Leonard Matlovich’s headstone, “NEVER AGAIN – NEVER FORGET – 6 JULY 1943-22 JUNE 1988 – 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,” Washington, D.C. In 1974, Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich–Vietnam veteran, recipient of the Bronze Star and Purple Heart, and lecturer on race relations in the U.S. Air Force–began his career as an activist after reading an interview with Frank Kameny in the Air Force Times. On March 6, 1975, after meeting with ACLU attorney David Addlestone and Kameny–who explained that he and other activists hoped to find a gay service member with an impeccable record to challenge the military’s ban on homosexuals–Matlovich delivered to his commanding officers a letter explaining that he was homosexual, that his “sexual preferences will in no way interfer[e] with my Air Force duties,” and “therefore request[ing] that those [regulations] relating to the discharge of homosexuals be waived in my case.” From there, Matlovich became the first public face of the fight against the military’s ban on homosexuals, and his appearance on the September 8, 1975, issue of Time magazine made him the first named openly gay person to appear on the cover of a U.S. newsmagazine. Unlike many others in his place, Matlovich received an honorable discharge, and a court ultimately ordered that the military reinstate him; Matlovich, however, took a financial settlement. The impact of Matlovich’s activism in the mid-to-late 1970s cannot be overstated, as Anita Bryant and other anti-LGBT conservatives struggled to cast the war hero as anything less than “all-American”; Randy Shilts later described Matlovich’s appearance as “a major turning point.” In 1987, Matlovich announced he had contracted HIV, and, that June, he was among those arrested during a demonstration at the White House to protest the Reagan administration’s response to AIDS. Leonard Matlovich died on June 22, 1988, twenty-eight years ago today; he was forty-four. #lgbthistory #lgbtherstory #lgbttheirstory #lgbtpride #queerhistorymatters #haveprideinhistory (at Congressional Cemetery)
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