US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Maxwell Orlosky
- The Navy is changing the name of the USNS Harvey Milk to USNS Oscar V. Peterson.Milk was a gay rights movement icon and political figure.US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the Pentagon is "done" with political ship naming.
Announcing that the Defense Department is finished with "political" ship names, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in a video message Friday that the Navy ship honoring gay rights icon Harvey Milk has a new name.
The John Lewis-class replenishment oiler USNS Harvey Milk, a Navy logistics support ship that refuels other vessels and can also deliver supplies, is now named after Medal of Honor recipient Oscar V. Peterson, a chief petty officer who posthumously received the nation's highest honor for military valor in action.
Peterson led a repair party on the Cimarron-class fleet oiler USS Neosho afloat, which had been severely damaged by Japanese dive bombers during the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942.
His entire repair party was either killed or seriously wounded. Though gravely injured during the repair efforts, Peterson managed to close the bulkhead stop valves to keep the ship operational. The sailor later died of his injuries.
"People want to be proud of the ship they're sailing in," Hegseth said, calling Peterson's actions historic and heroic that kept with the traditions of the Navy rather than honoring politics and activism like the last administration.
USNS Harvey Milk was named in the final months of the Obama administration to honor civil rights icon who had served in the Navy before being forced out due to his sexual orientation. Milk had been a Navy diver.
He was a national icon within the gay rights movement and the first openly gay man to be elected into public office in California. As a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, he helped usher in a bill banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in housing, employment, and public accommodations. He was later assassinated for this bill in late 1978. Milk posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.
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The renaming comes at the tail-end of Pride Month, which is one of the identity celebration months that the US Department of Defense declared "dead" earlier this year. The announcement also comes just days after the 10-year anniversary of the federal legalization of gay marriage in the US through the Supreme Court Obergefell v. Hodges decision back in 2015.
USNS Harvey Milk was one of six ships dedicated to prominent civil rights leaders. Other figures honored with ship names include Sojourner Truth, John Lewis, and Robert F. Kennedy. When the ship was launched in 2021, then-Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said that the service needed to "not just to amend the wrongs of the past but to give inspiration to all of our LGBTQ community leaders."
"For far too long, sailors like Lt. Milk were forced into the shadows or, worse yet, forced out of our beloved Navy," Del Toro 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."
Since President Donald Trump again took office in January of this year, his administration has undertaken efforts to eliminate anything seen as affiliated with diversity, equity, and inclusion within DoD and across the federal government. That includes many projects, content, and efforts related to women, minorities, and members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Trump's Pentagon has also reversed efforts to rename Army bases honoring Confederate officers, bringing back the original names but with the odd catch that they now honor soldiers who happen to share last names with those Confederate officers. These include Army installations like Fort Benning, Fort Bragg, Fort Hood, and Fort Lee.
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The changes to the Army base names were originally a result of a 2021 Congressional mandate prohibiting the naming of military installations after Confederate personnel.
In his video message, Hegseth said the Pentagon was "taking the politics out of ship naming."
The names of US Navy vessels are typically picked by political appointees such as the Navy secretary. Historically, the conventions around naming have been left up to the secretary and shifted based on the administration's priorities and focuses. Ships have been named after presidents who did and didn't serve in uniform, civil rights activists, and other officials.
Renaming a Navy ship already in service is rare.
Some recent changes include renaming the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USNS Robert Smalls, which was originally USNS Chancellorsville after the Civil War battle, and the Pathfinder-class oceanographic survey ship USNS Marie Tharp, originally named the USNS Maury after Matthew Fontaine Maury, an oceanographer who resigned from the Navy to become a commander in the Confederate States Navy during the Civil War.
It's unclear exactly why Hegseth announced the name change for the Milk, as this role is typically done by the Navy secretary. Renaming a Navy vessel comes with costs of repainting, reprinting, new documentation, and other related fees. It's unclear how long that will take or how much it will cost.
The Navy didn't provide information on these matters when reached for comment.
