SAN DIEGO — A Navy ship named for slain homosexual rights chief Harvey Milk, who served 4 years within the Navy earlier than being compelled out, was christened and launched in San Diego Bay on Saturday.
The replenishment oiler USNS Harvey Milk slid down the shipyard methods after a bottle of champagne was smashed on the bow by former Navy officer Paula M. Neira, medical program director for the John Hopkins Heart for Transgender Well being.
Milk’s nephew, Stuart Milk, and Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro watched the normal ceremony.
“The secretary of the Navy wanted to be right here at the moment, not simply to amend the wrongs of the previous, however to offer inspiration to all of our LGBTQ neighborhood leaders who served within the Navy, in uniform at the moment and within the civilian workforce as nicely too, and to inform them that we’re dedicated to them sooner or later,” Del Toro mentioned.
Del Toro mentioned that, like many others, Milk needed to “masks that crucial a part of his life” whereas he served within the Navy.
“For much too lengthy, sailors like Lt. Milk have been compelled into the shadows or, worse but, compelled out of our beloved Navy,” Del Toro mentioned. “That injustice is a part of our Navy historical past, however so is the perseverance of all who proceed to serve within the face of injustice.”
Milk was one of many first brazenly homosexual candidates elected to public workplace. He was serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1978 when a former political colleague, Dan White, assassinated him and Mayor George Moscone at Metropolis Corridor.
In 2016, then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus determined that six new oilers scheduled to be constructed could be named after civil and human rights leaders. Along with Milk, they embody Sojourner Reality, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Robert F. Kennedy, suffragist Lucy Stone and Rep. John Lewis of Georgia.
Del Toro informed Mabus, who attended the christening, that it was a brave determination.
“Ship names are essential as a result of they specific what we worth as a Navy and as a nation and talk these values across the globe in each port of name,” Del Toro mentioned.
Stuart Milk, co-founder and president of the Harvey Milk Basis, thanked Mabus for offering the household particulars of his uncle’s discharge from the Navy.
“He has a less-than-honorable discharge. He was compelled to resign as a result of he was homosexual,” Stuart Milk mentioned, including that “we’ve got to show our historical past to stop ourselves from going backwards and repeating it.”
Though there’s a course of for reversing such discharges, he mentioned it was essential to not try this for his late uncle so as “to maintain the reminiscence of how we didn’t honor everybody on this very honorable service.”
The naval custom of getting ship “sponsors” went to Neira and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who was unable to attend.
Feinstein was in San Francisco Metropolis Corridor when Milk and Moscone have been shot after which made the beautiful announcement of their deaths. The ship “will carry a wealthy legacy of civic management,” Feinstein mentioned in a letter learn on the ceremony.
“When the Harvey Milk sails, she is going to ship a really sturdy message each domestically and across the globe to everyone that believes in freedom and justice and liberty, that there’s a place for you on this household,” mentioned co-sponsor Neira.
Basic Dynamics NASSCO started building of the six oilers in San Diego in 2018 beneath a $3.2 billion Navy contract. The primary ship within the class, the John Lewis, was christened this summer season.
