serving in the military.
“Harvey Milk wasn’t merely a civil rights symbol. He was a veteran of the Korean War, and his commander called him “exceptional,” Newsom said. “Striking his name from a naval ship will not erase his legacy as an American icon, but it reveals Trump’s light emptying against the value veterans fight for protection.”
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) repeated Newsom in his comments about X.
“Our military is the most powerful in the world, but this malicious move does not reinforce our national security or the spirit of “warriors,” she writes. “It’s a shameful, vindious erase of those who fought to break the barriers in order for everyone to pursue American dreams.”
State Sen. Scott Winner, who is gay and once represented the same district as Milk on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, said the move was all “part of Trump’s systematic campaign to remove LGBTQ people from public life.”
“They want us to go back to the closet and back inside the closet, not part of our public life,” Wiener said. “And we’re not going anywhere.”
After graduating from university, Milk joined the Navy in 1951 and was stationed in San Diego. According to the Harvey Milk Foundation, he resigned in 1955 in middle school grades after being officially asked about his sexual orientation.
He moved to San Francisco in 1972, opening a camera shop on Castro Street, and quickly joined politics. They brought together growing local gay communities to fight for organised labor and rights with other groups, including the city’s large Asian and Pacific islander communities, and built strategic alliances.
Milk was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1977 and led an effort to beat the 1978 voting initiative that banned gay and lesbians from education throughout the state. This is a major political victory for the LGBTQ+ community.
That same year, Milk was assassinated at City Hall by former director Dan White along with Mayor George Moscon. His murder solidified his status as a symbol of the gay rights movement.
Winner is known as the “absolute hero” milk “dead for our community” and is honored to have a naval ship named after him.
“A group of LGBTQ veterans have worked for many years to achieve this goal of naming ships for Harvey, and casually taking that into a month of pride can be heartbreaking and painful,” Wiener said.
Removing his name means more than scrubing the stencil from the side of the ship, Wiener said: [seeing] Very negative about our community. ”
Milk “is a very visible role model for young queer people, he gave people hope in ways that didn’t happen from prominent queer leaders, and he was murdered for his visibility and leadership in our community,” Wiener said, “for the young queer people today to see the names of gay people on the side of the military.”
US officials announced in 2016 that the ship would be named after milk and after abolitionist Sojourner Truth, Supreme Justice Attai Earl Warren. General Robert F. Kennedy, suffragist Lucy Stone and US Rep. John Lewis.
At an event marking the start of the ship’s construction in 2019, Milk’s ne Stuart Milk said the naming of the ship after her uncle said not only “sent a global message of inclusion”, but “tolerate everyone”, but “we celebrate everyone.”
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