Perhaps the most painful aspect of the whole experience for Matlovich was his revelation to his parents. 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. 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.
Four months later, he met with Kameny at the longtime activist's Washington, D.C. 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 gays. 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. Matlovich gradually came to believe that the discrimination faced by gays was similar to that faced by African Americans. He became so successful that the Air Force sent him around the country to coach other instructors. 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 "came out" to his friends, but continued to conceal the fact from his commanding officer. In 1973, when he was 30, he slept with another man for the first time. "I met a bank president, a gas station attendant – they were all homosexual", Matlovich commented in a later interview. While stationed in Florida near Fort Walton Beach, he began frequenting gay bars in nearby Pensacola. He was seriously wounded when he stepped on a landmine in Đà Nẵng. Matlovich volunteered for service in Vietnam and served three tours of duty. 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. When the Candlestick Murder occurred in Charleston in 1958, Matlovich saw it as proof of the negative societal consequences of homosexuality. He spent much of his teenage years in Charleston, South Carolina, attending the Catholic Bishop England High School. Matlovich and his sister were raised in the Catholic Church. He spent his childhood living on military bases, primarily throughout the Southern United States. To a movement still struggling for legitimacy, the event was a major turning point." īorn 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. According to author Randy Shilts, "It marked the first time the young gay movement had made the cover of a major newsweekly. Matlovich was the first named openly gay person to appear on the cover of a U.S. His 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.
His case resulted in articles in newspapers and magazines throughout the country, numerous television interviews, and a television movie on NBC. 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.
He was the first gay service member to purposely out himself to the military to fight their ban on gays, and perhaps the best-known openly gay man in the United States of America in the 1970s next to Harvey Milk. Technical Sergeant Leonard Phillip Matlovich (J– June 22, 1988) was an American Vietnam War veteran, race relations instructor, and recipient of the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star.