Renaming the ‘Harvey Milk’ Exposes Culture-War Fault Lines
Did the ship's moniker unite us as Americans, or divide us on culture-war fault lines?
I can’t deny that ordering the Navy to rename the USNS Harvey Milk at the start of Pride Month shows a certain animus toward gay people/homosexuality (in the LGBTQ+ mix) on the part of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Milk, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, was a gay activist who became one of the first openly gay elected officials in the U.S. He was assassinated in 1978.
While in the U.S. Navy for four years, Milk served during the Korean War on a submarine rescue ship and then as a diving instructor. He was issued an “other than honorable discharge” in 1955 after his superiors learned he was a homosexual, the New York Times reports.
A brief digression: In the past, Hegseth has said he opposed gays in the military, but Trump made clear he wasn’t going there – while ordering transgendered people ineligible for service.
I’ve written on transgender service members elsewhere (but briefly, if you’re on cross-sex hormones, you can’t be deployed – just like diabetics on insulin aren’t eligible for service; and if you self-identify as trans but haven’t physically transitioned, your excludible for all the reasons why we don’t allow men and women to be naked together in shared spaces).
But back to gays. I believe military symbolism should be limited to what unites us as Americans, not what divides us on culture-war fault lines. While a gay (or LGBTQ+) person might appreciate serving on the Harvey Milk, how would a traditionally religious person feel about it? We have a right to equality under the law in our relationships, but we don’t have a right to require others to endorse homosexual relationships.
And then there is the issue of Milk’s age-discordant sexual relationship with a 16-year-old boy with substance issues, as reported by Milk’s friend Randy Shilts in his biography “The Mayor of Castro Street.” This fact is noted in all the “conservative” media reports and in none of the “liberal” media reports I’ve seen.
Whatever you may think about a 16-year-old’s right to self-agency, and despite the misreporting from the right calling this pedophilia, it’s still problematic for a lot of people who are not “bigots.”
Others are free to disagree, but that’s my take.
Addendum: Right-Wing Anti-Gay Bile
Right-wing influencer Matt Walsh crosses the line into ant-gay invective when discusses renaming the “Harvey Milk.”
I understand conservative reaction to LGBTQ+ wokiness, but to deny the criminalization, discrimination and social ostracism that homosexuals suffered through shows that bigotry toward gay people is still potent on the right, along with racism and anti-Semitism.
From his video, 11 minutes in, Wash claims:
“He [Milk] was a champion of the quote gay rights movement, and what good has come of that exactly? In what way has the quote gay rights movement improved society? Look around at society right now what area can you point to and say “Oh yeah, that is better now right?" Like people's lives are better in this area because of this person and because of this movement. I don't think you can do that.”
So you have Walsh’s complete lack of awareness of what gay lives are like, and especially were like under sodomy laws, conversion therapies (the real kind), mainstream religious denunciations of our humanity, and intense, daily, all-encompassing family and social ostracization.
Then Walsh continues with a straw-man argument:
“Every leftist will tell you that Harvey Milk deserves to be honored and remembered more than somebody like Columbus. Columbus, who is responsible for one of the great achievements in the history of Western civilization. Our entire civilization looks different in in a in fundamental ways we can't even conceive of if Columbus didn't exist.”
Well sure, Harvey Milk wasn’t Christopher Columbus. But hardly every naval ship or military installation is named for a Columbus. Most are often named for people who are otherwise unknown to the vast majority.
Does Walsh think this is actually a convincing line of argument? Apparently so, and so do his fawning, equally or even-more-homophobic right-wing commenters.
So we have the woke LGBTQ+ left and the still potent anti-gay right, and actual gay and lesbian people caught in the crossfire.
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Should the Military and Federal Agencies Celebrate LGBTQ Pride?
Lately, I have been seeing a lot of discussions in LGBTQ online groups decrying the ending of LGBTQ Pride commemorations and Pride Month celebrations in the military and federal government offices, and the State Department’s ordering that only the U.S. flag be flown
I’m an older gay man and technically a Navy veteran. I served two years of my six year enlistment before entering college as an NROTC Midshipman at Northwestern University. During my Junior year a fellow midshipman learned I was gay and reported me. Apparently I was the first outed gay midshipman, my case went clear on up to Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy John Lehman and I was duly processed out of the Navy. I never understood why they named a ship after Harvey Milk. Although as a gay man, I admired his being the first openly gay man elected to office and was saddened at his assassination and angered that his killer got off with a ridiculous sentence based on the infamous “Twinkie Defense” I never understood the reasoning accept pure politics. I could come up with a list of more worthy contenders that have never been so honored. I’m no fan of the President but when I learned of the name change I was not overly concerned…it was just some rather small craft in the Navy’s fleet anyway.