A Ship Named for a Pedophile?

Seriously, Gentle Readers.

The U.S. Navy has announced plans to name a battleship after Harvey Milk.

That Harvey Milk.

He was a trailblazing homosexual activist, which some of you may think was a good thing, and he succeeded as an "out" homosexual because he was competent at his job, or jobs, which was definitely a good thing. He served honorably in the U.S. Navy.

But hello...can the Navy not think of other people who were competent at their jobs, who served in the Navy, and who were not child molesters?

In Harvey Milk's time the homosexual lobby hadn't grown big enough to dare to separate themselves from pedophiles; they took whomever they got. They got many same-sex pedophiles. They didn't repudiate the National Association for Man-and-Boy Love until, what, 1990?

To be fair, in Harvey Milk's time mainstream society had not reached a consensus about the precise definition of child abuse, either. People were more willing to believe that a sexual act involving a teenager had been non-consensual, but in some states consenting teenagers could marry each other, or older people, at thirteen.

Like a lot of "gay" men, Milk didn't publicize his sexuality unil he was fairly well settled in his career (and out of the Navy). When he did, all of his known boyfriends were younger than he. At least one was only sixteen. 

If you thought Judge Roy Moore's merely touching teenaged girls, when he was thirty and still single, was more discrediting than his "rogue judge" reputation, then to be consistent you must agree that Mayor Harvey Milk's having a sixteen-year-old boyfriend, when Milk was over thirty, is also discrediting.

Personally, I can't imagine what anyone was thinking--even if they knew nothing about the man's life--to propose naming a battleship Milk.

Unfortunately the petition linked below doesn't offer a place for those signing it to nominate other Navy veterans who weren't pedophiles (and whose names would look less ridiculous on a battleship than "Milk"). This web site, however, does. Please name your favorite Navy veterans and tell their stories below. Disqus will give you about 200 words.

https://www.returntoorder.org/petition/tell-u-s-navy-not-to-name-vessel-after-a-pedophile/ 

(This link will eventually expire.)