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Navy launches ship named for LGBTQ leader Harvey Milk

By Brody Levesque OF THE LOS ANGELES BLADE, COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL LGBT MEDIA ASSOCIATION
ABOVE: The USNS Harvey Milk’s launch. Photo via NASSCO/Twitter.

The United States Navy christened and launched its latest John Lewis class of fleet replenishment oilers Saturday as the U.S. Naval Ship Harvey Milk slid down the ways at the General Dynamics-National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, NASSCO, shipyards into the waters of San Diego Bay.

The ship is named after slain openly gay LGBTQ+ rights activist and former San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, who along with LGBTQ+ ally Mayor George Moscone was assassinated by disgruntled former Supervisor Dan White, in their offices in San Francisco City Hall on November 27, 1978.

The time-honored christening ceremony with a bottle of champagne broken over the bow was executed by Paula Neira, the Clinical Program Director for John Hopkins Center for Transgender Health. Also in attendance at the ceremony was Stuart Milk, the late San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk’s nephew, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro and California State Senate President pro Tem, Senator Toni Atkins, whose Senate district includes the area of San Diego where the U.S. Navy’s sprawling naval base is located as well as the NASSCO shipyards.

Dignitaries also included Out San Diego city and county commissioner Nicole Murray Ramirez, San Diego’s openly gay Mayor Todd Gloria, Supervisor Milk’s campaign manager and advisor Anne Kronenberg and Chair of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors Nathan Fletcher.

Addressing the audience of attendees, Secretary Del Toro told them; “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.”

The Secretary then directly spoke to Milk’s sexual orientation and his being forced from naval service.

“For far too long, sailors like Lt. Milk were forced into the shadows or, worse yet, forced out of our beloved Navy,” he said. “That injustice is part of our Navy history, but so is the perseverance of all who continue to serve in the face of injustice.”

In 2016, then-Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus decided that six new fleet oilers scheduled to be built would be named after civil and human rights leaders.

Del Toro told Mabus, who attended the christening, that it was a courageous decision.

The Milk is a fleet oiler and will be assigned the tasks of replenishing fuel oil and dry goods to U. S. naval vessels at sea. The Milk is the second ship in the new John Lewis class of fleet oilers. The future USNS John Lewis (T-AO-205) , is named for the former civil rights leader and Georgia Congressman, and is also under construction at NASSCO San Diego.

The first six vessels in the Lewis class of fleet oilers are named after prominent civil rights activists and leaders, in addition to the USNS John Lewis (T-AO-205) are; USNS Harvey Milk (T-AO-206) – LGBT activist Harvey Milk; USNS Earl Warren (T-AO-207) – Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren; USNS Robert F. Kennedy (T-AO-208) – U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy; USNS Lucy Stone (T-AO-209) – Women’s rights activist Lucy Stone; USNS Sojourner Truth (T-AO-210) – Abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth.

Also addressing those in attendance, Stuart Milk, the co-founder and president of the Harvey Milk Foundation referring to his uncle’s naval service said;

“He has a less-than-honorable discharge. He was forced to resign because he was gay,” Stuart Milk said, adding that “we have to teach our history to prevent ourselves from going backwards and repeating it.”

Milk told the audience that although there is a process for reversing such discharges, he said it was important to not do that for his late uncle in order “to keep the memory of how we did not honor everyone in this very honorable service.”

Milk enlisted in the Navy in 1951 and attended the U.S. Navy Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island. By 1954 he was a lieutenant (junior grade) stationed at Naval Air Station Point Mugu, which during Milk’s tenure of service was the Naval Air Missile Test Center near Oxnard, California. He was serving as a diving instructor.

As the Bay Area Reporter wrote in an article in February 2020, Milk was given an “other than honorable” discharge from the U.S. Navy and forced to resign on February 7, 1955 rather than face a court-martial because of his homosexuality, according to a trove of naval records obtained by the paper. It contradicted an archival document housed in the San Francisco Public Library’s San Francisco History Center that authors of several recent biographies of Milk had used to claim that Milk was honorably discharged from the Navy.

https://twitter.com/SenToniAtkins/status/1457037533548670979

Watch the ceremony below:

 

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