OPINION:
On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order to restore American greatness in the names of our national landmarks (“Trump to rename the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska’s Mount Denali,” Web, Jan. 20). It reads, in part: “The naming of our national treasures … should honor the contributions of visionary and patriotic Americans in our Nation’s rich past.”
Harvey Milk is a name that stains the side of one of our navy ships. In 2016, a congressional notification signed by then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced its intent to name a ship after Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the U.S. The ship launched from San Diego Bay in November 2021.
Milk was a man who, as friend and author Randy Shilts wrote in “The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk,” had a “penchant for young waifs with substance abuse problems.” Among Milk’s victims was 16-year-old runaway from Maryland, Jack Galen McKinley, whom the then 33-year-old abused.
In its rush to celebrate gay rights and publicly apologize for the military’s discharge of Milk for homosexuality, government officials decided to name a ship in our great U.S. Navy after a known pederast. Surely there are other Americans with names more worthy to display on the “USNS Harvey Milk.”
STEPHANIE LUNDQUIST-ARORA
Springfield, Virginia
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