Harvey Milk speaks during a Police Community Relations meeting in San Francisco, 1974. Photo by Getty Images
Benjamin Ivry
June 4, 2025
On June 3, it was revealed that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to rename a ship that was dedicated in honor of the American Jewish gay rights advocate Harvey Milk.
This unusual move was scheduled by the current administration to coincide with Pride Month.
A relevant office memo stated that the renaming is in “alignment” with the President, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of the Navy’s “priorities of reestablishing the warrior culture.”
Among reactions to the news was that of the gay American Jewish playwright Harvey Fierstein, a gender warrior in his own right, who opined on Facebook that the current occupant of the White House is a “vile, petty, stupid, destructive, jealous, illiterate, hateful, ego-maniacal and dangerous shmuck.”
More temperately, gay Jewish California State Senator Scott Wiener informed the Los Angeles Times that the move was part of a “systematic campaign to eliminate LGBTQ people from public life.”
“They want us to go away, to go back in the closet, not to be part of public life. And we’re not going anywhere,” Wiener added.
Similar words might have been uttered by the redoutable Milk, who was praised in 2016 by then-U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, a Methodist from Mississippi, who noted that Milk had joined the Navy during the Korean War and served as a diving officer before receiving an “other than honorable” discharge because he was gay. Less than a year after being elected San Francisco city supervisor, Milk was assassinated by a political rival.
Secretary Mabus said of Milk: “Even after death, his voice still spoke, his struggles continued and his cause taken up by countless others.”
Mabus also observed that the Jewish hero “offered hope for millions of Americans who were being ostracized and prosecuted just for who they loved,” he said. Commemorating this hope, a group of oil replenishment vessels was planned to honor other civil rights pioneers.
Most of these ships have not yet been built and launched, but one that was planned in homage to the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is also supposedly on the chopping block because Justice Ginsburg was not only a woman, but also progressive in outlook.
Maritime historians declare that renaming a ship is considered bad luck because those who initiate any such change may anger Poseidon, the Ancient Greek god of the sea who keeps track of such things. Those who try to do so get what they deserve, according to legend.
Nevertheless, the overall category of ships involved will likely be renamed, since they are termed “John Lewis-class” replenishment oilers, after the Black Congressman who led marches for Civil Rights and was beaten by Alabama state troopers and police.
As with Milk and Ginsburg, Lewis is anathema to today’s White House and its underlings, and anything relating, however remotely, to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility is now taboo.
Hegseth has already ordered that any mention of African Americans, women, or LGBT people be deleted from Ministry of Defense websites. Among the more derisory results of this edict occurred in March when a tribute to the Jewish comedian Bea Arthur’s World War II military service was scrubbed from a US Department of Defense website, and then restored days later after protests were made.
Bea Arthur (born Frankel), best remembered for her role on The Golden Girls, had patriotically enlisted in the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve after hostilities broke out. Her Department of Defense page also recalled that Arthur later supported charities helping homeless LGBTQ+ youth, a fact which may have offended the current censors in charge. Bea Arthur’s tzedakah, in addition to her gender, were enough to get her banished, at least temporarily, from the website.
Could Harvey Milk’s name be as promptly restored to honor? After all, the stated priority of “reestablishing the warrior culture” might arguably include a number of Jews who braved battles.
One such was Gad Beck, a resistance fighter whose memoir An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin detailed his wartime efforts to supply food and hiding places to Jews escaping to neutral Switzerland. Then there was Frank Kameny, a New York-born Jewish astronomer who was fired from his position with the U.S. Army Map Service due to his sexual orientation; Kameny dedicated his life to combative, albeit peaceable, activism.
More recently, another gay Jew who might be deemed a warrior is Sharon Afek, Deputy Attorney General in Israel’s Ministry of Justice. Previously, Afek was the chief military advocate general of the Israel Defense Forces.
In 2018, Afek was promoted to the rank of major general, Israel’s first openly gay person to hold that rank. The previous year, he told an interviewer, “Even today, in the year 2017, we still encounter manifestations of ignorance and hatred of others.”
Given the ignorance and hatred still reigning in America, what could be the next attempt to sully the memory of Jews and others of minority status? At least 17 American Jews have received the Medal of Honor. Some might have been Democrats. As most died on the field of honor, it would be necessary to pry the medals from their survivors.
But fortunately, most such honors cannot be rescinded, however small-minded, petty rulers with no concept of bravery, honor, or service might wish to do so.
This means that no further indignities await the ghost of Harvey Milk, whose immortal renown is assured. In August 2009, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, stating that Milk “fought discrimination with visionary courage and conviction.”
And there is no way to take back the Presidential Medal of Freedom, or the current administration might have already tried to do so. Realistically, vessels can always be named or renamed, however rare this latter event might be. Jewish observers of the current downfall of America’s prestige worldwide may instead focus more pertinently on more permanent damage potentially being done.
To cite merely one example, on June 3, United States Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum announced that the federal government had proposed reversing an order banning oil and gas drilling on the 23-million acre National Petroleum Reserve on Alaska’s North Slope. The remote area is home to diverse wildlife, including imperiled polar bears, caribou and migratory birds.
The noble, undercelebrated legacy of Alaskan Jews who tried and failed to have Jewish refugees from Fascist Europe admitted to their depopulated state, is likewise easy to overlook or take for granted. Deeply involved in social organizations and philanthropy, the Jews of Alaska also spearheaded a 1948 American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee effort to enlist Alaska Airlines’ help in transporting Yemenite Jewish refugees to Israel.
The so-called Operation Magic Carpet quickly attained legendary status, and if historians still debate its efficacy, Alaska’s Jews witnessed what true, ineffaceable heroism could be, just as Harvey Milk, Frank Kameny, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Gad Beck, and others did. And this awareness of tradition cannot be removed from Jewish minds, even by wannabe dictators.
