The Other McCain

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California Democrat Wants Navy to Name Ship for Gay-Rights Martyr Harvey Milk

Posted on | April 25, 2012 | 39 Comments

Navy Times via the Quinton Report:

An upcoming addition to the Navy’s fleet may be the USS Harvey Milk if Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., and other San Diego gay rights leaders have their way about it.
The GLBT Historic Task Force of San Diego County and Filner sent letters to Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta last week asking for Harvey Milk to be considered as a name for a submarine, carrier or other appropriate vessel, according to a PR Newswire press release.
Milk, a late civil rights icon, was a Navy veteran who served aboard the submarine rescue ship Kittiwake as a diving officer during the Korean War.

“Civil rights icon”? Like he was at Selma or something? Never mind.

Jeff Quinton points out that at least Milk was a veteran, unlike some other proposed namesakes for Navy ships: USS Gabby Giffords?

Category: Gays, Military, Quinton Report

Comments

39 Responses to “California Democrat Wants Navy to Name Ship for Gay-Rights Martyr Harvey Milk”

  1. smitty
    April 25th, 2012 @ 4:00 pm

    It hasn’t been the same Navy since USS Murtha.
    I am officially Old Navy.

  2. Montag500
    April 25th, 2012 @ 4:21 pm

    The sour fruit of the big push to name the USS Ronald Reagan.

    I realize that other carriers had been named for Presidents, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, but that might have been a special case owing to Roosevelt dying in office during the war. And I know USS Forrestal had been named for the man who saved naval aviation.

    But the push to name USS Ronald Reagan came as part of a lunatic effort by Reagan supporters to name something for Reagan in each one of the fifty states. I remember thinking at the time, “too third world”.

    But control of the government shifts between parties, and now we have the USS Jimmy Carter. Perhaps the sailors on that boat are alright with that, I’m not. There should not be a USS Jimmy Carter, and if not having a Ronald Reagan could have accomplished that, I would have been glad to pick some other name for CVN-76.

    There will be, it’s a dead slam certainty, a USS Bill Clinton. There will be, and find a place to get a bet down if you want a guaranteed payout, a USS Barack Hussein Obama. There are already plans to name an amphib the USS John P. Murtha, and no more contagious disgrace can I imagine.

    There used to be a pretty rational system for naming the ships of the fleet which we more or less stuck with–States for the BB’s (SSBN’s took over the prime strategic role the battleships used to have, so now we name them after states, I’m cool with that) major cities for the cruisers, names of heroic fighting seamen for the destroyers, important battles for the carriers, fish for the submarines (which I particularly miss–I loved reading about immortal names like Barb, Wahoo, Growler, and the like–they were the terror of the Pacific, and strangled the Japanese economy).

    I’d much rather see the grand old names of carriers recycled for the carriers, instead of having them elbowed aside by  politicians and used for other classes of ships. There ought to be another carrier named Hornet, there ought to be another Lexington or Saratoga turning into the wind to launch aircraft.

    Instead, there’s going to be a USS John P. Murtha. Someone wants to name a ship for Harvey Milk, who I am given to understand had something to do with seamen. I feel bad about what happened to Gabby Giffords, but do we name ships for shooting victims? Really? There will be a push to name a ship the USS Barack H. Obama, on pain of riots if we don’t, and make it an aircraft carrier, white boy. These are symptoms of a nation decadent, rotten to its stinking core, and past the point of salvation. US Presidents get their name written in the history books enough, and naming our most powerful ships after them, as well, is a sign that we have lost sight of why we tried to form a more perfect union.

  3. ThePaganTemple
    April 25th, 2012 @ 4:23 pm

    Now wait a minute, there has been a long, time-honored tradition of pole smokers in the US Navy.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InBXu-iY7cw

  4. ThePaganTemple
    April 25th, 2012 @ 4:29 pm

    And, lest we forget-

    Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks

  5. laser9999999
    April 25th, 2012 @ 5:15 pm

    Milk was a “diving officer?”

    Please don’t go there.

  6. Adobe_Walls
    April 25th, 2012 @ 6:09 pm

    Does anyone really believe they want to name a ship after Milk because of his service?

  7. Lisa Graas
    April 25th, 2012 @ 6:11 pm

    You’re supposed to put that in quotes…..like so. “Gay Rights.” See? Because…there aren’t really any “gay rights” there are only human rights. Okay? Since “gays” are humans, they get those, too. I think that’s pretty special.

  8. Mojo
    April 25th, 2012 @ 6:47 pm

    But would the other ships feel comfortable with it?

  9. Wombat_socho
    April 25th, 2012 @ 6:50 pm

     I tell you, you can’t make this stuff up.

  10. Charles G Hill
    April 25th, 2012 @ 6:57 pm

    Gotta be a submarine: long, rigid, and full of seamen.

    What, too soon?

  11. Chuck
    April 25th, 2012 @ 7:04 pm

    In order to be a “martyr” for butt-pirate rights, Milk’s death would’ve needed to have some passing relation to his penchant for the buttseks. He just happened to be there when the dude started shooting.

