Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday that he renamed a Navy oiler ship that previously honored a gay rights activist to don the name of a World War II hero.
Hegseth announced in a Friday X post that the U.S. Navy renamed the USNS Harvey Milk to the USNS Oscar V. Peterson. The ship’s new namesake won the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Second World War, as he helped save the USS Neosho at the cost of his own life.
“We are taking the politics out of ship naming,” Hegseth said in his post. “We’re not renaming the ship to anything political, this is not about political activists unlike the previous administration. Instead we are renaming the ship after a United States Navy Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient.”
The USNS Harvey Milk debuted its former name in August 2016 on the tail-end of the Obama administration, according to USNI News. Milk served in the Navy from 1951 to 1955 as a diving officer during the Korean War on the submarine rescue ship Kittiwaki.
When Milk was 33, he allegedly had a sexual relationship with 16-year-old Jack Galen McKinley, who Milk allegedly took in as a lover when he moved to San Francisco as a minor, according to a biography on Milk’s life titled “The Mayor of Castro Street.”
Milk was shot and killed in 1978 by Dan White, a rival of his in San Francisco City Hall at the time. The activist remains a revered figure among LGBT advocates, as he was the first openly gay man elected to public office in California.
The Pentagon told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the renaming effort will take approximately six months, at most.
“There was a review of all installations and assets conducted to ensure all installations and assets are reflective of the Commander in Chief’s priorities, the Nation’s history and the warrior ethos,” a U.S. official told the DCNF. “There are no plans to rename any other ships in this class.”
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