Pete Hegseth's Hateful War Against Harvey Milk

[babylonsister]

Pete Hegseth's Hateful War Against Harvey Milk
by Peter Dreier | June 9, 2025 - 5:06am

— from Talking Points Memo

snip//

To Hegseth, Milk is an obvious target in the Trump administration’s homophobic crusade. It is part of a broader effort to reverse decades of progress toward equality and human rights. Trump and his MAGA followers want to eliminate recognition of people and movements who fought discrimination against women, people of color, and LGBTQ Americans, including those who served in the military.

In March, the Pentagon removed from its website a story about Jackie Robinson’s military service, explaining that “DEI is dead at the Defense Department.” Toward that goal, the Pentagon also removed a page about Ira Hayes, a Native American who was one of the marines pictured raising the American flag at Iwo Jima during World War II, as well as articles about Native American code talkers. The DOD also deleted an article about a Tonawanda Seneca officer who drafted the terms of the Confederacy’s surrender at Appomattox. A DOD webpage about a Black Medal of Honor recipient, Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers, was also briefly taken down but later restored. A DOD page about an all-Japanese-American unit that fought in WWII was also removed and then restored.

The backlash against scrubbing mention of Robinson, the trailblazing baseball hero and activist, was so widespread that the Pentagon restored the story a day later, but Hegseth has pursued his crusade nevertheless.

According to a memo from Navy Secretary John Phelan, the names of other civil rights pioneers are also on the list to potentially be removed from Navy vessels, including Supreme Court justices Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, abolitionist leader Harriet Tubman, suffrage and anti-slavery activist Lucy Stone, NAACP leader Medgar Evers (who was assassinated by a Ku Klux Klan member), and farmworker organizer Cesar Chavez, who was also a Navy veteran.

Soon after taking office, Hegseth fired prominent Black and female officers, including Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, the second African American to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the first woman selected as the Navy’s top officer, suggesting that they may have been promoted to those positions due to their race or gender rather than merit.

Hegseth has also pushed to eliminate courses at West Point and the Naval Academy that deal with gender, racial, and LGBTQ issues and remove books from their libraries that focus on these subject. He ordered the military academies to end consideration of gender, race, or ethnicity as part of their admissions standards. “Selecting anyone but the best erodes lethality, our warfighting readiness, and undercuts the culture of excellence in our armed forces,” said Hegseth.

snip//

The Trump administration’s, and Hegseth’s, recent efforts to paper over and rewrite history suggests they don’t want the current and future generations to know about that movement, its accomplishments, and the persistent battle for LGBTQ equality.

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http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/peter-dreier/114051/pete-hegseths-hateful-war-against-harvey-milk

[EYESORE 9001]

1. And yet naval vessels have been named for traitors who took up arms against the government

USS Robert E. Lee and USS Stonewall Jackson come to mind. These were SSBN Polaris/Poseidon missile submarines named after confederate generals, for crying out loud. These vessels were given names sometime in the late 50s or early 60s, when the civil rights movement was just gaining traction. Also during that time, neoconfederates were trying to stage a revival of sorts.

[struggle4progress]

2. Angry old drunkard hopes to obliterate memory of more accomplished folk

[solara]

3. Me thinks Hegseth doth

protest too much.. you know what they say about the folks who seek to do harm to the LGBTQ+ community.. they may be hiding their true selves beneath their manufactured & presumed vitriol. 😆

[mr715]

4. Methinks the Secretary prayeth too much

[Haggis 4 Breakfast]

5. Bad move.

We sailors (yes, even us old retired salts) have always held that re-naming a ship (espcially for a BS reason like this) is bad luck.