Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the US Navy to strip the name of Harvey Milk — a controversial “gay rights” activist and former San Francisco politician — from a Navy ship, as part of the Trump administration’s push to restore the military’s “warrior ethos.”
The directive, disclosed in a Navy memo obtained by Military.com, cites the need for “alignment with president and SECDEF [secretary of defense] objectives and SECNAV [secretary of the Navy] priorities of reestablishing the warrior culture.”
Issued just days into “Pride Month,” the order targets the USNS Harvey Milk, a replenishment oiler named in 2016 during the Obama administration.
Milk, hailed for decades by Democrats as a pioneer of “LGBTQ rights,” has come under renewed scrutiny for disturbing details of his personal life.
In a biography by close friend Randy Shilts, Milk was documented as having several predatory relationships with underage boys, revealing a pattern of statutory rape. In one case, Milk had a relationship with a 16-year-old runaway boy, who committed suicide after his encounter with Milk.
Despite these revelations, Former President Barack Obama awarded Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, and the US Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in his honor in 2014.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who previously praised Milk as a symbol of “freedom,” condemned Hegseth’s order as a “shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American Dream” in a June 2 statement.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer echoed the criticism, calling the move “disgusting, blatant discrimination” in a post on X. He “served the U.S. Navy and his country honorably,” Schumer claimed.
Pentagon officials defended the renaming effort as consistent with a broader priority to refocus the military on national defense priorities.
“Secretary Hegseth is committed to ensuring that the names attached to all DOD [Department of Defense] installations and assets are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, our nation’s history, and the warrior ethos,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told Newsweek.
According to CBS News, the Harvey Milk vessel is one of several politically charged ship names now under review. Others reportedly on the list include ships named after Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Cesar Chavez, and Dolores Huerta.
As CatholicVote previously reported, Hegseth has made it a priority to eliminate “woke” initiatives and refocus the military on combat readiness and unit cohesion.
In January, he issued a directive halting the use of military resources for “cultural awareness months,” including “Pride Month.”
“Our unity and purpose are instrumental to meeting the Department’s warfighting mission,” the order stated. “Efforts to divide the force – to put one group ahead of another – erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution…. We are proud of our warriors and their history, but we will focus on the character of their service instead of their immutable characteristics.”
