The U.S. Navy held a ceremony on Saturday christening and launching a ship in San Diego that commemorates LGBT activist and icon Harvey Milk.
“The secretary of the Navy needed to be here today not just to amend the wrongs of the past but to give inspiration to all of our LGBTQ community leaders who served in the Navy, in uniform today and in the civilian workforce as well too and to tell them that we’re committed to them in the future,” Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said during the ceremony.
Milk, who served as a diving officer in the Navy during the Korean War, had been forced to leave the military branch because he was gay. He later became the first openly gay politician in California to be elected after he joined the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in the late 1970s.
A year after he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, he was killed by his colleague Dan White.
Then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus in 2016 made a decision that Milk and five other human rights and civil rights icons would have their names used for six oil tankers that were built, according to The Associated Press.
Honoring the late human rights activist, the Navy commemorated a John Lewis -class replenishment oil tanker as USNS Harvey Milk on Saturday.
“Our force is stronger for the service of the many great members of the LGBTQ community who wear our uniform or work in our civilian ranks around the world and around the clock,” Del Toro said.
“Today we’re celebrating something much bigger than tolerance. What we’re celebrating today is that the Navy not only recognizes but honors those. So there’s a difference between tolerance and celebration,” Stuart Milk, a nephew of Harvey Milk and co-founder of the Harvey Milk Foundation, said during the ceremony.
“So this Navy ship sends an important message to the world,” he added.
I read recently that China is building mock-ups of US Navy ships and running exercises to sink them. I bet this one gets added to their inventory fairly quickly.
This woke shit is going to get us killed
What better to weaken a military by putting mentally challenged transgenders in charge! What a wonderful strategy.
I don’t wish for any harm to ever come to our brave servicemen in any circumstances. This ship on the other hand probably would make a nice coral reef.
Fat ,Happy, woke, and gay as all hell . My God
I bet he was a good " diving officer ".
The murder of Harvey Milk–quite some time ago–was certainly indefensible.
But why, pray tell, should we feel obligated to “give inspiration to all of [the] LGBTQ community leaders”?
This gives the Navy a chance to have have an GAY crew on these ships ,separate from the others. Hopefully, here to be queer could be part of the crew.
Did it bother you op when Trump appointed the FIRST OPENLY GAY American to run the nations intelligence………
Just as with the myriad threads posted here on debt and deficit spending now that the Democratic Party is back in power, that didn’t bother Trumpers one bit as he signed the BIGGEST BUDGET DEFICITS IN AMERICAN HISTORY and as the national debt swelled from 19.8 trillion to 27 trillion during his brief presidency ……
Pure hypocrisy
Trumps hired him because of a skill not because of a sex life… democrats appointees are hired because of their sex color gender intersection… which is why China is building fake American war ships to attack. Because Democrats are gay
It was indefensible. And why shouldn’t he receive the honor. Or did you have a problem with Trump’s political appointee who was the FIRST openly gay man to head the nation’s intelligence who had ZERO experience in intelligence…
People never seem to care about political appointments until it happens in the party that they don’t like….
Naming a ship after someone doesn’t endanger national security like appointing someone to head up intelligence with no intelligence (history)……
Don’t worry about that, congress has been ignoring the Pentagon’s warning on that for 18 years….
Only a little humor, lighten up. I would like to see all appointments made on on qualifications, not raced based quotas or sexual idenity.
Your argument is based upon tu quoque reasoning. And I truly do not admire that.
The naming of the ship was merely an act in political correctness. It amounted to a tacit mea culpa for the navy’s view of homosexuals.
And I find that to be offensive.
Well perhaps you can prove your claim that it is nothing more than political correctness. Otherwise I don’t care if you are offended that a naval ship was named after a man with a good standing military record, who fought for this country, something you seem normally to admire, only to be senselessly murdered.
More offensive was Trump’s political appointment of an unqualified man to head our nations intelligence, a serious security risk….
It was just a matter of time, I suppose.
I find no significant correlation with what Donald Trump may have done. (As I have noted previously, tu quoque reasoning really does not carry any weight with me.)
And just how often do we name ships after sailors who merely had “a good standing military record”–yet did nothing of outstanding significance to earn the honor?
When Fox News announced Trump’s pic to head the national 16 intelligence agencies, I’m sure they didn’t point out that he didn’t have any qualifications or experience with the level of intelligence or of running a big bureaucracy as such. And they likely didn’t mention that he used his position to advocate for gay rights, as their audience wouldn’t appreciate that either……SO, it’s no surprise that you may not be aware of it….
Otherwise, here’s a little bit for you on the navy’s history of naming ships….
In 1969, a Navy panel decreed that warships would no longer be named after living persons.[1] That lasted until 1974, when President Richard Nixon announced the naming of an aircraft carrier after United States Representative Carl Vinson.[1] Since then, ships such as the Arleigh Burke , Bob Hope , Jimmy Carter , Ronald Reagan , George H.W. Bush , and Gabrielle Giffords have been named for people still alive at the time.
At this point this country is so far gone it’s better it’s allowed to implode and from the fallout we can hopefully rebuild it.