(LifeSiteNews) – U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the Navy to strip the name Harvey Milk — hailed as a heroic, murdered “gay icon” by some but more appropriately known as an abusive “pederast” — from one of its ships.
“A defense official confirmed that the Navy was making preparations to strip the ship of its name but noted that Navy Secretary John Phelan was ordered to do so by Hegseth,” reported Military.com.
“The official also said that the timing of the announcement — occurring during “Pride” month — was intentional,” the report noted.
Despite Milk’s reputation for sexual predation, he has been lionized over the years by the media, by Hollywood, and multiple times by former Democrat President Barack Obama.
Milk was a pederast, not a hero
Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, a former police officer and former city supervisor, on November 27, 1978.
Although his homosexuality had nothing to with the murder, the implication that it did has led to Milk becoming a gay martyr and icon who was even called a saint.
Omitted from most accounts of Milk’s life are his alleged sexual relationships with underage boys.
Milk was attracted to “boyish-looking men in their late teens and early 20s,” wrote Randy Shilts, a homosexual friend of Milk in his biography. “Harvey always had a penchant for young waifs with substance-abuse problems.”
One of his young victims was allegedly Jack Galen McKinley, a 16-year-old runaway from Maryland.
Milk also had a relationship with a 25-year-old alcoholic named Jack Lira, who eventually killed himself.
The decision to name a ship after Milk was made by President Obama’s Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, who signed a Congressional notification in 2016 to commission the now-under-construction Military Sealift Command fleet oiler.
In 2009, President Obama posthumously awarded Milk with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. In 2014, Obama again honored Milk, this time with a commemorative U.S. postage stamp bearing his image.
Milk’s adopted state, California, also pays tribute each year with a “Harvey Milk Day” on May 22 that was signed into law by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, in 2009.
The ship formerly known as USNS Harvey Milk is included in a class of oilers built by General Dynamics NASSCO that carry the names of civil rights leaders, including former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and abolitionist Sojourner Truth.
Though Milk served in the Navy during the Korean War as a diving officer on a submarine and his family had a Naval background, he publicly opposed the Vietnam War. Other than his brief political career and gay rights advocacy, Milk held no other positions in public office.
Milk also had a close relationship with infamous cult leader Jim Jones, responsible for the forced suicides of more than 900 people in the infamous Jonestown massacre, just nine days before Milk’s death.
Jones provided Milk “with a printing press, gave him hundreds of campaign ‘volunteers,’ yielded the Peoples Temple pulpit to him, and provided free publicity to him in the Peoples Forum newspaper,” Daniel Flynn said in a 2018 FrontPage Magazine interview. In exchange, Milk publicly vouched for Jones.
