Defense Secretary and former Fox host Pete Hegseth said several weeks ago that the Navy supply vessel formerly known as the USNS Harvey Milk would get a new name because Milk was a gay civil rights leader. And he just announced the new name on social media.I am pleased to announce that the United States Navy is renaming the USNS Harvey Milk to the USNS Oscar V. Peterson, Hegseth wrote on X. We are taking the politics out of ship naming. Related Out lawmakers grill Pete Hegseth over decision to remove Harvey Milks name from Navy ship Democrats have called the removal cruel, unnecessary. and a waste of valuable time and resources. Milk became one of the first out gay people elected to public office when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Insights for the LGBTQ+ community Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more. Subscribe to our Newsletter today Earlier that decade, he helped lead the fight against the Briggs Initiative, which would have banned gay people from working in public schools in California. He is also known for his Hope Speech, where he implored a crowd during Pride in 1978 to come out to everyone they knew to fight the conspiracy of silence.He also served in the U.S. Navy as a diving officer on a submarine rescue ship during the Korean War. He was forced out of the military with a less-than-honorable discharge, facing court-martial because he was gay. He left with the rank of lieutenant junior grade.In 2016, the Navy announced that several new ships would be named after civil rights leaders, including one after Milk and others after leaders like suffragist Lucy Stone, abolitionist Sojourner Truth, racial justice champion John Lewis, Latina labor activist Dolores Huerta, womens rights suffragette Lucy Stone, Latino civil rights organizer Cesar Chavez, and Black soldier and civil rights activist Medgar Evers. This past June, nearly a decade later, Hegseth ordered those ships to be renamed because of the administrations opposition to diversity and civil rights. The ship will now be named for Oscar V. Peterson, a chief petty officer in the U.S. Navy who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Battle of the Coral Sea during World War II. Peterson was a white man who was married to a woman and did not identify publicly as LGBTQ+.Like so many LGBTQ+ service members of his generation, [Milk] faced discrimination from the very institutions he served with loyalty and courage, the group VoteVets said in a statement last month. To erase his name now during Pride Month is no innocent bureaucratic decision. Its part of Hegseths broader campaign to purge the military of anyone who doesnt fit his narrow, outdated vision.Milk was assassinated by former supervisor Dan White in late 1978. President Barack Obama honored Milk with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.