November 24, 2008

Memorial to Gay Air Force Veteran Leonard Matlovich Dedicated in San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO — November 24, 2008 — “Therefore be it resolved, that I, Gavin Newsom, Mayor of the City and County of San Francisco, join the LGBT community in recognizing Leonard Matlovich’s unprecedented contribution to the pursuit of equality and celebrate his contributions and heroism, do hereby proclaim November 15, 2008, as ‘Leonard Matlovich Memorial Day’ in San Francisco!”

Thus, in the city in which a local TV news anchor who thought he was off-mike once referred to him as a “faggot flier,” late US Air Force Tech. Sgt. Leonard Matlovich, immortalized on the cover of Time magazine and by his own tombstone in Washington DC’s Congressional Cemetery, was honored by the Mayor and others on Saturday, November 15th.

The occasion was the dedication of a bronze memorial plaque since installed on the side of the apartment building at the corner of 18th & Castro where he once lived. It was conceived by friends of Leonard and the nongay owner of the building. As its text notes, Matlovich, a 12-year Air Force veteran with a Bronze Star and Purple heart earned during three tours of duty in Vietnam, was the first to make the nation aware of the absurdity and injustice of the military’s ban on gays when he volunteered to challenge it in court.

Though he didn’t succeed, his example inspired others to continue to try to this day and others, still, to come out to their family and friends, including some of the speakers at the dedication ceremony.

Representing the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, formed in 1993 to fight the modern version of the military’s ban, San Francisco attorney Jo Hoenninger recalled that, despite having never met him, Leonard inspired her to tell the truth when asked if she was a lesbian when she, too, was in the Air Force. Thinking the importance of her job for the service might save her, she was, nonetheless, soon discharged. She added that she believed that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” would have been overturned by now had Leonard lived.

GLBT Historical Society Executive Director Paul Boneberg revealed that he was still in the closet when Leonard’s famous “I Am A Homosexual” Time magazine cover appeared in 1975, forcing him to hide it behind another magazine while reading it. Twelve years later, as the head of Mobilization Against AIDS, Boneberg would be arrested along with Leonard and several other gay leaders at a protest in front of the White House against the Reagan Administration’s failure to adequately address AIDS which, by that time, had already killed 20,000 in the US. Leonard was arrested wearing his US Air Force jacket, his medals, and carrying a small American flag. By coincidence, the building on which his plaque was installed will soon house an exhibit of the Historical Society’s huge collection of GLBT memorabilia, including Leonard’s uniform, Harvey Milk’s chair, and the sewing machine upon which Gilbert Baker created the first rainbow flag.

In a remarkable coincidence, chants of the huge San Francisco anti Prop 8 crowd marching by below rose upward, filling the LGBT Community Center’s fourth floor ceremonial room as CA Assemblyman/State Senator-Elect Mark Leno also presented a certificate in Leonard’s honor and emphasized how fitting it was that the dedication was happening the same day as nationwide protests against anti gay marriage bigotry.

Attendees watched video clips of some of Matlovich’s numerous appearances on national television and speeches, including Walter Cronkite introducing his first television interview on May 26, 1975; being interviewed in Miami by NBC nightly news as one of the leaders of the 1977 fight against the Anita Bryant campaign which also used the threat of the city becoming “another San Francisco,” and, like Yes On Prop 8, the fear of gays’ influence on children to win; his revealing in 1987 to Charlie Gibson on Good Morning America that he had AIDS; his final speech just weeks before he died at a 1988 Sacramento gay rights rally where he told the crowd that “our mission is to reach out to teach people to love and not to hate”; and ABC’s Peter Jennings announcing his death and reading his epitaph which the Associated Press has described as “still as fresh as today’s headlines: ‘When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one’.”

Leonard’s friend, and co-organizer with him of a never-realized plan to erect a Washington DC memorial to Harvey Milk, activist Ken McPherson, said he knew that Leonard would be out in the streets himself if he were still alive.

LGBT liaison to out-of-the-country San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Alex Randolph, who had not been born when Leonard came out nor yet in grade school when he died, said how happy he was to learn of another gay hero, and presented the certificate from the Mayor proclaiming “Leonard Matlovich Memorial Day.”

More than one speaker agreed with the words of reporter Neely Tucker in an article in The Washington Post just a few days before:

“He had the knack for taking your heart and making it catch for a moment… He seemed to make people want to be braver than perhaps they were.”

A Website, www.leonardmatlovich.com, to further memorialize Matlovich and grow support for overturning “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” will be launched soon.

Posted by: Sapphocrat

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