US ship to be named after gay rights icon

Washington: The US Navy will name a ship after gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk, a San Francisco politician who was assassinated in 1978, a naval official said on Friday. Nicknamed “the gay Martin Luther King, Jr” for his work to end discrimination against gay people, Milk was killed one year after winning a seat on the San Francisco board of supervisors, which made him the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in America. “I can confirm that the Navy sent congressional notification on the intention to name a new oiler Harvey Milk,” said a congressional notification obtained by USNI News, a website run by the United States Naval Institute. —