OPINION:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to remove Harvey Milk’s name from an oiler ship and now the left, particularly the LGBTQ-loving left, are up in arms, accusing that hatred of the dead homosexual activist and discrimination against gays in general has promoted the move.
But Hegseth’s right. Milk’s name shouldn’t be on a U.S. naval ship.
To Democrats, to many in the media, to the LGBTQ community, Milk may be a hero. But like much of what leftists label heroic, such cause celebre is all based on lies and gaslighting and false narratives and revised history. Milk was hardly the gay rights activist-slash-victim today’s talking heads of the left would have believed.
This is what’s true of Milk: He’s credited as being the first openly homosexual elected official in America, having served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Prior, he served in the Navy; he enlisted in 1951, after graduating from what’s now called the State University of New York; he attended Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island; and he served as a diving instructor at the Naval base in San Diego. In 1955, after achieving the rank of lieutenant junior grade, he resigned his commission. On Nov. 27, 1978, he was assassinated, along with Mayor George Moscone, by a man named Dan White — a disgruntled former city supervisor.
That’s all according to the Harvey Milk Foundation.
He’s since become a magical figure to leftists who’ve taken his murder and used it as evidence of the utter hatred Americans hold toward all-things-LGBTQ — as justification for the special protections LGBTQs need just so they can feel safe in their own communities — as indisputable fact that LGBTQs are targeted for attack and denied the civil rights and constitutional freedoms supposedly guaranteed to all Americans.
“Proclaim Harvey Milk Day in Your City,” the National League of Cities advocated in 2023.
“Governor Newsom proclaims Harvey Milk Day 2025,” the official Governor of California web page reported a couple of weeks ago.
“Harvey Milk, you are a hero, a leader, a voice against tyranny and your name will live on and on and ON! You have inspired us all and we will carry your legacy forward,” actress Jamie Lee Curtis posted on her Facebook page.
There’s more.
But then there’s this.
“Drinking Harvey Milk’s Kool-Aid” — a headline from City Journal in May of 2009.
The essay goes on to report how Milk has been one of the left’s largest and longest-lasting objects of adoration — but based on lies. Actor Sean Penn played Milk in a movie and won an Academy Award for his portrayal — a lie. Milk’s loved by the left for supposedly overcoming the adversity that came from a dishonorable discharge for his homosexual behaviors — a lie. Milk’s mourned by the LGBTQ and left for supposedly being murdered simply because he was homosexual — a lie.
Point One: “Rather than the gentle, soft-spoken idealist portrayed by Sen Penn, the real Harvey Milk was a short-tempered demagogue who cynically invented stories of victimhood to advance his political career,” City Journal wrote.
Point Two: “Milk curried favor with [San Francisco] votes by boasting that his homosexuality had resulted in a dishonorable discharge from the Navy … [But] Chief Petty Officer Milk of the 1950s was a closeted homosexual whose discharge papers reflected four years of honorable service,” City Journal wrote.
Point Three: “[In] an effort to depict Milk as a martyr for the gay rights movement on par with Martin Luther King’s martyrdom for the Civil Rights movement — [Milk’s advocates say] homophobia killed Harvey Milk. … But Harvey Milk’s homosexuality played about as much of a role in his murder as San Francisco mayor George Moscone’s heterosexuality played in his,” City Journal wrote.
So why were Milk and Moscone killed by Whites?
According to City Journal, White “had donated $100 to defeat the Briggs Initiative, which would have empowered school boards to fire teachers for homosexuality. White hired a homosexual as his campaign manager and voted as a city supervisor to fund a Pride Center for homosexuals.”
White, in other words, was a supporter of LGBTQs.
It was the “petty politics of City Hall” — not hatred of homosexuals — that drove White to murder, City Journal wrote.
The left doesn’t want to hear that, though.
The LGBTQ community doesn’t want to talk about that.
It’s much better for Democrats to advance the idea of Milk as a martyr for the LGBTQ cause than to acknowledge the truths about his life — truths that perhaps place question marks and asterisks alongside those supposed claims to his LGBTQ-supporting fame.
Either way, Milk’s name doesn’t belong on a Navy ship. Even if all the imaginations and fancies of the left about Milk were true — his name still shouldn’t be the name of a Navy ship.
Homosexuality isn’t an accomplishment. Identification with the LGBTQ community isn’t a show of heroism. And the U.S. military should only advance narratives and carry messages and showcase symbols that make clear America is the strongest nation in the world, with the mightiest fighters in the world.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on X @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “God-Given Or Bust: Defeating Marxism and Saving America With Biblical Truths,” is available by clicking HERE.
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