MADRID, 7 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The US Navy has launched a warship by the name of ‘USNS Harvey Milk’ in honor of gay rights activist Harvey Milk, who was forced to resign from the Armed Forces due to his sexual orientation in the 1950s .
The ship began sailing this Saturday in San Diego in an official event attended by the Secretary of the Navy, Carlos del Toro, and a nephew of Milk, Stuart.
The ‘Harvey Milk’ is one of six new Navy ships to be named after prominent American civil rights activists such as Chief Justice Earl Warren; the presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, assassinated in 1968; Lucy Stone, 19th century suffragette; the abolitionist Sojourner Truth or the anti-racist congressman John Lewis.
Milk was an officer on the submarine rescue ship ‘USS Kittiwake’ during the Korean War, but had to shed his uniform in 1955 after two weeks of questioning about his sexual orientation.
He later became one of the first declared gay politicians in the United States and was elected in 1977 as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the legislative body of the Californian city.
A year later he was shot and killed by Dan White, a former member of the Board of Supervisors with whom he had had frequent clashes.
Del Toro stressed during Saturday’s ceremony that it was a mistake to force Milk to “hide that important part of his life.” “Sailors like Lieutenant Milk were forced to remain in the shadows or worse, forced to leave our beloved Navy,” he said.
The news that a warship would be dedicated to Milk felt bad in certain political circles when it was announced, in 2016, during the term of President Barack Obama. They consider that Milk would not have wanted a Navy ship to bear his name because it was openly against the Vietnam War.
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