Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich: The GI of Gay Liberation

Tech. Sgt. Leonard Phillip Matlovich, a Vietnam veteran, engaged the U.S. Air Force in a very public legal battle over his involuntary discharge in 1975. In a personal typewritten letter to the Secretary of the Air Force, with support from the Lawyers Military Defense Committee of the ACLU, Matlovich admitted his homosexuality. “After some years of uncertainty, I have arrived at the conclusion that my sexual preferences are homosexual as opposed to heterosexual,” he wrote. Matlovich affirmed that his open sexuality would “in no way interfere” with his duties and requested that the “provisions in AFM 39-12 be waived” in his case. The Air Force policy was explicit in its condemnation of homosexuality as immoral, plainly stating its support for heteronormative Cold War sexual mores. This paper traces Matlovich’s legal battles, from his initial fight against dishonorable discharge through to his civilian federal court proceedings, arguing that it was in this moment, in the mid-1970s, when the collective military branches could have eliminated their policies that demonized homosexuals. Despite the visibility of the Gay Liberation movement and changing attitudes toward gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals—as evidenced in local ordinances halting discrimination in the workplace and housing across the United States—the military doubled down. Although the Civil Service Commission had eliminated its hiring policies that banned homosexuals in July 1975, the Air Force and the Navy shored up their instructions, eliminating disparaging language, but leaving personnel policies that discriminated against gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals.