Technical SergeantLeonard Phillip Matlovich (July 6, 1943 – June 22, 1988)[1] was an American Vietnam War veteran, race relations instructor, and recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star.[2] He was the first gay service member to purposely out himself to the military to fight their ban on gays, and perhaps the best-known openly gay man in the United States of America in the 1970s next to Harvey Milk. His fight to stay in the United States Air Force after coming out of the closet became a cause célèbre around which the gay community rallied. His case resulted in articles in newspapers and magazines throughout the country, numerous television interviews, and a television movie on NBC. His photograph appeared on the cover of the September 8, 1975, issue of Time magazine, making him a symbol for thousands of gay and lesbian servicemembers and gay people generally.[3][4][5][6] Matlovich was the first named openly gay person to appear on the cover of a U.S. newsmagazine.[7][8] According to author Randy Shilts, "It marked the first time the young gay movement had made the cover of a major newsweekly. To a movement still struggling for legitimacy, the event was a major turning point."[9]
While stationed in Florida near Fort Walton Beach, he began frequenting gay bars in nearby Pensacola. "I met a bank president, a gas station attendant – they were all homosexual", Matlovich commented in a later interview.[17] In 1973, when he was 30, he slept with another man for the first time.[18] He "came out" to his friends, but continued to conceal the fact from his commanding officer. Having realized that the racism he had grown up around was wrong, he volunteered to teach Air Force Race Relations classes, which had been created after several racial incidents in the military in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He became so successful that the Air Force sent him around the country to coach other instructors. Matlovich gradually came to believe that the discrimination faced by gays was similar to that faced by African Americans.[14]
Activism
In March 1974, previously unaware of the organized gay movement, he read an interview in the Air Force Times with gay activist Frank Kameny, who had counseled several gay people in the military over the years. He contacted Kameny, who told him he had long been looking for a gay service member with a perfect record to create a test case to challenge the military's ban on gays. Four months later, he met with Kameny at the longtime activist's Washington, D.C. home. After several months of discussion with Kameny and ACLU attorney David Addlestone during which they formulated a plan, he hand-delivered a letter to his Langley AFB commanding officer on March 6, 1975. When his commander asked, "What does this mean?" Matlovich replied, "It means Brown versus the Board of Education" – a reference to the 1954 landmark Supreme Court case outlawing racial segregation in public schools.[19]
Perhaps the most painful aspect of the whole experience for Matlovich was his revelation to his parents. He told his mother by telephone. She was so stunned she refused to tell Matlovich's father. Her first reaction was that God was punishing her for something she had done, even if her Roman Catholic faith would not have sanctioned that notion. Then, she imagined that her son had not prayed enough or had not seen enough psychiatrists. His father finally found out by reading it in the newspaper, after his challenge became public knowledge on Memorial Day 1975 through an article on the front page of The New York Times and that evening's CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.[citation needed] Matlovich recalled, "He cried for about two hours." After that, he told his wife that, "If he can take it, I can take it."[20]
Discharge and lawsuit
At that time, the Air Force had a fairly ill-defined exception clause that could allow gay people to continue to serve if there were extenuating circumstances. These circumstances might include being immature or drunk, exemplary service, or a one-time experimentation (known sarcastically as the "Queen for a day" rule).[21] During Matlovich's September 1975 administrative discharge hearing, an Air Force attorney asked him if he would sign a document pledging to "never practice homosexuality again" in exchange for being allowed to remain in the Air Force. Matlovich refused. Despite his exemplary military record, tours of duty in Vietnam, and high performance evaluations, the panel ruled Matlovich unfit for service, and he was recommended for a General (Under Honorable Conditions) discharge. The base commander, Colonel Alton J. Thogersen, citing Matlovich's service record, recommended that it be upgraded to Honorable. The Secretary of the Air Force agreed, confirming Matlovich's discharge in October 1975.[22]
Matlovich sued for reinstatement, but the legal process was a long one, with the case moving back and forth between United States District and Circuit Courts.[23] When, by September 1980, the Air Force had failed to provide U.S. District Court Judge Gerhard Gesell an explanation of why Matlovich did not meet its criteria for exception (which by then had been eliminated but still could have applied to him), Gesell ordered him reinstated into the Air Force and promoted. The Air Force offered Matlovich a financial settlement instead. Convinced that the military would find some other reason to discharge him if he reentered the service, or that the conservative Supreme Court would rule against him should the Air Force appeal, Matlovich accepted. The figure, based on back pay, future pay, and pension, was $160,000.[24]
From the moment his case was revealed to the public, Matlovich was repeatedly called upon by gay groups to help them with fundraising and advocating against anti-gay discrimination, helping lead campaigns against Anita Bryant's efforts in Miami, Florida, to overturn a gay nondiscrimination ordinance and John Briggs' attempt to ban gay teachers in California. Sometimes he was criticized by individuals more to the left than he had become. "I think many gays are forced into liberal camps only because that's where they can find the kind of support they need to function in society," Matlovich once noted. While appealing his discharge, he moved from Virginia to Washington, D.C., and, in 1978, to San Francisco. In 1981, he moved to the Russian River town of Guerneville, where he used the proceeds of his settlement to open a pizza restaurant.[25]
With the outbreak of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. in the early 1980s, Matlovich's personal life was caught up in the hysteria about the virus. He sold his Guerneville restaurant in 1984, moving to Europe for a few months where, during a visit to the joint grave of lovers Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and the grave of gay writer Oscar Wilde in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France, he got the idea for a gay memorial in the United States. He returned briefly to Washington, D.C., in 1985 and, then, to San Francisco where he sold Ford cars and once again became heavily involved in gay rights causes and the fight for adequate HIV/AIDS education and treatment.
