In July 2016, Ray Mabus, then United States Secretary of the Navy, advised Congress that he intended to name the John Lewis-class oilers after prominent civil rights leaders, with this ship to be named in honor of gay rights activist Harvey Milk.[5]
The ship was officially named at a ceremony in San Francisco on 16 August 2016.[6][7] Though Milk was gay, this ship is not the first US Navy ship named for an openly gay person, as that would be the WWI troopship USS Von Steuben (ID-3017), commissioned in 1917 and named for a revolutionary war hero and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.[8]
Per Wikipedia