Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is renaming a Navy ship that bears the name of San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, arguably the most famous openly gay man to hold public office in U.S. history.
A defense official told Military.com, which first reported the news, that Hegseth's timing is intentional and meant to back up the Trump administration's message that "Pride month" is no longer recognized by the federal government.
Milk is considered an icon in the LGBT movement, which received from his friend, Army veteran Gilbert Baker, the design for the rainbow "Pride" flag.
The move to scrub Milk's name sparked fury among Democrats in California, including San Francisco career politician Nancy Pelosi.
"Our military is the most powerful in the world – but this spiteful move does not strengthen our national security or the ‘warrior’ ethos,” Pelosi wrote in a post on X. “It is a shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American Dream.”
Milk was elected to the San Francsico Board of Supervisors in 1977, becoming one of the first openly homosexual men to hold public office in the United States. Less than a year into the job, he was assassinated along with then-mayor George Moscone by a disgruntled ex-city supervisor.
Milk has been held up in recent years as a civil rights icon, with admirers overlooking his scandalous relationship with a 16-year-old boy.
"Harvey Milk was a pedophile,” Mary Rice Hasson, the Kate O’Beirne Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., wrote in a post on X. “This is the right thing to do," she added of Hegseth's move.
President Obama's Navy Secretary, Ray Mabus, originally announced plans to name a ship after Milk, a Navy veteran. Those plans did not come to fruition until the 2021, when the USNS Harvey Milk was formally launched on the Biden administration's watch.
The renaming is part of a broader effort by Trump to restore a "warrior ethos" at the Pentagon, which in recent years had become focused on celebrating particular identity groups.
"Secretary Hegseth is committed to ensuring 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," Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell added in a statement.
The Navy is also reviewing other ships named after civil rights leaders, including Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice, feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and abolitionist Harriet Tubman.
The vessels belong to the John Lewis-class of oiler ships named after John Lewis, the civil rights activist and former Democratic congressman.
No new ship names have been announced yet. Any renaming "will be announced after internal reviews are complete," the Pentagon said.
The Trump administration has said it will not make a proclamation celebrating "pride," and will instead honor June as "Title IX" month, a nod to the civil rights law that protects equal opportunity for women.
