Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth introduced on June 27, 2025, that the USNS Harvey Milk can be renamed the USNS Oscar V. Peterson, stripping the Navy’s first vessel honoring an brazenly homosexual determine. Hegseth framed the transfer as depoliticizing ship naming, emphasizing Peterson’s Medal of Honor for heroism throughout WWII, the place he saved the USS Neosho through the Battle of the Coral Sea, dying from extreme burns.
Critics, together with Democratic leaders, condemned the timing throughout Pleasure Month as a “shameful, vindictive erasure”. The fleet oiler, initially christened in 2021 beneath a coverage naming ships after civil rights icons, will now commemorate a non-political “warrior,” aligning with the Trump administration’s push to eradicate DEI initiatives and restore “navy ethos“.
Harvey Milk’s legacy: Naval veteran turned civil rights pioneer
Earlier than his activism, Milk served as a Navy diving officer through the Korean Struggle however was compelled out in 1955 with an “apart from honorable” discharge after going through interrogation over his sexuality. Relocating to San Francisco, he opened a digital camera store within the Castro district, co-founded America’s first LGBTQ+ enterprise affiliation, and gained a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977.
As California’s first brazenly homosexual elected official, he handed landmark anti-discrimination legal guidelines, united labor unions with marginalized communities, and led the defeat of Proposition 6 (the Briggs Initiative), which sought to ban homosexual academics. His advocacy centered on empowering closeted people: “If a bullet enters my mind, let it shatter each closet door”.
Controversy and broader implications for navy recognition
The renaming intensifies political divides, with Navy paperwork revealing plans to reassess different vessels named for civil rights leaders like Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Milk’s nephew, Stuart Milk, beforehand declined to improve his uncle’s discharge standing to protect the “reminder” of historic discrimination—a nuance overshadowed by Hegseth’s concentrate on Peterson’s fight sacrifice. Whereas Republicans champion Peterson’s “warrior ethos,” Democrats argue that Milk’s posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009) and international recognition, together with faculties, stamps, and a California state vacation, replicate his enduring influence on equality. The ship’s rechristening underscores a cultural conflict: whether or not navy honor ought to completely valorize battlefield heroism or additionally embody leaders who expanded freedoms.