In 1986, Matlovich felt fatigued, then contracted a prolonged chest cold he seemed unable to shake. When he finally saw a physician in September of that year, he was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS.[26] Too weak to continue his work at the Ford dealership, he was among the first to receive AZT treatments, but his prognosis was not encouraging. He went on disability benefits and became a champion for HIV/AIDS research for the disease which was claiming tens of thousands of lives in the Bay Area and nationally. He announced on Good Morning America in 1987 that he had contracted HIV, and was arrested with other demonstrators in front of the White House that June protesting what they believed was an inadequate response to HIV/AIDS by the administration of President Ronald Reagan.[27]
Despite his deteriorating health, he tearfully made his last public speech on May 7, 1988, in front of the California State Capitol during the March on Sacramento for Gay and Lesbian Rights:
... And I want you to look at the flag, our rainbow flag, and I want you to look at it with pride in your heart, because we too have a dream. And what is our dream? Ours is more than an American dream. It's a universal dream. Because in South Africa, we're black and white, and in Northern Ireland, we're Protestant and Catholic, and in Israel we're Jew and Muslim. And our mission is to reach out and teach people to love, and not to hate. And you know the reality of the situation is that before we as an individual meet, the only thing we have in common is our sexuality. And in the AIDS crisis – and I have AIDS – and in the AIDS crisis, if there is any one word that describes our community's reaction to AIDS, that word is love, love, love.[28]
Death
On June 22, 1988, less than a month before his 45th birthday, Matlovich died in Los Angeles of complications from HIV/AIDS.[1] His tombstone, meant to be a memorial to all gay veterans, does not bear his name. It reads, "When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one."[29] Recognizing military officials would not then allow such a marker in Arlington Cemetery,[30] Matlovich chose a gravesite in Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.[31] Another reason was because the man many believe to have been the greatest love of poet Walt Whitman, Peter Doyle, is buried there. He chose the same row where the graves of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Hoover's longtime Assistant Director and heir Clyde Tolson are, as a kind of "last laugh".[30]
"A Gay Vietnam Veteran When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one."
Before his death, Matlovich donated his personal papers and memorabilia to the GLBT Historical Society, a museum, archives and research center in San Francisco.[32] The society has featured Matlovich's story in two exhibitions: "Out Ranks: GLBT Military Service From World War II to the Iraq War", which opened in June 2007 at the society's South of Market gallery space, and "Our Vast Queer Past: Celebrating San Francisco's GLBT History", which opened in January 2011 at the society's GLBT History Museum in the Castro District.[33][34][35]
A bronze plaque in his memory was installed near the entrance of the apartment in which he once lived at the corner of 18th and Castro Streets in San Francisco.[36] In October 2012, another, larger bronze memorial plaque was installed on Chicago's Halsted Street as a part of the Legacy Walk,[37] an "outdoor museum" of LGBT historical figures including Milk, Wilde, Barbara Gittings, Bayard Rustin, and Alan Turing, and the Legacy Project Education Initiative in Illinois public schools.
