President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are working to depoliticize the U.S. military and return its focus to being a lethal war-fighting machine, which necessarily includes extricating all aspects of the ideological left's obsession with gender and race, along with so-called "diversity, equity, and inclusion" policies, or DEI.

In furtherance of that goal, Hegseth announced on Friday that a U.S. Navy oil tanker named after the late gay rights activist Harvey Milk would be renamed after World War II hero and Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Oscar V. Peterson, according to the Daily Mail.

Of course, the left was predictably outraged over what it viewed as a purposeful attack on the LGBTQ community during Pride Month with the removal of the gay rights icon's name from the ship just a few years after it was first commissioned, and ignored the merit of the renaming of the ship after someone who'd sacrificed his life to save others in battle.

Naval refueling vessel renamed after a WWII hero

In a video posted to X on Friday, Sec. Hegseth said, "I am pleased to officially announce that the Department of the Navy is renaming the fleet replenishment oiler, formerly known as the USNS Harvey Milk, to the USNS Oscar V. Peterson."

"We are taking the politics out of shipnaming. We're not renaming the ship to anything political. This is not about political activists, unlike the previous administration," he continued. "Instead, we're renaming the ship after a United States Navy Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, as it should be."

Noting that "people want to be proud of the ship they're sailing in," Hegseth went on to share how the late Chief Petty Officer Peterson, during the 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea, put his life and safety at risk to lead a doomed repair party on the "severely damaged" USS Neosho, in which he suffered grievous burns and injuries while he "singlehandedly closed the bulkhead stop valves, thereby helping to keep the ship operational."

"In performing his historic actions, and heroic actions, Peterson received additional injuries and burns which tragically resulted in his death," he said. "But his spirit of self-sacrifice and concern for his crewmates was in keeping with the finest traditions of the Navy, and for his heroic actions, Oscar Peterson was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor."

"So I would like to officially welcome the USNS Oscar V. Peterson to the Navy's vessel registry," the secretary concluded.

The controversial decision to name a ship honoring Milk

According to the Daily Mail, at the tail end of the Obama administration in 2016, then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus ordered a new oiler ship to be named in honor of Harvey Milk, a former Navy veteran who'd been dishonorably discharged in 1954 after four years of service because of his open homosexuality, which was illegal in the U.S. Armed Forces at that time.

After becoming a gay rights activist, Milk would later become the first openly gay politician elected in California in the 1970s when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, though he was assassinated by a political rival just one year later, which turned him into a martyr for the LGBTQ community and the ideological left.

Former Sec. Mabus' 2016 order to honor Milk finally became a reality in 2021 under former President Joe Biden, when the USNS Harvey Milk was formally christened and launched into service.

Yet, while the left cheered the honoring of the activist icon, many on the right fumed over the decision in light of claims that Milk was a "pedophile" and "predator" who'd admittedly sexually "groomed" and taken in as his lover an underage teenage boy while he was living in New York in his 30s -- though those claims have been disputed by some.

Democrats are outraged, as usual

To be sure, Democrats and leftists are howling mad about the renaming of the oil tanker ship from Milk to Peterson, and the Daily Mail shared plenty of outraged quotes without providing any of the context for why Milk's name is controversial to many Americans.

None of that really matters, though, because the Navy ship is now properly named after an actual military hero instead of a partisan political one ... "as it should be."