Dustin Lance Black and Sean Penn, who won Academy Awards for writing and starring in the 2008 Harvey Milk biopic Milk, are speaking out on orders from U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to remove the name of the gay rights activist and late San Francisco Supervisor from a Navy ship.
“This is yet another move to distract and to fuel the culture wars that create division,” Black, 50, says in a phone call with The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s meant to get us to react in ways that are self-centered so that we are further distanced from our brothers and sisters in equally important civil rights fights in this country. It’s divide and conquer.”
Adds Penn, 64, in an email to THR: “I’ve never before seen a Secretary of Defense so aggressively demote himself to the rank of Chief PETTY Officer.”
News of the renaming of the USNS Harvey Milk, christened in San Diego in 2021, came through the leak of an internal memo on Tuesday. The Pentagon’s chief spokesperson later confirmed that the renaming “will be announced after internal reviews are complete.”
Issued by Navy secretary John Phelan, the memo stated other potential ships currently being reviewed for renaming include ones bearing the monickers of civil rights icons like Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Harriet Tubman and Cesar Chavez.
“Secretary Hegseth is committed to ensuring that the names attached to all DOD installations and assets are reflective of the commander in chief’s priorities, our nation’s history and the warrior ethos,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
“These guys are idiots,” Black responds. “Pete Hegseth does not seem like a smart man, a wise man, a knowledgeable man. He seems small and petty. I would love to introduce him to some LGBTQ folks who are warriors who have had to be warriors our entire life just to live our lives openly as who we are.”
Black shot to international attention after Milk, helmed by Gus Van Sant, became a critical and commercial darling, winning two Academy Awards — one for Black and one for Sean Penn, who played the title character.
The film begins with Milk’s arrival in San Francisco, tracing his political ascendancy as the first out gay man to be elected to public office before being tragically assassinated, along with Mayor George Moscone, by city supervisor Dan White in 1978. White was found guilty of two counts of voluntary manslaughter and served only five years in prison before being released.
“There’s a lot that Harvey did before my film fades in,” Black tells THR. “He worked on Wall Street. He worked on Broadway. He was a school teacher and was in the Navy right here in California. Harvey always excelled at every single thing he did, including his work in the Navy.”
Says Black, “Harvey said repeatedly, ‘This is not about ego, this is about the ‘us’-es.’ And when he talked about the ‘us’-es, it wasn’t just gay people. It was racial minorities, ethnic minorities, people who didn’t speak English, seniors who couldn’t afford rent in the city that they grew up in and are finding themselves homeless at an old age. Union workers, most importantly, who couldn’t afford to feed their children and needed a living wage. These were the ‘us’-es. This was the coalition.”
“Harvey Milk is an icon, a civil rights icon, and for good reason,” Black continues. “That’s not going to change. Renaming a ship isn’t going to change that. If people are pissed off, good, be pissed off — but take the appropriate action. Do what Harvey Milk had said we need to do, and it’s about bringing back together the coalition of the ‘us’-es that helps move the pendulum of progress forward. Stop the infighting and lock arms again. That’s what Harvey would say.”
