Friday, June 22, 2012

Know Your LGBT History - Leonard Matlovich

It's my sad duty to report that on this day in 1988, the lgbtq community lost a warrior whose fight against injustice paved the way for gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military - Leonard Matlovich.

 He was the first gay man to demand his rightful place in the military. Before anyone even thinks of saying "thank you" to President Obama for the legislation allowing us to serve openly, they should say "Thank You Leonard" several times.

And loudly:





From Michael Bedwell, Matlovich's close friend:

Six weeks after telling a rain-drenched Sacramento gay rights rally that, “Our mission is to reach out and teach people to love and not to hate,” a year after being arrested in front of the White House protesting President Reagan's virtual passive genocide, more than a decade after telling his African-American Air Force supervisor that his letter outing himself meant, “Brown v. the Board of Education,” and twenty years after surviving a land mine explosion in Vietnam, AIDS' great black wings swept Leonard's last breath away beneath a large framed photo of Martin Luther King, Jr, at approximately 9:43 pm. On one side of his bed, holding one hand, was his roommate, Joe, a nurse cousin, and myself; on the other side, holding his other hand, his heartbroken mother still trying, like so many mothers during those relentless dark days, to fathom how she had outlived her son; and his father, the stoic conservative who, before retiring after 30 years in the military himself, had stood by his then 19-yr. boy as he was sworn in. Thirteen years before this day he’d opened the morning newspaper and found out for the first time that his son was gay . . . and that he was threatening to sue the United States Air Force for discharging him. He then locked himself in his bedroom, and cried for two hours. As he looked down now at the shriveled body finally at peace, his inconsolable grief gently rested against the shoulder of his immeasurable pride.

Learn more about Leonard Matlovich here.


Past Know Your LGBT History posts:

Know Your LGBT History - Liberace

Know Your LGBT History - A brief history of gay relationships

Know Your LGBT History - Bessie Smith

Know Your LGBT History - Josephine Baker

Know Your LGBT History - Clara Ward and Willie 'Little Axe' Broadnax

 Know Your LGBT History - Venus Xtravaganza

Know Your LGBT History - LGBTs who are changing the world for the better

 Know Your LGBT History - Danitra Vance

Know Your LGBT History - Oliver Sipple

Know Your LGBT History - Gay Rights, Special Rights

Know Your LGBT History - Alan Turing

 Know Your LGBT History - Bayard Rustin

Know Your LGBT History - Billy Preston

Know Your LGBT History - Sylvester

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Know Your LGBT History - Nell Carter

Know Your LGBT History - James Baldwin

 Know Your LBGT History - Paul Winfield

Know Your LGBT History - Barbara Jordan

Know Your LGBT History - Michael Jeter

Know Your LGBT History - All in the Family and Beverly LaSalle

Know Your LGBT History - The Lion in Winter

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Know Your LGBT History - The 37th anniversary of 'Flowers of Evil'

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The Jeffersons and the transgender community  

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