United States warship named after anti-war Harvey Milk

This 2015 video from the USA is called Harvey Milk / First Gay Politician (Biography TV).

This month, the United States Navy announced new names for several of their new warships.

United States warships and warplanes often have names of people in history. Eg, there is the military plane called the Spirit of Strom Thurmond. Republican Senator Strom Thurmond is one of the most racist bigots in US history.

Among the new warships’ names are several of people a lot better than Thurmond. They include women’s rights activist Lucy Stone and abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth. And activist against discrimination of LGBTQ people Harvey Milk.

The new names in themselves are signs that some historical oppression has been abolished. Slavery against which Sojourner Truth (and Lucy Stone) fought was officially abolished in the 1860s. The ban on United States women voting against which Sojourner Truth and Lucy Stone fought was abolished in 1920.

As for Harvey Milk, during Barack Obama’s presidency the homophobic ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ rule in the US military was abolished.

San Francisco politician Scott Wiener writes:

When Harvey Milk served in the military, he couldn’t tell anyone who he truly was.

Harvey Milk was in the United States navy as a conscript during the Korean war.

There is a paradox in this new warship’s name.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:

A friend of Milk’s thinks it is ironic that a warship is now named especially after him because Milk was against the Vietnam War and was part of an anti-militarist movement. “In my time men used to say they were gay to stay out of military service.”

So, this new name looks like ‘pinkwashing‘ of wars all over the world.

There is similar ambiguity about naming warships after Lucy Stone and Sojourner Truth. Their abolitionist movement opposed slavery, and oppression of women; but it opposed wars as well.

The Liberator, the paper of Stone’s and Truth’s abolitionist movement, wrote:

Anti-War Pledge – War with Mexico

June 5, 1846 …

desiring to show our utter abhorrence of slavery, and of every act either of the state or the individual, which means to support it,— and to bind ourselves before God and the world, to side with the oppressed, and not with the oppressor, we hereby pledge ourselves, neither by act or deed, to aid, support, or countenance the Government in the War with Mexico….. to refuse enlistment, contribution, aid and countenance to the War.