SpaceWar.com - Your World At War
Pentagon announces renaming of ship that honored gay rights icon
Washington, June 27 (AFP) Jun 27, 2025
The US Navy is renaming a ship that honored gay rights icon and assassinated San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said on Friday.

"We are taking the politics out of ship naming. We're not renaming the ship to anything political," Hegseth said in a video posted on X, without explaining specifically why the change was being made to the "USNS Harvey Milk."

The ship, a 227-meter (744-foot) refueling vessel that was named in 2021, will now be named for Oscar V. Peterson, a Navy sailor who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for actions during World War II, Hegseth said.

The renaming of the ship was first reported earlier this month but the Pentagon said at the time that the change would only be announced after "internal reviews are complete."

Milk served as a US Navy diver at a time when there was a ban on homosexuality in the military.

One of the first openly gay politicians in America, Milk was elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, where he was instrumental in passing laws banning discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.

Months later, in 1978, Milk was shot dead along with mayor George Moscone by a disgruntled former city supervisor.

Milk's murder helped cement his reputation as a civil rights icon, and he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Since taking office, President Donald Trump and Hegseth have moved to ban transgender troops from the military and to dismantle diversity programs, arguing the measures undermine US military cohesion.


ADVERTISEMENT




Space News from SpaceDaily.com
China Focus: Chinese scientist details first planned Mars sample-return mission Tianwen 3
NASA says it will lose about 20 percent of its workforce
Building blocks of life found in distant star system suggest origins in interstellar space

24/7 Energy News Coverage
Trump administration expected to say greenhouse gases aren't harmful
MicroCarb satellite launches to map global carbon dioxide emissions from space
Rollable solar array by GalaxySpace redefines satellite compactness and power efficiency

Military Space News, Nuclear Weapons, Missile Defense
Airbus CO3D satellites begin mission to generate high precision global 3D map
BlackSky to supply satellite imagery and analytics for Latin American security operations
GovSat selects Thales Alenia Space to build secure satellite for military communications

24/7 News Coverage
First wildfire images reveal FireSat's unmatched detection capabilities
MetOp Second Generation satellite fully fuelled ahead of August launch
MicroCarb satellite launch marks new era in urban carbon tracking



All rights reserved. Copyright Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.