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From left: Congressman Eric Sorensen and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
After grilling Navy Secretary John Phelan Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen had some choice words for Hegseth Thursday.
For the second day in a row, gay U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen, confronted a Department of Defense official over the disrespect shown to Harvey Milk in light of reports that Milk’s name is to be removed from a Navy ship.
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After having grilled Navy Secretary John Phelan Wednesday, Sorensen offered pointed comments to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in a Thursday session of the House Armed Services Committee.
Sorensen, a Democrat from Illinois, noted that his grandfathers were both military veterans and taught him to be proud of all vets. “Which is why I want to talk about a different veteran,” he said. “One who served … from 1951 to 1955. He served courageously, like my Grandpa Sorensen. Unlike my grandpa, this veteran was forced to resign from the Navy — I’m talking about Harvey Milk — because he was gay.”
Related: Who was Harvey Milk?
“You see, as a kid, all I wanted to be was the weatherman on TV,” he continued. “I learned that I could have gone into the Army or the Navy to learn meteorology. But someone like me wasn’t allowed. They didn’t want someone like me, Mr. Secretary. There wasn’t anything that I could do to change myself or the way that my nation thought of me. So I want to keep it very simple: Do you believe that Harvey Milk is a veteran who deserve this country’s thanks?”
Hegseth started to talk about the ship renaming, but Sorensen repeated his question about whether Milk, the pioneering and martyred gay politician, deserves the nation’s thanks for his military service. “If his service was deemed honorable, yes,” Hegseth answered. Milk, however, had to take an “other than honorable” discharge for being gay.
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Sorensen noted that he couldn’t get a straight answer from Phelan either. “I disagree with your leadership and his,” the congressman said. “Because I believe that every veteran deserves our thanks. We all walk in the footsteps of the leaders before us. And you may not find the value in the fact that many of those people are women, with different skin colors, different backgrounds, different talents, immigrants, gay, straight, transgender, disabled. You may want to change it, but you can’t. Because the America you and I both serve is a place where everyone has the ability or should have the ability to grow up and be the hero that your grandpa was. I wanted to do that when I was a kid.”
“We’re going back to that time” of exclusion, Sorensen said. “Gay kids like me, they don’t want to go into the Army, they don’t want to go into the Navy, because you don’t care for them. It’s happening all over our country. My grandpa taught me never to judge the value of a veteran’s service, and I hope, Mr. Secretary, that you can learn to do the same in your capacity, and you can find it in your heart to make that part of your process.”
It's been reported that Hegseth has ordered the renaming of the USNS Harvey Milk, but Phelan said Wednesday that the decision isn’t final. The ship is the first Navy vessel named for an out gay person. It has also been reported that the Navy is reconsidering the names given to similar ships that are under construction or contract; they were set to be named for civil rights icons including Supreme Court justices, labor leaders, and abolitionists.
