The future USNS Harvey Milk, being built by General Dynamics NASSCO, has value and symbolism beyond its deckplates, advocates say.
Construction began Friday on a Navy ship named after Harvey Milk, a former San Francisco supervisor and activist who was fatally shot months after becoming the first openly gay man elected in California more than forty years ago.
This “sends a global message of inclusion more powerful than simply ‘We’ll tolerate everyone,’ ” Milk said."[It says,] we celebrate everyone.”Milk said his uncle was forced to resign from the Navy in the 1950s after being caught in a San Diego park popular with gay men. To be honored now with a Navy ship showed how much things have changed, he said.
“I was a congressional staffer when we were working to repeal ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ and you think about how difficult a challenge that was,” he said, referring to the military’s ban on out gay, lesbian and bisexual service members that was repealed in 2010.“Today, the Navy’s constructing a ship named after the first openly gay elected official in California,” he said.
“I was shocked,” she said. “I was honored. I felt all the time, effort and hard work I put in all these years was appreciated.” His organization, which has chapters nationwide, organized a national letter-writing campaign in 2011 to push then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus to name a ship for Milk.
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