The Washington Whispers section of US News and World Report reports,

Have Lockheed Martin executives watched too many episodes of Bravo’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? When the defense giant was selected in July as one of three finalists to design and build a warship of the future, Navy program execs raised one minor quibble: The name Lockheed chose for the small, slick ship seemed a bit, well, queer. Lockheed chose Sea Blade to connote a swift, agile vessel on the ready to chase down bad guys in shallow coastal waters. That seemed to be perfectly in line with the Navy’s concept for a littoral, or coastal, combat ship. But Navy officials whined that Sea Blade sounded too much like the Washington Blade, the capital’s influential gay paper. The Navy claims it never asked Lockheed to change the name, but, lo and behold, Lockheed stopped calling it Sea Blade. “They’re so freaking homophobic,” laments an insider of the service. All that makes Chris Crain, executive editor of the Blade, wonder if he has some stealth Pentagon readers: “I’m surprised officials at the Defense Department are aware of the gay publications out there.”

Sphere: Related Content