San Francisco resident Michael Bedwell, a close friend and the original executor of Matlovich's estate, created a website in honor of Matlovich and other gay U.S. veterans. The site includes a history of the ban on gays and bisexuals in the U.S. military both before and after its transformation into "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", and illustrates the role that gay veterans fighting the ban played in the earliest development of the gay rights movement in the United States.[38]
Matlovich's gravesite has been a site of attraction and ceremony for LGBT rights activists since his interment including an annual LGBT Veterans Day observance, and several individuals and couples have chosen to also be buried in Congressional Cemetery identifying their being gay on their tombstones per his suggestion such as Gittings and her partner Kay Tobin Lahusen. In May 2011, gay Iraq veteran Capt. Stephen Hill – who would later become famous for being booed by audience members during a Republican presidential candidates debate for asking whether any would attempt to restore "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" – and his partner Josh Snyder chose to be legally married next to the gravesite to honor Matlovich's fight against the original ban. His grave is the starting point for the annual Pride Run 5K sponsored by DC Front Runners, a running, walking, and social club serving Washington DC's LGBT people and their friends.[39] On Veterans Day 2015, a Veterans Administration memorial for his mentor Kameny (1925–2011) was dedicated immediately behind Matlovich's grave. Activists including Army Lt. Dan Choi, Army Staff Sergeant Miriam Ben-Shalom and members of GetEQUAL held a vigil at Matlovich's gravesite on November 10, 2010 before proceeding to chain themselves to the White House fence (and be subsequently arrested) to protest "Don't Ask, Don't Tell".[40]
Castañeda, Laura and Susan B. Campbell. "No Longer Silent: Sgt. Leonard Matlovich and Col. Margarethe Cammermeyer." In News and Sexuality: Media Portraits of Diversity, 198–200. Sage, 2005, ISBN1-4129-0999-6.
Hippler, Mike. Matlovich: The Good Soldier, Alyson Publications Inc., 1989, ISBN1-55583-129-X
Miller, Neil. "Leonard Matlovich: A Soldier's Story." In Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present, 411–414. Virginia: Vintage Books, 1995, ISBN0-679-74988-8
Shilts, Randy. Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military, Diane Publishing Company, 1993, ISBN0-7881-5416-8
Sergeant Matlovich vs. the U.S. Air Force, made-for-television dramatization directed by Paul Leaf, written by John McGreevey, starring Brad Dourif in title role. Originally aired on NBC, August 21, 1978.
The Strange History of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, HBO television documentary directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. Originally aired September 20, 2011.
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous protests by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Patrons of the Stonewall, other Village lesbian and gay bars, and neighborhood street people fought back when the police became violent. The riots are widely considered the watershed event that transformed the gay liberation movement and the twentieth-century fight for LGBT rights in the United States.
The White Night riots were a series of violent events sparked by an announcement of a lenient sentencing of Dan White for the assassinations of George Moscone, the mayor of San Francisco, and of Harvey Milk, a member of the city's Board of Supervisors who was one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States. The events took place on the night of May 21, 1979 in San Francisco. Earlier that day, White had been convicted of voluntary manslaughter, the lightest possible conviction for his actions. That White was not convicted of first-degree murder had so outraged the city's gay community that it set off the most violent reaction by gay Americans since the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City.
Captain James K. Dressel was an Air Force pilot, and a Michigan politician in the 1970s and early 1980s. Although he was a conservative Republican, in 1983 he co-sponsored the state's first bill to protect gay and lesbian people from discrimination in employment and housing. He was profiled in Randy Shilts' book Conduct Unbecoming in the chapter "Heroes".
Randy Shilts was an American journalist and author. After studying journalism at the University of Oregon, Shilts began working as a reporter for both The Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations. In the 1980s, he was noted for being the first openly gay reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Franklin Edward Kameny was an American gay rights activist. He has been referred to as "one of the most significant figures" in the American gay rights movement.
Robert Boyle "Bobbi" Campbell Jr. was a public health nurse and an early United States AIDS activist. In September 1981, Campbell became the 16th person in San Francisco to be diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma, when that was a proxy for an AIDS diagnosis. He was the first to come out publicly as a person with what came to be known as AIDS, writing a regular column in the San Francisco Sentinel, syndicated nationwide, describing his experiences and posting photos of his KS lesions to help other San Franciscans know what to look for, as well as helping write the first San Francisco safer sex manual.
Perry Watkins was an American soldier. A gay man, he was one of the first servicemembers to challenge the ban against homosexuals in the United States military.
