Adding to the hundreds of other gay servicemembers discharged since he was sworn in, our Commander-in-Chief has sacrificed another gay combat veteran, another Arabic linguist, on the altar of what he called in 2007, "fear and prejudice." Dan Choi may no longer be in the Army but he remains a hero and a universal soldier in the fight for full LGBT equality. At the recent NetRoots convention, he asked the moderator to give his West Point ring to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid because, “it doesn’t mean what it used to mean any more.” When Dan came onstage, Reid promised to give it back to him after the repeal bill is signed. Click photo at left for excellent interview with Dan in OutSmart magazine by Brandon Wolf.
HOW TO JUSTIFY KEEPING THE BAN
1993 METHOD
2010 METHOD
- PENTAGON SPOKESMAN GEOFF MORRELL MAY 19, 2009 "I don't think this is a question of polling anyway. I mean, this is a question of where the President wants to lead the country on this issue, and it'll be a determination made by him as to if and when he wishes to pursue this matter with the United States Congress."
PENTAGON SPOKESMAN GEOFF MORREL JULY 9, 2010 The poll is “absolutely, unequivocally” not biased. “We’re trying to figure out what the attitudes of our force are, what the potential problems are with repeal. We are not creating issues where we believe there to be none.”
"This expensive survey stokes the fires of homophobia by its very design. It is simply impossible to imagine a survey with such derogatory and insulting wording, assumptions, and insinuations going out about any other minority group in the military." - Servicemembers United
“Surveying the troops is unprecedented; it did not happen in 1948 when President Truman ended segregation and it did not happen in 1976 when the service academies opened to women; even when the military placed women on ships at sea.” - Servicemembers Legal Defense Network
Leonard Matlovich was the first to volunteer to fight the military's ban on gays, a universal soldier in the fight against AIDS & for full LGBT equality in every arena. He was also a loving son, brother, uncle, friend, & "father" of untold numbers of lives lived out & proud.
"The American Revolution continued in the fight of Sergeant Leonard Matlovich." - Rear Admiral Jamie Barnett (Ret)
"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." - Neely Tucker, The Washington Post
"He will never receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom although he has earned it. If I were in charge of these things, I'd give it to him." - Aubrey Sarvis, Executive Director, SLDN, The Huffington Post
"The epitaph he chose is 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." - The Associated Press
"The time for change has come. The most eloquent and most convincing testimony against the policy of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' comes, as such testimony usually does, from those who have paid the highest price for the policy's failings. And the most compelling I have ever read is on a tombstone in Congressional Cemetery, not far from the Capitol." - Sen. John Kerry, VetVoice
Leonard's Story
"I bore his name with pride." 19-yr. old Leonard P. Matlovich at his Air Force induction witnessed by his father Leonard C. Matlovich, a 30+ yr. USAF veteran.
The Purple Heart. A landmine explosion almost gave Leonard his wish for an end to the guilt he felt for being gay. It would take several months in the hospital to recover from his wounds and years more to live his life and love out loud.
IN 1975, as Tech. Sgt. Leonard Matlovich, United States Air Force, he was the first to bring the government's decades of discrimination against gays and lesbians to national consciousness when he volunteered to tell his superiors that he was gay in order to create a test case. From the front page of The New York Times to the cover of Time magazine, from every major network news program, talk show, and podiums everywhere, he exposed the military's naked bigotry. For despite his 12 years of exemplary service, despite his extraordinary performance ratings, despite the admiration and affection of over a thousand of his Race Relations Class students, despite his Bronze Star, his Purple Heart, and his shrapnel wounds, the Air Force
demanded his discharge simply because he was gay. He fought them in court for years, securing a ruling that the Air Force had failed to justify their discrimination. NBC DRAMATIZED his challenge in the first made-for-TV movie about a living gay person, and, as documented in the ABC News video below, his example inspired many others to join the fight against Pentagon prejudice and countless people to come out. Wherever he went, he told audiences:
"I'm intensely proud to be gay and you should be, too. Unless we state our case, we'll continue to be robbed of our role models, our heritage, our history, and our future."
1987 ABC-TV recap of his challenge of the US Air Force.
Historic interview on Good Morning America.
