Re “Hegseth orders name of gay rights activist Harvey Milk scrubbed from San Diego-built Navy ship” (June 3): President Trump wants to rename the USNS Harvey Milk at the beginning of Pride Month. I can think of few things more disrespectful. But the cruelty is the point, right?
— Eric Paeish, Vista
I weep for all the minorities through the centuries who devoted their lives to seeking equality and acceptance, only to find themselves vilified by those who somehow felt threatened by them.
I weep for Harvey Milk, who was so viciously assassinated, and who now, it seems, is about to be assassinated again.
— Janed Guymon Casady, Mission Hills
Renaming military bases and ships, now linked to removing Confederate statues, is a recurring feature of today’s culture wars. Such decisions, by both the left and right, are inherently political and divisive.
One of the prominent fallouts is the false equivalency between renaming the Navy’s civil rights fleet and as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth puts it, maintaining “our nation’s history, and the [Department of Defense’s] warrior ethos.” The Confederates engaged in treason. Harvey Milk engaged in restorative justice.
Today, the USS John Lewis is also in the name-removal queue. The legacies of San Francisco Supervisor Milk and Congressman Lewis will thus sustain friendly fire wounds, some 50 years after Milk’s murder and Lewis’ skull fracture.
— Bill Slomanson, Hillcrest
