Dustin Lance Black, Sean Penn Hit Back as Navy Ship Is Stripped of Harvey Milk’s Name: “These Guys Are Idiots” (Exclusive); The Hollywood Reporter, June 4, 2025

 BY SETH ABRAMOVITCH , The Hollywood Reporter; Dustin Lance Black, Sean Penn Hit Back as Navy Ship Is Stripped of Harvey Milk’s Name: “These Guys Are Idiots” (Exclusive)

"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.”...

“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.”...

“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.”"