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The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has formally announced that the US navy supply vessel named in honor of the gay rights activist Harvey Milk is to be renamed after Oscar V Peterson, a chief petty officer who received the congressional Medal of Honor for his actions in the Battle of the Coral Sea in the second world war.
“We are taking the politics out of ship naming,” Hegseth announced on Friday on X.
In an accompanying video-statement, Hegseth added: “We are 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 congressional Medal of Honor recipient.”
“People want to be proud of the ship they are sailing in,” Hegseth added.
The move comes amid a widespread backlash against LGBTQ+ rights and issues in the US under the Trump administration, ranging from banning books associated with LGBTQ+ causes to reducing the rights of transgender people.
The oil-supply vessel had been named after the San Francisco gay rights activist, who was murdered in 1978 after serving as a city supervisor, dubbing himself the “Mayor of Castro Street”. He had served in the navy as a diving officer on a submarine rescue ship but resigned with an “other than honorable” discharge rather than be court-martialed for homosexuality.
Peterson served on the USS Neosho, a ship that was heavily damaged by Japanese dive bombers on 7 May 1942, during the Battle of the Coral Sea. In one bombing raid, Peterson and members of the repair party he led were severely wounded. But despite his injuries, he managed to close four steam line valves, suffering third-degree burns to his face, shoulders, arms and hands in the process.
But by closing the bulkhead valves, Peterson isolated the steam to the engine room and helped keep the ship operational.
In an announcement that appeared timed for the start of Pride month, Hegseth announced that Milk’s name was to be stripped from ship in early June. It had been named after the gay icon in 2016 by then-navy secretary Ray Mabus, who said at the time that the John Lewis-class of oilers would be named after leaders who fought for civil and human rights.
The move to strip Milk’s name from the ship triggered a backlash from the activist’s friends when it was first reported. “Yes, this is cruel and petty and stupid, and yes, it’s an insult to my community,” Cleve Jones, Milk’s close friend and an LGBTQ+ activist, previously told the Associated Press.
“I would be willing to wager a considerable sum that American families sitting around that proverbial kitchen table this evening are not going to be talking about how much safer they feel now that Harvey’s name is going to be taken off that ship,” he added to the news agency.
Milk’s nephew, Stuart Milk, told the AP that renaming the ship would become “a rallying cry not just for our community but for all minority communities”. He added: “I don’t think he’d be surprised, but he’d be calling on us to remain vigilant, to stay active.”
Elected officials, including the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, described the change as an attempt to erase the contributions of LGBTQ+ people and an insult to fundamental American values of honoring veterans.
“The right’s cancel culture is at it again. A cowardly act from a man desperate to distract us from his inability to lead the Pentagon,” Newsom said of Hegseth on the social media platform X.