  12. Bob Belvedere
    April 25th, 2012 @ 7:07 pm

    I like your sales.

  13. ReaganiteRepublican
    April 25th, 2012 @ 7:38 pm

    Obviously the sub would be most appropriate

    What are they calling it, Queen Milk 1 ?

  14. Adjoran
    April 25th, 2012 @ 7:47 pm

     You could, but no one would believe it.

  15. Adjoran
    April 25th, 2012 @ 7:48 pm

     Depends on who he was servicing.

  16. Adjoran
    April 25th, 2012 @ 7:49 pm

     And always heading into the murkiest depths.

  17. Adjoran
    April 25th, 2012 @ 7:50 pm

    Well, Dan White blamed him and Mosconi for his problems, but it had nothing to do with his private life.

    Of course, at trial White also blamed the Twinkies as well as the twink.

  18. ThePaganTemple
    April 25th, 2012 @ 7:51 pm

     Didn’t the dude just get through munching down on a bunch of big ol’ cream filled twinkies?

  19. Adobe_Walls
    April 25th, 2012 @ 8:37 pm

    Even if it was inadvertent I should get paid for a setup like that.

  20. richard mcenroe
    April 25th, 2012 @ 8:42 pm

     Too third world; hell, son, there’s nothing more American.  Robert Moses State Park! Anything named for Robert C. Byrd or Lamar Alexander!  Houston! We’ve even named a ship for Bob Hope, with all the attendant problems (It’s chased the Ann Margaret-class ships all over Pearl Harbor).

    But if we have to name a ship after a gay martyr, what’s wrong with the USS Father Geoghan?

  21. Adobe_Walls
    April 25th, 2012 @ 8:47 pm

    These tasteless remarks are extremely insensitive carry on.

  22. Evilbloggerlady
    April 25th, 2012 @ 9:28 pm

    Well, we are talking about the Navy. They can blast the Vilage People to “keep up” moral on extended sea duty.

  23. M. Thompson
    April 25th, 2012 @ 9:53 pm

     Can we get the booze back?

    They won’t beat sailors with a real whip any more, and now that sodomy has been legalized, the least the American Sailor deserves is to be able to have a cold beer after a watch.

  24. Pathfinder's wife
    April 25th, 2012 @ 10:16 pm

    Uhm, no, too obvious.

  25. richard mcenroe
    April 25th, 2012 @ 10:17 pm

    Only a Democrat would think “Rum, Sodomy and the Lash” was a recruiting slogan.

  26. Pathfinder's wife
    April 25th, 2012 @ 10:18 pm

    The jokes, they write themselves.

    I’m with the above poster: I’d rather they went back to Enterprise, Saratoga, Hornet…Mudskipper over Murtha!

  27. Wombat_socho
    April 25th, 2012 @ 11:20 pm

     Hey, it worked for the Royal Navy!

  28. Anamika
    April 25th, 2012 @ 11:53 pm

    Let it be noted that trolls cannot be blamed for infiltrating the comments section of a conservative blog — favorite excuse — and posting several of these homophobic remarks (against Harvey Milk). Not this time. For fun’s sake, you got too carried away, under your own monikers.

  29. richard mcenroe
    April 26th, 2012 @ 12:48 am

     Send all your indignant friends over here to read them.  Stacy can use the traffic.

    You do have friends, right?  And they can read?

  30. Anamika
    April 26th, 2012 @ 1:23 am

    You guys just couldn’t help it, isn’t it? It’s amazing how you’ll can be so oblivious to your own hate. Your kind just needs a political partisanship excuse to just walk into it.

  31. SUKANYA BUS
    April 26th, 2012 @ 2:40 am

     Download Education Topics For All Below Courses: Chemical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering,Electrical And Computer Engineering, Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering,Biological Engineering, Material Science And Engineering, Aero Space Engineering, Nuclear And Engineering.

    http://online-education-topics.blogspot.com

  32. richard mcenroe
    April 26th, 2012 @ 10:40 am

     So that would be, no, you have no friends who can read…

  33. richard mcenroe
    April 26th, 2012 @ 10:40 am

     SPAM!

    WOMBAT, KILL!

  34. Bob Belvedere
    April 26th, 2012 @ 10:48 am

    I’m sure at some point in his life Harvey Milk was called a Twinkie.

  35. Bob Belvedere
    April 26th, 2012 @ 10:49 am

    Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash.

  36. Bob Belvedere
    April 26th, 2012 @ 10:51 am

    YEAH!  Throw Sukanya Bus under the bus!

  37. ThePaganTemple
    April 26th, 2012 @ 11:28 am

     I don’t have anything personally against faggots. I’d just rather die than raise one.

  38. Wombat_socho
    April 26th, 2012 @ 12:31 pm

     Th-thump.

  39. RichFader
    April 26th, 2012 @ 4:37 pm

    How do conservative satirists make a living when real life insists on trying to out-crazy them?