Barbara Gittings was a prominent American activist for LGBT equality. She organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) from 1958 to 1963, edited the national DOB magazine The Ladder from 1963 to 1966, and worked closely with Frank Kameny in the 1960s on the first picket lines that brought attention to the ban on employment of gay people by the largest employer in the US at that time: the United States government. Her early experiences with trying to learn more about lesbianism fueled her lifetime work with libraries. In the 1970s, Gittings was most involved in the American Library Association, especially its gay caucus, the first such in a professional organization, in order to promote positive literature about homosexuality in libraries. She was a part of the movement to get the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality as a mental illness in 1972. Her self-described life mission was to tear away the "shroud of invisibility" related to homosexuality, which had theretofore been associated with crime and mental illness.
Nicole Murray-Ramirez is a LGBT activist and frequent San Diego city committee appointee known as "Empress Nicole the Great, Queen Mother of the Americas" within the Imperial Court System of which she is the titular leader.
Craig L. Rodwell was an American gay rights activist known for founding the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop on November 24, 1967, the first bookstore devoted to gay and lesbian authors, and as the prime mover for the creation of the New York City pride demonstration. Rodwell is considered by some to be the leading gay rights activist in the early homophile movement of the 1960s.
Bruce Raymond Voeller was a biologist and researcher, primarily in the field of AIDS, and gay rights activist. In 1973 he co-founded the National Gay Task Force. In 1977, the now renamed National LGBTQ Task Force held the first-ever meeting at the White House with President Jimmy Carter marking the first time openly gay and lesbian leaders were welcomed there, and the first official discussion of gay and lesbian rights in the White House. Within the first few years of the AIDS pandemic Voeller coined the term acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) which we use to this day.
James M. Foster was an American LGBT rights and Democratic activist. Foster became active in the early gay rights movement when he moved to San Francisco following his undesirable discharge from the United States Army in 1959 for being homosexual. Foster co-founded the Society for Individual Rights (SIR), an early homophile organization, in 1964. Dianne Feinstein credits SIR and the gay vote with generating her margin of victory in her election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1969.
Melvin Boozer was a university professor and activist for African American, LGBT and HIV/AIDS issues. He was active in both the Democratic Party and Socialist Party USA.
The United States military formerly excluded gay men, bisexuals, and lesbians from service. In 1993, the United States Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed a law instituting the policy commonly referred to as "Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) which allowed gay, lesbian, and bisexual people to serve as long as they did not reveal their sexual orientation. Although there were isolated instances in which service personnel were met with limited success through lawsuits, efforts to end the ban on openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual people serving either legislatively, or through the courts initially proved unsuccessful.
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic is a 1987 book by San Francisco Chronicle journalist Randy Shilts. The book chronicles the discovery and spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) with a special emphasis on government indifference and political infighting—specifically in the United States—to what was then perceived as a specifically gay disease. Shilts's premise is that AIDS was allowed to happen: while the disease is caused by a biological agent, incompetence and apathy toward those initially affected allowed its spread to become much worse.
Vernon E. "Copy" Berg was U.S. Naval Academy graduate and artist. He was the first Naval Academy alumnus to actively fight the policies against homosexuality in the services. After Mr. Berg's suit against the Navy, which had given him an other than honorable discharge as an ensign in 1976, the armed forces adopted a policy of generally granting honorable discharges to homosexuals.
Miriam Ben-Shalom is an American educator, activist and former Staff Sergeant in the United States Army. After being discharged from the military for homosexuality in 1976, she successfully challenged her discharge in court and returned to military service in 1987—the first openly gay person to be reinstated after being discharged under the military's policy excluding homosexuals from military service. She served until 1990 when the Army succeeded in terminating her service after prolonged judicial proceedings.
Nell "Johnnie" Phelps was a member of the Women's Army Corps who falsely claimed that she managed to convince General Dwight D. Eisenhower not to eject lesbian members of the WAC as he had been ordered by President Truman.
The following is a timeline of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) history in the 20th century.
The National LGBTQ Wall of Honor is an American memorial wall in New York City dedicated to LGBTQ "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes." The wall is located inside of the Stonewall Inn and is a part of the Stonewall National Monument, the first U.S. National Monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history. The first fifty nominees were announced in June 2019 and the wall was unveiled on June 27, 2019as a part of the Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019 events. Each year five additional names will be added.
↑ Sears, James T. (2001). Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. pp.197–211. ISBN9780813529646.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
