Portrait
Born
6 July 1943Savannah, Georgia, USA
Died
22 June 1988West Hollywood, California, USA · aged 44
Soldier and activistUnited States

Leonard Matlovich

“They gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.” – the decorated sergeant who challenged the US military’s ban on gay soldiers.

Leonard Matlovich was the son of an Air Force sergeant and grew up on military bases in the American South. He joined the Air Force at 19, volunteered for Vietnam and served three tours there. He was seriously wounded by a landmine and received the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. Raised with the racism of his surroundings, he later taught race relations courses for the Air Force and came to see that discrimination against gay people resembled discrimination against Black Americans.

He came out to himself at 30. In 1974 he read about the activist Frank Kameny, who was looking for a soldier with a perfect record to challenge the military’s ban on gay people. In March 1975 Matlovich handed his commanding officer a letter declaring that he was homosexual. Asked what it meant, he replied: “It means Brown versus the Board of Education.”

On 8 September 1975 he appeared on the cover of “Time” magazine in uniform under the headline “I Am a Homosexual” – the first time the gay movement had made the cover of a major American news magazine. The Air Force offered to let him stay if he promised never to have sex with a man again. He refused and was discharged. In 1980 a judge ordered his reinstatement; Matlovich accepted a settlement instead.

He died of AIDS-related illness in 1988, aged 44. His gravestone in Washington’s Congressional Cemetery bears no name, only the words: “When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.”

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