AFTER BEING ONE of the leaders in Miami's anti-Anita Bryant campaign, he moved to San Francisco where, from his apartment overlooking 18th & Castro, he repeatedly answered the community's call to help fight for LGBT rights once again. He crisscrossed America raising money to defeat Proposition 6, the Briggs Initiative, which would have banned gay teachers in California schools, and Proposition 64 that threatened to quarantine people with AIDS.
HE WAS ONE of the leaders of the protests during homophobic Pope John Paul's San Francisco visit, declaring:
"The Pope is wrong. I am not 'intrinsically evil'. We are a moral people! We will do everything we can to make this world a better place. We are letting our love and voices be heard."
AS SHOWN IN the video clip below, he tried to establish a permanent memorial to Harvey Milk in Washington DC. He helped force Northwest Airlines to end their refusal to fly people such as himself with AIDS. He was arrested
at San Francisco's Federal Building and in front of the White House itself denouncing the Reagan Administration's passive genocide, and was still speaking out for equality in the rain falling on a Sacramento gay rights demonstration just six weeks before he died on June 22nd, 1988.
REMARKABLY, A GROWING NUMBER of other out gays, particularly veterans, have since chosen to be buried near him in Congressional Cemetery. His name and example are echoed again and again in the struggle to overturn Don't Ask-Don't Tell which is essentially "old wine in new bottles." Both The Advocate and Philadelphia's Equality Forum have honored him as one of the Movement's great heroes. Last year, in connection with the dedication of a bronze plaque marking where he lived, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom declared it Leonard Matlovich Day in San Francisco, and recently four generations of activists honored him in Washington DC.
Excerpt from his final speech six weeks before his death.
"A glooming peace this morning with it brings."
ON JULY 2nd, 1988, a horse-drawn caisson carried Leonard through the streets of the nation's capital to his final rest in Congressional Cemetery. An eight-member Air Force honor guard served as pallbearers. His mentor and personal hero, movement icon Frank Kameny, told reporters, "The Air Force finally did it right and on Leonard's terms today." Army Sgt. Perry Watkins, fighting his own discharge, told the mourners, "His example lets each individual know that they must take a personal stand, with pride and courage, so that the dream we all share will continue to move victoriously forward."
Injustice may endure but so does the memory and spirit of Leonard's courage and compassion to inspire us to neither run nor surrender.
Leonard
& Ken McPherson conceived of the idea of the Never Forget
Foundation whose goal was to create public memorials to LGBT heroes in
the same fashion as there are for countless nongays. The first
subject was HARVEY MILK. The dedication ceremony was one of the
main events at the 1987 LGBT March on Washington, attended by the Who's
Who of the movement including Frank Kameny seen carrying a flag at the
beginning of the clip, and Pat Norman, Harry Britt, and Morris Kight
seen at the end. Although Harvey had been cremated and his
ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean, Scott Smith, his former partner
and heir, gave Leonard a few mementos that had belonged to Harvey. The
plan was to eventually entomb these beneath a monument in Congressional
Cemetery where Leonard had already placed his own stone honoring all gay
veterans. Sadly, he passed before enough money could be raised to
complete the Milk project. NB: The narrator misidentifies the
year as 1986, and Harvey's office—he was, of course, a San Francisco
City Supervisor not a Congressman.
Additional video clips to come including Leonard's appearances on the CBS Evening News, the NBC Nightly News, the Larry King Show, and Nightline.
America's Shame: Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Not including 15 Coast Guard discharges & an unknown number of discharges from the Reserves.
Since this chart was created, Coast Guard #s brought the total to 640 in 2008, but Servicemembers United recently unearthed documentation for another 630 discharges by the Army National Guard between 1994 & 2009. Discharge numbers from other National Guard and Reserve components have yet to be released. As in the past, every branch discharged lesbians at rates disproportionate to the number of women in the service. Nearly HALF of those discharged by the Air Force & Army were women, even though they made up only 20 & 14 percent of those branches respectively.
Two Iraqi war vets. First, former US Army National Guard Lt. Dan Choi, cofounder of gay West Point graduates group, KNIGHTS OUT. After outing himself in order to fight the ban in March 2009, he was finally discharged more than a year later. — Second, US Air Force Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach who's appealing the recommendation for his discharge which followed his being outed to his commander.
A Lesson from the Land of Oz
There were several times as I was driving around our nation’s capital that I thought I had a visitor from another planet in the car. For my passenger, Royal Navy Chief Petty Officer Stuart O’Brien, Australian Defence Force [ADF], comes from a place which has allowed gay servicemembers to serve openly longer than our ban has been the law known as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. And while he speaks English with a charming Aussie accent, the chairperson of the Defence Gay & Lesbian Information Service [DEFGLIS] repeatedly expresses an inability to understand those Americans who continue to speak nonsense about why we can't end DADT. Certainly Australia isn’t perfect for LGBTs. Inconsistencies remain between Australia’s states and territories regarding the various other rights afforded them, and, while gay couples have most of the rights of heterosexual couples, marriage equality remains unavailable there, too.
Which is why a right that Stuart and his partner, Chris, successfully fought to achieve is all the more remarkable: they and other same sex couples with at least one partner in the ADF are allowed to live in military housing. That sound you hear is Sen. McCain and Elaine Donnelly choking. And, oh yes, active duty members of DEFGLIS are allowed to march in Sydney’s famous Mardi Gras parade with a banner emphasizing the support they get from the ADF. Stuart has visited our backward country before, but these particular few days were unique. That Thursday saw Dan Choi and Jim Pietrangelo commit the first acts of traditional civil disobedience to overturn the ban [every servicemember who has ever outed him or herself publicly was effectively breaking the law], and two other DADT casualties, Mike Almy and Jenny Kopfstein, testified to the US Senate as a part of the first serious effort to end DADT since 1993. The next day, O’Brien joined gay former US Army CAPT Joan Darrah in lobbying members of Congress for repeal. At the annual Servicemembers Legal Defense Network Dinner, Stuart mingled with a panoply of American gay servicemembers who, in addition to Almy and Kopfstein, lost their careers after outing themselves or being ensnared by the ban including Joe Steffan, Tracy Thorne-Begland, Jose Zuniga, and Margie Witt, whose favorable 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling the Obama Defense Department has yet to react to despite promising they would.
These heroes were joined by three of the few to ever be allowed to stay in the military, Grethe Cammermeyer, Keith Meinhold, and Zoe Dunning. Gay WWII vet Frank Kameny, Leonard’s inspiration and once the only resource for gay servicemembers in trouble, was also there. Victor Fehrenbach, still awaiting final disposition of his discharge as the clock ticks toward his eligibility for retirement [and the difference between getting and not getting his Air Force pension], received the Barry Winchell Courage Award, and lead sponsor of the House repeal bill, Cong. Patrick Murphy received a standing ovation for being one of our community’s strongest nongay allies.
Former USAF MAJ Margie Witt
USAF LT COL Victor Fehrenbach
Cong. Patrick Murphy
Despite politely telling the aides of Senators Jim Webb and Mark Warner that fears that the sky will fall if DADT is repealed are disproved by Australia’s nearly 20-years of experience allowing gays to serve, that gay Australians such as himself served side-by-side with Americans in Iraq, and about gay couples living peacefully next door to nongay couples in military housing, Stuart sensed an unwillingness to hear. He might not have mentioned it, but it’s hard to imagine that even the willfully deaf would have missed the irony in the fact that openly gay O’Brien received a Meritorious Service Medal for his service in Iraq from OUR government, and that it was authorized by Gen. David “No Repeal Before Another Study” Petraeus. Stuart had to return to the land of Oz before the announcement of the new, so-called “humane” regulations regarding Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but I doubt a man who has lived real equality in the military would have been much impressed. Nor would any of Gates’ newfound “common decency” done the gay American soldier Stuart befriended on his second tour of Baghdad much good.
One day, that soldier walked up to him clearly upset about something. When asked what was wrong, he replied that his American soldier-partner had been killed by an IED in Northern Iraq and he was drowning in grief amplified by the fact that he couldn’t tell any of his friends in his unit, his commander, or even speak to a chaplain without fear of being discharged. Stuart comforted him as best he could and took him to the Australian unit’s chaplain who welcomed him with the kind of open heart and acceptance the country his partner had died for denied them both. Yes, under the new regs, he could, in theory, speak to an American chaplain with impunity. But, as enemies of repeal remind us again and again, unit cohesion is based upon a unique bond, upon the belief that one can trust those one fights beside with one’s sorrows as well as one’s joys, with pictures and stories of those one loves, and of those one loses. His chaplain may have kept his secret, but without repeal he still could not tell his band of brothers that it isn’t only straight soldiers that are shipped home in boxes, it isn’t only the mothers and fathers of straight sons and daughters who clutch folded flags as their children are lowered into the ground, and it isn’t only straight military wives and husbands who weep and mourn.
Australian gay servicemembers in Sydney's Mardi Gras Parade.
Click on photo to watch Stuart speak at last year's 60th anniversary celebration of President Truman racially integrating US forces sponsored by the Truman Library & SLDN.
KNIGHTS OUT
Remarks by Rear Admiral Jamie Barnett, USNR [Retired] at the 2009 SLDN Dinner
“I WOULD LIKE TO START WITH A STORY, a piece of history. The story starts with a young Catholic man who loved his country so passionately that he enlisted in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, served 3 tours in Vietnam, won a Bronze Star and was awarded the Purple Heart for wounds he received in Da Nang. If you walk through the Congressional Cemetery in D.C. you will find the end of this story. Or is it the end? The tombstone reads: 'WHEN I WAS IN THE MILITARY THEY GAVE ME A MEDAL FOR KILLING TWO MEN AND A DISCHARGE FOR LOVING ONE'.” Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich was probably the most famous gay man in the country in the 1970s. His face was on the cover of Time magazine, and NBC made a movie of his story. He declared his orientation in 1975, long before “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and despite his exemplary service, combat tours, and medals, he was discharged six months later with a general discharge. But the bravery which had served him so well in Vietnam served him in a fight with the Air Force for his civil rights, a fight which resulted in dignity, an honorable discharge and a ray of hope for gay service members. So the tombstone was not the end of the story. Sergeant Matlovich’s fight still continues. So with that story from history, let me ask you a historical question: when did the American Revolution end? It hasn't ended. It is still going on. The American Revolution continued with the Emancipation Proclamation and with the 13th Amendment ending slavery. It continued with Susan B. Anthony and the fight for the right for women to vote. The American Revolution continued with Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. . . . And the American Revolution continued in the fight of Sergeant Leonard Matlovich. And it continued in the fight of Sergeant Darren Manzella, and CDR Zoe Dunning, and in the fight of so many of you here, including the fight of Major Margaret Witt. And that is why I am so pleased to give this keynote address. I want to serve my country in this continuing American Revolution. I am proud to stand before you because I am proud to stand with you, the new patriots of the American Revolution, a revolution that exists wherever freedom and dignity are expanded with equanimity and justice. . . .”
REAR ADMIRAL JAMIE BARNETT, USNR (Retired)
“BY LAW, MEN AND WOMEN are still being discharged today if they declare that they are gay—even in a private e-mail to a friend that someone happens to find and passes to a superior. It is nothing short of astonishing, as well as appalling, that on the twentieth anniversary of Leonard's death the fight for basic rights most Americans take for granted is still going on. It is the reason why the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network exists. It is the reason why we defend service members affected by the law now known as Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and why we work for its repeal. That's our way of honoring a very brave and principled man. He will never receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom although he has earned it. If I were in charge of these things, I'd give it to him, not to General Peter Pace who declared Leonard Matlovich's love ‘immoral’."
- Aubrey Sarvis, Executive Director, SLDN, The Huffington Post.
Purchase this song sung by the out & outstanding John Barrowman, his CDs, new autobiography, & DVDs of his starring role in the BBC sensation "Torchwood" by clicking on his photo.
"Tell my father that his son didn't run or surrender. That I bore his name with pride as I tried to remember you are judged by what you do while passing through. As I rest 'neath fields of green let him lean on your shoulder. Tell him how I spent my youth so the truth could grow older. Tell my father when you can I was a man. Tell him we will meet again where the angels learn to fly. Tell him we will meet as men for with honor did I die. Tell him how I wore the Blue proud and true through the fire. Tell my father so he'll know I love him so. Tell him how I wore the blue proud and true like he taught me. Tell my father not to cry then say goodbye." - Murphy/Wildhorn
