Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday that the United States officially renamed a U.S. Navy ship that had been named in honor of gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk.

It will now called be called the USNS Oscar V. Peterson in honor of a World War II Medal of Honor recipient. 

"We are taking the politics out of ship naming," Hegseth said in an announcement, posted on X, about renaming the fleet replenishment oiler. 

"We're not renaming the ship to anything political. This is not about political activists, unlike the previous administration. Instead, we're renaming the ship after a United States Navy congressional Medal of Honor recipient, as it should be."

Hegseth noted that Peterson was a chief watertender on the U.S. Neosho in 1942, when the ship was severely damaged by Japanese dive bombers, and the entire repair party was either killed or severely wounded. 

"Peterson himself was gravely wounded, yet he managed to single-handedly close the bulkhead stop valves, thereby helping to keep the ship operational," said Hegseth. "In performing his historic actions and heroic actions, Peterson received additional injuries and burns which tragically resulted in his death." 

Peterson's actions, said Hegseth, were in keeping with the traditions of the Navy, and Peterson was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

Milk was California's first openly gay man to hold public office. The ship was named in his honor in 2016 during the Obama administration.

Milk served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War but accepted an "other than honorable" discharge rather than face a court-martial because of his homosexuality. He embarked on his career in civil rights activism and politics after leaving the military, and was assassinated in San Francisco in 1978.