Let’s be crystal clear: this isn’t about a ship. This is about a coordinated assault on queer memory.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the USNS Harvey Milk renamed—ripping the name of a Navy veteran and LGBTQ+ icon from the hull of a U.S. warship. Harvey Milk served during the Korean War and was forced to resign for being gay. He went on to become the first openly gay man elected to public office in California, and a martyr for queer liberation. His story is etched into our history—and now, quite literally, being painted over.
But this isn’t an isolated insult. It’s part of a broader pattern.
The “T” in LGBTQ has been surgically removed from military DEI training materials. Trans service members—who have fought and died in uniform—are being erased in a deliberate, calculated campaign to roll back basic recognition.
And then there’s Stonewall.
The Stonewall National Monument, created to honor the queer-led uprising that birthed the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, has quietly had all mentions of “LGBTQ+” removed from its description on the National Park Service website. Gone is the context. Gone is the truth. As if bricks flew through windows on their own. As if Marsha and Sylvia weren’t there, leading the cause.
This is a war on memory.
It’s the government gaslighting a community it has always been afraid of—because we remember. We remember that Harvey Milk wore a uniform. We remember that trans women of color led the charge. We remember who bled, who fought, who died.
You can rename your ships. You can edit your monuments. You can strip us from your brochures and your sanitized histories.
But you cannot erase what we carry.
To Pete Hegseth and every one of the cowardly hands behind this campaign of erasure:
You don’t get to decide who gets remembered.
We do.
And we’re not asking.
The warship may lose its name.
But Harvey Milk doesn’t lose his legacy.
And we don’t lose our fight.
