The US Navy is to name a ship after the assassinated gay rights activist and politician Harvey Milk, according to a Congressional notification obtained by USNI News.
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Milk served in the Navy and came from a Navy family. Oiler ships serve as support ships to other Navy vessels by replenishing them with fuel and sometimes food, ammunition, mail, and other goods while at sea.
Milk is widely known to have not only changed the City of San Francisco, but possibly the entire country with his forward-thinking LGBT ideas. Infact, when he was shot to death in 1978, he was still wearing his U.S. Navy diver’s belt buckle.
San Diego City Commissioner Nicole Murray Ramirez a longtime gay- and Latino rights activist launched the national campaign in partnership with the Harvey Milk Foundation and the International Court System (a charitable services membership organization with chapters in 68 cities.) in San Diego in April 2012.
“When Harvey Milk served in the military, he couldn’t tell anyone who he truly was”, he wrote. Other names in the class include Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth and former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, according to the USNI.
Milk went on to become the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, winning a post on the Board of Supervisors as a result of changes in the social makeup of San Francisco, following three unsuccessful attempts to gain office.
Milk joined the Navy during the Korean War and served as a diving officer, earning an honorable discharge in 1955 having attained the rank of lieutenant, junior grade.
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It should be noted that political career of Harvey Milk lasted for only 11 months and he was called “a martyr for gay rights”.
