LEONARD MATLOVICH

LEONARD MATLOVICH WAR HERO, GAY RIGHTS ACTIVIST

According to a Pentagon study released in June 1992, it costs U.S. taxpayers at least $27 million per year to enforce the ban on gay men and lesbians in the armed forces. Between 1980 and 1990, 16,919 military men and women were investigated and expelled for no other reason than their sexual orientation. The ban became a hot issue during the 1992 presidential campaign, with Bill Clinton promising to lift it if he was elected. The policy has been much debated since Sgt. Leonard Matlovich fought his exclusion from the Air Force in 1975 and became a gay rights hero.

Born July 6, 1943, in a military hospital in Savannah, Georgia, Matlovich was the son of an enlisted man in the Army Air Corps. He grew up on Air Force bases around the world and enlisted in the service in 1963. Volunteering for assignment in Vietnam, he served three tours there and received a Bronze Star for bravery and a Purple Heart for wounds. Despite his exemplary record, he was expelled when his homosexuality was revealed in 1975. He sought reinstatement in the service for five years, but in 1980 he finally dropped his suit for a settlement of $160,000.

Matlovich opened a restaurant in Guerneville, California, but with the advent of AIDS, many people avoided eating in places with known gay help (see card 73), so he sold it in 1984. In 1986 he was diagnosed with AIDS. In 1987 he admitted that the burial plot in Congressional Cemetery in Washington with a headstone reading "A Gay Vietnam Veteran" was his. He died June 22, 1988, and was buried there. The stone also says, "When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one." Next Card 34: STEWART B. MCKINNEY: Member of Congress