Pete Hegseth Is No Match for the LGBTQ+ Community
The Trump-Musk feud has erased this news from our brains, but it was only two days ago that Pete Hegseth ordered the United States Naval Ship Harvey Milk—named for the first out gay man to be elected to American public office—to be renamed. The Defense Secretary didn't identity a new moniker for the ship, but it will probably be the USNS Kettlebell Swing or the USNS Morgan Wallen or the USNS Can Always Work In A Happy Gilmore Quote or whatever. This move, announced at the beginning of Pride Month, is spiteful and stupid, and yet there's also something hopeful buried in all this pointless cruelty.
It’s something I learned from Randy Shilts’ biography of Harvey Milk, The Mayor of Castro Street, and it explains something I’d been wondering about for a long time. In 1940, in the run up to World War II, the U.S. passed the Selective Service Act, forcing all men between the ages of 21 and 36 to register for the draft. After the attack on Pearl Harbor and America's declaration of war, the age range would widen to include every man between 18 and 45. It was the biggest draft in history: of the 10.1 million American soldiers who served in WWII, over 60 percent were conscripted.
Of course there were get-out-of-war-free cards: one could register as a conscientious objector, doctor, public official, or clergyman. But you could also be deemed unfit to serve if you were “observed to be homosexual,” as homosexuality was officially classified as a mental illness.
Probably because the military needed warm bodies, very few people got out of the draft this way. Many many more went on to serve.
When WWII ended, the United States military was way overstaffed and needed to do what is fair to call “layoffs.” The many millions of paychecks and pensions is a lot, so the dishonorable discharges began. For the untold thousands of soldiers who had been “observed to be homosexual,” the military, let us say, stopped observing the other way. The military processed them out of the service, with a special blue discharge H. A blue ticket made the discharged soldier ineligible for a pension, for benefits like the GI Bill, and made finding civilian employment that much more difficult. A blue ticket outed these guys, whether they were ready for that or not, in a year that began with a 1 and a 9 and a 4, in a world that was unimaginably hostile.
The U.S. military was only obligated to process these soldiers back to the debarkation point from which they shipped out. These men were on their own to get themselves back to their hometowns, and with the scarlet A that was the blue H, many understood that they would be unwelcome there.
The debarkation point from which most U.S. soldiers who served in the Pacific theater were shipped out was San Francisco. So a lot of these guys, pariahs in a post-WWII frenzy of nationalism, just stayed there. They found one another—being made a pariah can help you do that. The option of anonymity having been ripped away from them, they lived openly. They made a community. They started to fight for the rights of that community.
Harvey Milk at San Francisco’s Gay Pride Parade in 1978.
And that’s one of the reasons why LGBTQ+ people in America have the rights that we do. The bigotry and ignorance of the mid-20th century U.S. military created the Castro neighborhood in San Francisco. How lucky are we that bigots and ignorant people are often too stupid to think two moves ahead.
Harvey Milk would go on to enlist in the Navy during the Korean War, after which he was forced to accept one of those blue discharges. In 2016, the Navy named one of its Military Sealift Command ships the USNS Harvey Milk. All the vessels in this John Lewis class of oiler ships were to be named after civil rights leaders: Earl Warren, Sojourner Truth, Dolores Huerta. But this week brought the announcement that the Harvey Milk will be renamed, and the naming of the rest of the fleet will be reviewed to “ensure that they are reflective of the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, our nation’s history, and the warrior ethos.” This order came from the office of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has demonstrated that he is an ignorant person, a Trump sycophant, and has singlehandedly undone four decades of beer commercials in that he makes drinking look like a disgusting and irresponsible habit.
Renaming Naval ships to reflect the president's bigoted priorities is cowardly. Any of the men with that blue discharge H back then, any queer person on Earth now, any trans kid figuring themselves out right this second, has more strength, bravery, and integrity in their left elbow than Pete Hegseth has in his whole body.
We have overcome worse. We will overcome Pete Hegseth and his pathetic ilk. And we will do it together. Queer people, fair-minded people, soulful people who aren’t scared of a name on a boat.
Happy Pride.
Now, to send you into the weekend, here's a playlist reflecting all the week's news, so you don't spiral from having lived through it.
“Neanderthal” Bob Mould
Allow the great Bob Mould to bring the furious aggro gay man energy that this moment requires.
“Rip Her To Shreds” Blondie
It appears that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have had a full falling out, as anyone with a nine-year-old’s understanding of human nature predicted they eventually would. It’s two sad, friendless guys, afraid of their emotions, blasting each other on social media. It’s Kendrick vs. Drake except they’re both Bubba Sparxxx. It’s like a particularly nasty fight on a Vanderpump Rules reunion episode, except one of them has all of our personal information and the other has the nuclear codes. Musk said Trump is in the Epstein Files; Trump has said the federal government is going to terminate all of Musk's subsidies and contracts; and Kanye West has tweeted “Broooos please noooooo we love you both so much.” It is in the “moderately entertaining” phase right now, and I am years into my “tired of being entertained by politics” era. Go on BetterHelp and leave it there, boys.
