“[The ship] wasn’t named for [Milk] because he was gay,” Story told me. “It was named for him because he was a veteran. He served his country, served it well, and was also gay.”
But Milk’s service is being disregarded by a president who, unlike Story, finagled his way out of military service during the Vietnam era. In his sweeping disdain for everything his cruel administration brands as DEI — diversity, equity, and inclusion — Trump is targeting LGBTQ veterans and active-duty members.
“They feel they’re under attack. They see what’s coming out of the Trump administration and it’s not just the words but the executive actions,” Jon Santiago, secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Veteran Services, said in an interview.
“As a veteran myself, when I served, when I deployed, I didn’t care what your gender, your race, or your sexual orientation was,” Santiago said. “You signed the same contract I signed, we’re going to get deployed together, my life depends on you and vice versa. All I cared about was if you could do your job.”
Last month, the conservative-led Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to begin enforcement of a ban on transgender service members in the military. In an executive order, Trump falsely claimed that trans people are mentally and physically incompatible with military service — despite the fact that a majority of Americans surveyed favor trans people being allowed to serve openly in the armed services, according to a 2025 Gallup poll.
“We’re talking about the exclusion of transgender members from military service,” Santiago said. “We’re talking about cutting off gender-affirming care at [Veterans Administration hospitals]. We’re talking about [LGBTQ] erasure from the public [like] removing Harvey Milk’s name from a ship.”
In his first presidential run, Donald Trump was touted in a 2016 New York Times article as having “more accepting views on gay issues” that “set him apart” in the GOP. That story included a comment Trump made on the “Today” show that transgender people should “use the bathroom they feel is appropriate.”
But today, an LGBTQ Army veteran familiar with veterans services told me that some veterans are so fearful of the Trump administration’s anti-LGBTQ actions that they’ve contacted their VA providers to have them “change their sexual orientation or gender identity in their VA records because they’re afraid they’ll be at risk of being isolated or targeted.”
The source, who requested anonymity, added that they have friends who are transgender veterans and “have already left the country because they fear for their safety.”
Whatever their sexual orientation or gender identity, this is a fraught time for this nation’s nearly 16 million veterans. In March, the Trump administration announced that the Department of Veterans Affairs, the agency where many veterans receive health care and other services, will cut more than 80,000 jobs — about 15 percent of its workforce.
But for LGBTQ veterans, there’s the added indignity of wondering whether they’ll need to conceal who they are to receive the care that they have earned and deserve.
Story, 76, who is a wedding minister at Old South Church in Boston, feared that under the Trump administration, the military could retreat into another “Don’t ask, don’t tell” era.
“For someone enlisting today, I think they’d have to keep [their sexual orientation and gender identity] to themselves, which is sad,” he said. “To not be openly gay is not the way we’re supposed to be in this country.”
Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at renee.graham@globe.com.
