Hegseth announced USNS Harvey Milk changed its name to USNS Oscar V. Peterson

Defense Minister Pete Hegseth announced that on Friday USNS Harvey Milk was renamed USNS Oscar V. Peterson, after he ordered the Navy to attack the name of the rights activist rights of the pioneer gay from the ship.

Hegseth made an announcement on A Video posted to X.

“We issue politics from the naming of the ship,” said Hegseth. “We do not change the name of the ship to whatever is political. This is not about political activists, unlike the previous government. Conversely, we changed the name of the ship after the recipient of the Honorary Medal of the United States Navy Congress, as it should.”

Peterson, said Hegseth, was the head of Watnder who was awarded a medal of honor for heroism during the attack on USS Neosho by Japanese bombers during the coral sea battle in World War II.

According to the Navy, Peterson keeps the ship operating and credited by saving the life of 123 from his boat friends before surrendering to his wound.

Milk is also a navy veteran, serving almost four years in this service. He was dismissed in the rank of Lieutenant Junior after being threatened with a military court because of his sexual orientation.

Milk is one of the first open gay men to be elected as a public office in the United States after winning a seat at the San Francisco Supervisory Board in 1977. He was killed a year later.

Hegseth ordered the Navy to change the name of the ship during the Pride Month, which celebrated the LGBTQ community.

Stuart Milk, nephew of Harvey Milk and founder of the Harvey Milk Foundation, told ABC News that his uncle “would say this was a call to act” and that the sailors he met at USNS Harvey Milk “were very proud to serve” on the ship.

He called the Hegseth Premise to change the name of The Oiler – that “people want to be proud of the ship they sail” – as “antithesis with the truth.”

“We sometimes step forward and one step back,” said Stuart Milk. “This is a pretty big step.”

But “the fact of this problem is that my uncle’s legacy will live far through the 40 -year life of a military ship, but it also survives,” he added.

Lindsay Church, Executive Director of the American Veterans Minority Advocacy Group, told ABC News that Hegseth was “American cultural fighters, and brought certain lenses to lead the Department of Defense, rather than focusing on military readiness and what actually would make Americans safer.”

“We wear that uniform, we are Americans. When we let go of uniform and continue to serve our country, we are Americans,” the Church said.

At present there are no plans to change the names of other ships in this class, according to Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson.

Harvey USNS milk is part of the oil filling fleet named based on civil rights advocates including the Chief Judge Earl Warren and the US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

While Hegseth said he wanted to remove politics from the naming of the ship, the effort was a political effort that was inherent.

Traditionally, the Secretary of the Navy – which was appointed politics confirmed by the Congress – was responsible for names the ship’s direction.

Of the 15 most recent aircraft carriers have been named, 10 has been named for the previous US president and two for members of the congress, according to the Congress research services.

In the past, Hegseth criticized the efforts of the Biden government to change the name of the military base that respected the confederation general.

In the case of Fort Bragg in North Carolina, which was named more than a century ago after a confederation general who lost battle in the civil war, Hegseth argued that “the importance of inheritance” and it damaged the “generation relationship” for people who serve there.

Head of Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said the name of USNS Harvey Milk was different.

“There is absolutely no fortress that changed the name that was proportional to the potential replacement of USNS Harvey Milk-which occurred recently in 2016 under the government of Obama and was widely seen as an ideological motivated action found by sailors and veterans found,” Parnell said in a statement.

ABC News’ Alexandra Hutzler contributed to this report.