“SEEIN STARS” TURNSTILE
Turnstile’s new album Never Enough is out tomorrow, and tonight at theaters across the country, they’re dropping the whole thing as a visual album. Get tickets here. I love this band for a lot of reasons, but their aesthetic is especially on point.
“The Edge of Forever” The Dream Academy
Thanks to a diligent reporter for Baseball Prospectus, we know that Thursday—June 5—is the fortieth anniversary of the day Ferris Bueller took off. The movie was released in June of 1986, but made the year before, and June 5, 1985 was the only day the Cubs would have played the Braves with Lee Smith as starting pitcher. Thank God for obsessives. Thank God for this perfect movie, and thank God they never made a sequel. (I am choosing to forget the short-lived TV show.) This is the track that plays when they’re all at the Art Institute and Cameron is vibing out on that pointillist Seurat painting. (I am aware I could have put “Oh Yeah” by Yello on this playlist, but I love you too much for that.)
“Blood & Guts” Middle Brother
Speaking of the movies, last night I saw one of the freakiest, funniest, most fucked-up films I have ever seen, and my all-time favorite movie is Broadcast News, so you maybe shouldn’t take it from me, but do. Jimmy & Stiggs is a sci-fi horror film made by an indie auteur named Joe Begos, for $200,000, over the course of four years. It’s about two very drunk and stoned friends fighting a horde of invading aliens. It’s very gory, and the gore is day-glo. It’s also all shot in his own apartment, so indie auteur Joe Begos is not getting his security deposit back. Horror legend Eli Roth was so taken with it, he’s made it the first release for his brand new releasing company The Horror Section. Jimmy & Stiggs will be on 1,500 screens starting August 15. You’ll want to see it in a theater. Here's the trailer.
“Get Better” Frank Turner
This week, punk-folk troubadour Turner posted a conversation between himself and Scottish filmmaker Stuart Alexander. It’s sort of an interview that turns into more of a conversation. It’s sort of a podcast, titled Somewhere Inbetween, except we don’t know when or how often or even if we’ll get more episodes. The subject is “Drugs & Addiction,” and in it, Turner talks about his cocaine habit and what made him get sober, except not really sober, because now he only does cocaine sometimes. He talks about hitting a rock bottom that wasn’t actually so bad, and going to a rehab that really kind of sounds like regular therapy, and how his wife saved his life, but maybe it also wasn’t that serious and anyway how he’s seeing someone new. It’s candid and vulnerable and frustrating and I get the overall sense that he’s not being completely honest with himself, but I’m glad he put it out there. I think. Anyway, Frank Turner is ferociously talented and one of the best live performers I’ve ever seen and I hope he’s okay.
“Don’t Feel Bad” Rain Parade
David Roback’s band before he started Mazzy Star rereleased and deluxified their 1986 album Crashing Dream this week, just in time for summer.
“Maps” Richard Walters
This English singer-songwriter released a beautiful stripped-down cover of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s classic, recorded in his countryside cabin. I am loving the new, sunnier Bon Iver and what it tells us about Justin Vernon’s overall mental state, but I am glad someone is still occupying the wilderness bummer space.
“Oh Patti” Scritti Politti
Patti LuPone apologized this week for the comments she made in The New Yorker about Kecia Lewis (calling her a bitch, saying she hasn’t done enough shows to be a Broadway legend) and Audra McDonald (calling her “not a friend,” saying that they’re in a feud, which was apparently news to Audra). Listen: Patti mouths off. That’s kind of her whole thing. But it’s possible that we’ve given her a little too much positive reinforcement for it. We have maybe yaaaas, messy queened her a time too many, go off mouthy legended her down the stoney end. Now, apology notwithstanding, 600 Broadway professionals have signed a letter asking that she be uninvited from this weekend’s Tony Awards. I don’t know, y’all, I feel like this one’s on us.
“Animal” Goose
Zachary Peck wrote a piece for Esquire a couple of weeks about how an all-meat diet turned his life and his wife’s life around, and I have thought about it every day since. I am at the beginning of a quest to become Middle Age Jacked—more on that soon—and it might just be that this essay is the flint that will really light the fire. Or put me in the hospital. Let’s find out together.
“I Know A Place” MUNA
As I mentioned, it’s Pride, and that means there are tons of parties and parades for me to find out about after they’ve already happened. West Hollywood Pride was last weekend, as I found out on Sunday, because it broke off from Los Angeles Pride, which is happening this weekend in Hollywood Hollywood, but don’t get that confused with Downtown Los Angeles Pride, which happens in August, or Long Beach Pride, which happened in May, and then there’s Palm Springs Pride, but that’s not until November, because if you go outside in Palm Springs in the summertime, you become a bowl of clam chowder. I will be in my backyard with a small group of friends for all of this. Whatever you’re doing, do it proudly, unless it’s some Pete Hegseth shit, in which case don’t do it at all.
esquire
