No Mo’ Milk
Ship named for pedophile is a thing of the past
Editor’s note: Our friends over at National Review Online currently offer dueling takes on whether the U.S. Navy ship “Harvey Milk” (which is classified as an “underway replenishment oiler” (make of that what you will in relation to its current namesake) should be re-named. John Fund thinks not, arguing that Milk was “a patriot.” But NR’s Luther Ray Abel, a Navy veteran, dissents, arguing “Harvey Milk Is Undeserving of a Ship.” Our contributor Lloyd Billingsley recalls some details of the backstory of Milk usually left out of news accounts.
—Steve
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to rename USNS Harvey Milk. Those troubled by the move might consult Cult City: Jim Jones, Harvey Milk and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco. As author Daniel Flynn explains, Harvey Milk’s claim that he was drummed out of the Navy for being homosexual wasn’t true. Milk was honorably discharged in 1955 as a lieutenant, junior grade. He cast himself as a victim so people will “feel sorry for me, and then vote for me.”
As Flynn notes, “Milk’s taste in men veered toward boys” such as Jack Galen, 16 years old to Milk’s 33. Milk outed Bill Sipple, who saved President Ford from an assassin, as a homosexual. On the other hand, “Bill Sipple never outed Harvey Milk as a pederast.” In 1978, San Francisco Supervisor Milk did fall to a bullet from Dan White, but as Dianne Feinstein explained, “this had nothing to do with anybody’s sexual orientation. It had to do with [White] getting back his position.”
The eponymous Milk, starring Sean Penn, emerged in 2008. The biopic fails to show that Milk was a cheerleader for Jim Jones of People’s Temple and Jonestown fame. In 2009, the President Formerly Known as Barry Soetoro awarded Harvey Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2016, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus named a ship after the San Francisco pederast, who also boasts the Harvey Milk High School in New York and the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy and Harvey Milk airport terminal in San Francisco.
In 2023 California Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed “Harvey Milk Day” to honor “a hero not just for his own community but for every Californian fighting for freedom and equality,” and so on. So no big deal if Milk’s name goes missing from a ship, where it never should have been in the first place. At this writing the new name has not been revealed.
Perhaps this means there will be no USS George Floyd. . . .
I will wade in to these murky waters to say that I do not understand the obsession that gay men have with much younger boys. I find it kind of creepy, but not criminal at 16, though I guess it is. But, then older straight men sometimes "date" 16 year-olds, too. To me, 16 though not officially meeting the age of consent, is too old to qualify for a pedophilia situation. Many of our mothers and grandmothers were 16 or 17 when they were MARRIED.
Having said this, we lived in San Francisco from 1971-1975. It was before Harvey was in politics. He owned a camera and photo developing place a couple blocks from our apartment. Almost all of the baby pictures of our son were developed by him. He was always very nice to me. I was shocked and saddened when he was murdered along with Moscone. But it absolutely was NOT because he was gay. He was just in the way of the lunatic who killed him. That man was ALSO a Democrat which is nice to note. SV