Queer Ancestor Spotlight: Leonard Matlovich

Leonard Matlovich was an American Vietnam War veteran, recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star, and was the first openly gay service member to purposely out himself to the military in order to fight their ban on gay men serving in the armed forces. He is also the first named openly gay person to appear on the cover of a U.S. news magazine.

Leonard Matlovich on the cover of *Time* in 1975

Leonard Phillip Matlovich was born at Hunter Air Force Base in Savannah, GA on July 6, 1943. He grew up on military bases throughout the Southern United States, and enlisted in the military at 19. He volunteered for service in Vietnam and served three tours of duty before he was seriously injured by a landmine.

Matlovich began frequenting gay bars while stationed outside Pensacola, FL. He slept with another man for the first time when he was 30, partly as a result of attending high school in Charleston when the “Candlestick Murder” occurred in 1958. The successful use of the “gay panic” defense in reaching an acquittal reinforced to a young Matlovich the danger of engaging in homosexuality at the time. Although he came out to his friends he continued to conceal his homosexuality from his commanding officer.

He was keenly aware of racial discrimination while growing up, and volunteered to teach Air Force Race Relations classes. His success with these classes resulted in the Air Force sending him around the country to teach other instructors. Through this experience he developed his own belief that homosexuals faced discrimination similar to that faced by African Americans.

Matlovich became aware of the larger gay liberation movement after reading an interview with Frank Kameny in a 1974 issue of Air Force Times. He reached out to Kameny, who recruited him as a test case to challenge the military’s ban on gay servicemembers. To Kameny, Matlovich was the perfect candidate given his perfect record in the armed forces and lack of criminal history. After several months of planning with the ACLU, Matlovich hand-delivered a letter to his commanding officer on March 6, 1975 in which he formally came out to the military.

Following an administrative hearing in September 1975, during which an Air Force attorney attempted to have him sign a pledge to never engage in homosexual activity again, Matlovich as discharged from the military the following month. Given his tours in Vietnam, high performance evaluations, and military record he was given an Honorable Discharge. He immediately sued for reinstatement.

His case bounced between District and Circuit courts for years. In 1980, following the failure of the Air Force to provide an explanation of why Matlovich did not qualify for it’s criteria for exception from discharge, U.S. District Court Judge Gerhard Gesell ordered Matlovich be reinstated. The Air Force offered a financial settlement instead, which Matlovich accepted with the expectation that the conservative Supreme Court would inevitably rule against him.

Matlovich served as a rallying figure for many in the gay liberation movement due to the public nature of his case, and because he was the first openly gay man to be featured on the cover of a major U.S. magazine. In the early 1980’s, after visiting the graves of Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, and Oscar Wilde at Père Lachaise Cemetery he began working towards establishing a gay memorial in the United States.

In 1986, Matlovich was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. He remained highly involved in advocacy and education around the virus until his death, due to complications from the disease, on June 22, 1988. His tombstone was designed as a memorial to all gay military veterans, and does not bear his name. Instead, it reads “When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.” It can be found in Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.