Technical Sergeant Leonard Phillip Matlovich (July 6, 1943 – June 22, 1988) was an American Vietnam War veteran, race relations instructor, and recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. He was the first gay service member to purposely out himself to the military to fight their ban on gay people, 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.
Matlovich's 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. Matlovich was the first named openly gay person to appear on the cover of a U.S. newsmagazine. According to author Randy Shilts, "It marked the first time the young gay movement had ever made the cover of a major newsweekly. To a cause still struggling for legitimacy, the event was a major turning point."
Born at Hunter Air Force Base in Savannah, Georgia, Matlovich was the only son of retired Air Force sergeant Leonard Matlovich (of Czech ancestry) and his wife, Vera. He spent his childhood living on military bases, primarily throughout the Southern United States. Matlovich and his sister were raised in the Catholic Church. He spent much of his teenage years in Charleston, South Carolina, attending the Catholic Bishop England High School. When the Candlestick Murder occurred in Charleston in 1958, Matlovich saw it as proof of the negative societal consequences of homosexuality. Not long after he enlisted at 19, the United States increased military action in Vietnam, about ten years after the French had abandoned active colonial rule there. Matlovich volunteered for service in Vietnam and served three tours of duty. He was seriously wounded when he stepped on a landmine in Đà Nẵng.
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. In 1973, when he was 30, he slept with another man for the first time. 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 gay people was similar to that faced by African Americans.
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 gay people. 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.
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. Matlovich recalled, "He cried for about two hours." After that, he told his wife that, "If he can take it, I can take it."
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). 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.
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. 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.
A converted Mormon and church elder when he lived in Hampton, Virginia, Matlovich found himself at odds with the Latter-day Saints and their opposition to homosexual behavior; he was disfellowshipped and later excommunicated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for homosexual acts. He was disfellowshipped on October 7, 1975, in Norfolk, Virginia, and then excommunicated January 17, 1979. By this time, Matlovich had stopped being a believer.
Settlement, later life and illness
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.
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.