Members and supporters of San Diego’s LGBTQ community held a June 6 press conference on shore near the USS Midway Museum to protest the renaming of a Navy ship that had been dedicated in honor of gay rights activist and icon Harvey Milk.
One outspoken critic calls the decision “homophobic.”
Milk was the first openly gay man elected to public office in California. In 1978, he was assassinated while serving as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Previously, he’d served in the Korean War and worked at Naval Station, San Diego. He was forced to accept an “other than honorable discharge” from the Navy for being a homosexual.
The USNS Harvey Milk was launched in San Diego in 2021. At the start of this year’s national Pride Month, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the renaming of the ship.
A statement from the Department of Defense said the change was “to ensure that the names attached to all DOD installations and assets are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, our nation’s history, and the warrior ethos.” A new name for the ship has not been announced.
The local LGBTQ community is outraged.
“San Diego’s veterans, LGBTQ-plus and otherwise, deserve better than this insult,” San Diego City Councilmember Stephen Whitburn says. “Our LGBTQ veterans fought and bled for this country. Some of them never came home. Now their service is being disrespected.”
Whitburn says the anger directed at Hegseth’s dictum is not just about a ship.
“It’s about every veteran whose story is buried, every sailor who’s had to lie to serve, every young LGBTQ-plus American who deserves to see themselves honored,” he says.
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria says making the announcement during Pride Week is “disgraceful and mean.” He notes that as far as he’s concerned, the name will stay as is, even after Milk’s moniker is removed from the John Lewis-class oiler ship.
“We will not rename the street in Hillcrest or the plaque in Balboa Park honoring Harvey Milk,” Gloria says. “We will think of 100 other things to name after him. I serve in public office because of Harvey Milk. This is not trivial.”
Press conference emcee Nicole Murray-Ramirez was a personal friend of Milk. The local activist and frequent San Diego city committee appointee says both Hegseth and President Donald Trump are making a homophobic decision.
“It’s obvious the Secretary of Defense, at his Senate hearing, made it very clear that he was homophobic – that LGBT people should not serve in the military,” Murray-Ramirez says.
Prior to his Senate confirmation hearing, Hegseth wrote in his book, The War on Warriors, that the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and its repeal were a “gateway” and a “camouflage” for cultural changes that he says undermine military cohesion and effectiveness.
Several veterans who spoke at the press conference refuted Hegseth’s stated notion that “the single dumbest phrase in military history is our diversity is our strength…”
Murray-Ramirez says: “We’ve been spilling LGBTQ blood, as other Americans have, since the beginning of the Revolutionary War…Harvey was very much for peace but knew we had to defend our country. He believed every American should do their part, including himself.”
Milk’s memory should live on even as public policy seems to be regressing, Murray-Ramirez says.
“We will never be erased,” he says. “We are never ever going back into the closet.”
California Assemblymember and former San Diego City Councilmember Chris Ward made a direct plea to the Trump Administration to “reverse course” on the renaming of the Milk ship.
Susan Davis, who represented California’s 53rd congressional district for 20 years before retiring in 2021, hopes the decision can be reversed, but isn’t clear if it can be.
“Our colleagues are working on it and letting everybody know San Diegans are angry about it,” she says. “The best thing to do is not do anything. Leave it the way it is.”
Asked if she feels Milk exemplifies a warrior ethos, she nods.
“We all define strengths differently,” she says. “My definition of strength is people who stand up for what they believe. That describes Harvey Milk.” SDSun
UPDATE: New legislation has been introduced to prevent the renaming of Navy ships.
