I… um… the… it’s… but… there are no words. I’ll try though.
I thought it was hilarious – ignorant, stupid, childish, petty, but hilarious – last March when Newsweek reported that pictures of “Enola Gay,” the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in Japan during WWII, were flagged for removal from the Pentagon in an effort to eliminate DEI content in compliance with Trump administration directives. Why? We can only assume because the plane’s name included the word ‘gay.’
And though there have been no reported incidents of planes coming out as homosexual, particularly in the military, I should point out that the Wright brothers’ first successful flight in 1903 was in a biplane, and biplanes, airplanes with two wings, were prevalent in aviation from the early 1900s through the early 1930s. They were dominant in military aviation during and for some time after World War I, but were gradually replaced by monoplanes (single-winged airplanes) due to their greater speed and efficiency. Still, that historical fact is probably next to be scrubbed by the Department of Defense, because the ‘B’ in LGBTQ+ stands for “Bi.” Makes sense: if the Enola Gay has to go because it’s ‘gay’ (the ‘G’ in LGBTQ+), we can’t have biplanes! Think of the children.
That bit of silly reasoning is no more silly than defense secretary Pete Hegseth ordering the Navy to rename a ship named after slain gay rights icon and activist Harvey Milk. My riff on biplanes above was made up – just a clever pun. I had tried to work in that biplanes will often fly with monoplanes (planes with a single wing) so I could extend the pun to a “biplanes go both ways” observation, but after several attempts it felt forced and obvious and inartful, so I abandoned that.
I was being creative (or trying to be). But the website military.com reported on a memorandum from the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, and a defense official confirmed to them that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered Navy secretary John Phelan to proceed with the renaming of USNS Harvey Milk, with the announcement intentionally set to occur on June 13th during LGBTQ+ Pride month. Ahem!… that is intentionally. With this administration, the cruelty always seems to be the point.
For those of you unfamiliar with him, Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California in 1977 as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He was assassinated while in office, and posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. He served in the Navy as a lieutenant during the Korean War aboard a submarine rescue ship and was forced to resign from the military after four years and accept an other than honorable discharge instead of facing a court-martial for being gay. Shamed by the country he served, he was not embittered by that experience. Instead, he became a politician and devoted himself to breaking down the barriers keeping all Americans from being equal.
Secretary Hegseth, since becoming secretary of defense, has set out to dismantle anything remotely dealing with or referencing diversity, anti-racism, or gender issues in an effort to, according to him, return the armed forces to a “warrior ethos,” whatever in the hell that means. Perhaps if he was qualified to hold his job, he might have a better grasp of history, where we find The Sacred Band of Thebes, a heavy infantry unit of select soldiers consisting of 150 pairs of homosexual male couples which formed the elite force of the Theban army in the 4th century BCE. The Navy SEALs of their day. Not enough of a “warrior ethos” for you, Pete? Okay, how about Alexander? As in, “the Great.” King of Macedonia from from 336 BCE to 323 BCE. Conquered the known world of his time. It was said by Roman era writer Athenaeus, drawing on the scholar Dicaearchus, a contemporary of Alexander, that the king of Macedonia “was quite excessively keen on boys.” Not sure how Pete defines a warrior, and I’m not suggesting all gays are warriors (except when it comes to finding a restaurant with bottomless Mimosas for brunch on a Sunday), but I am suggesting there is nothing about being gay that precludes one from being a warrior, and in some cases, a damn good one.
Hegseth’s undertaking has now apparently extended to changing the names of ships. The Navy memo notes that stripping Harvey Milk of its name was being done for “alignment with president and SECDEF objectives and SECNAV priorities of reestablishing the warrior culture,” referencing President Trump, Hegseth and Phelan.
I think we all know what Secretary Hegseth means by warrior: some roided-up, anglo, gun-luvin’, truck-drivin’, misogynistic man who loves Jesus though seldom behaves like him or acts according to his teachings, and thinks patriotism is found in waving a flag rather than living by the values it represents.
I think the values are more important than the optics.
On June 25, 1978, the ninth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York City, Harvey Milk gave a speech in San Francisco at their Gay Freedom Day parade and festival (as Pride was then known). At the time, LGBTQ+ individuals around the country were dealing with state and local initiatives looking to “protect children” by overturning equal rights ordinances extended to homosexuals as part of the 20th century civil rights movement, initiatives that were not at all dissimilar from the Trump administration’s push to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the country. Just five months later, Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were assassinated in cold blood at San Francisco City Hall.
From his speech, these are the words of a patriot, of a true warrior:
On the Statue of Liberty, it says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free…” In the Declaration of Independence it is written, “All men are created equal and they are endowed with certain inalienable rights…” And in our National Anthem it says: “Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free.”
For Mr. Briggs and Mrs. Green and Mr. Starr and all the bigots out there: that’s what America is. No matter how hard you try, you cannot erase those words from the Declaration of Independence. No matter how hard you try, you cannot chip those words from off the base of the Statue of Liberty. And no matter how hard you try, you cannot sing the “Star Spangled Banner” without those words.
That’s what America is.