The decision was enabled by Obama appointee Ray Mabus, secretary of the US Navy, who signed a July 14 notification indicating that “he intended to name a planned Military Sealift Command fleet oiler USNS Harvey Milk (T-AO-206),” reports USNI News.
“Over the last several years, there have been pushes from California politicians to have a ship named for Milk since the 2011 repeal of the Department of Defense’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy.” Naming a vessel after Milk, “will further send a green light to all the brave men and women who serve our nation that honesty, acceptance and authenticity are held up among the highest ideals of our military,” Milk’s nephew Stuart Milk said in a statement to San Diego LGBT Weekly in 2012.
Milk was the first openly homosexual politician elected to public office in San Francisco City-County Board in 1977. He was later murdered by a disgruntled fellow Democrat.
He was also given a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama and has been honored with a US postage stamp. And now his name will appear on a US Navy vessel.
But the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg noted that: “Milk is famous only for winning one election, being murdered — and having sex with men.” His friend and biographer Randy Shilts was much harsher in describing Milk’s exploits: “Harvey always had a penchant for young waifs with substance abuse problems.”
Milk had committed statutory rape in California where the age of consent is 18. One American columnist called Milk “demonstrably, categorically an evil man”. Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel Action said the man known for his promiscuous lifestyle and his relationships with underage boys was “historical revisionism”.
“Well, like so much of ‘progressive’ – that’s liberal – propaganda, this is rooted in a whitewashing of reality. It’s rooted in historical revisionism,” Barber said. Activists sympathetic to the homosexual agenda have elevated Milk to the status of martyr.
“Harvey Milk was known as a pederast,” he says. “That’s a man who in his mid-30s had a sexual appetite for teenage boys as young as 15 years old.” According to Barber, that has been confirmed by many victims who have stepped forward.
In addition to the announced postage stamp, Milk is commemorated annually by “Harvey Milk Day” in California public schools. Earlier this year, San Francisco supervisor David Campos proposed changing the name of the nearby international airport to Harvey Milk-San Francisco International Airport.
Barber told OneNewsNow that honoring someone like Milk is unconscionable and “shows us how we have entered an era where we call evil good and good evil.”
“And the fact that our US. government would be commemorating and recognizing him as some kind of hero really just boggles the mind,” Barber added.
Previously the United States Navy named its ships after American values, such as Enterprise, Liberty, Freedom; and the names of famous presidents, patriots or admirals or naval war heroes such Spruance, Nimitz, Washington, Franklin, or the recently named Destroyer Michael Murphy, a Medal of Honor winner.