SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California State Sen. Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego) has introduced a resolution to support efforts to name a Navy ship after gay rights icon Harvey Milk.
Kehoe’s nonbinding Senate Resolution 36 is being considered by the Rules Committee.
Milk made history as the first openly gay politician to get elected to public office in California as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
He served in the Navy, and was stationed in San Diego during part of his military service. He left the Navy in 1955, holding the rank of lieutenant.
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As a public speaker, Milk was passionate and eloquent, inspiring a generation of LGBT activists at the beginning of the gay-rights movement. Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by former Supervisor Dan White on Nov. 27, 1978.
“Harvey was a major influence in state and national politics on issues important to the LGBT community,” Kehoe said in a statement.
The memory of Milk has been honored in San Diego this year with the renaming of a city street to Harvey Milk Street, which dead-ends in front of The San Diego LGBT Community Center.
