"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.
"And alien tears will fill for him pity's long broken urn, for his mourners will be outcast men, and outcasts always mourn."
- Oscar Wilde's tombstone epitaph from his poem TheBallad of Reading Gaol that he wrote after finishing his two-year prison sentence for "gross indecency."
LEONARD PERSONALLY DESIGNED his internationally known tombstone, incorporating the same kind of reflective black granite that was used in the construction of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, inset with his famous quote and pink triangles referencing the emblem used to mark gays in Nazi concentration camps.
NOTE IT DOES NOT bear his name—his last name inscribed at the foot of a granite grave border was to be the only indication that the grave was his. He wanted the stone itself to serve as a memorial to all gay veterans. He got the idea after being moved by the oft-visited graves of Alice B. Toklas & Gertrude Stein [who share the same stone] and Oscar Wilde in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, and realizing that in America, filled with countless places memorializing its straight-identified forebears, there are few such places where gays can remember and honor their own. In that spirit, he later began a project to build a DC memorial to Harvey Milk but passed away before enough money could be raised.
WHILE LEONARD WAS eligible to be buried in the same place most veterans identify with, Arlington National Cemetery, he chose Washington DC's Congressional Cemetery instead, which he discovered on one of his frequent walks near his then home. Though smaller, it is half-a-century older than Arlington, and he loved its variety of individual stones versus Arlington's tens of thousands of identical markers. He also was amazed to learn that Peter Doyle, Walt Whitman's great love, is buried there, and couldn't resist the last laugh of being buried in the same row with the loathsome and apparently self-loathing FBI legend J. Edgar Hoover and Hoover's partner Clyde Tolson.
IN A TOUCHING TRIBUTE no one anticipated, a growing number of other out gays, including veterans, have since chosen to be buried in the same once obscure graveyard. And at his graveside every Veterans Day, Capt. Mike Rankin USN (RET) conducts a memorial service for all gay veterans who have passed—just as Leonard dreamed.
“I believe that we must be the same activists in our deaths that we were in our lives.” - Leonard Matlovich, The Advocate, June 23, 1987.
Thumbnails below can be clicked for larger images of various other gay grave sites in Congressional Cemetery. Like Leonard, gay vet activist Tom Swann, first right, has already placed his own stone. Read about his many ongoing accomplishments at www.tomswann.com.
One of the reasons Leonard chose Congressional Cemetery was because Peter Doyle is buried there next to his brother. The former is considered to be the greatest love of legendary American gay poet Walt Whitman. The two met on the Washington DC Navy Yard horse-driven streetcar for which Doyle was the conductor.
"I will therefore let flame from me the burning fires that were threatening to consume me, I will lift what has too long kept down those smouldering fires, I will give them complete abandonment, I will write the evangel-poem of comrades and of love. . . . Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! Let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law, Camerado, I give you my hand! I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law: Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me? Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?" - Walt Whitman.
Click on photo to go to page with videos & photos of major 2009 memorial.
2010 annual Veterans Day observance. Click photo for video.
2004 - members of American Veterans for Equal Rights [AVER]
Australia ended their ban on gays in the military in 1992. Royal Navy Chief Petty Officer & gay rights leader Stuart O'Brien traveled to the United States several times to help lobby Congress to end the ban.
Now retired Air Force Major Margaret Witt won a landmark court victory against the ban in 2010 ordering her reinstatement. "One of the reasons I fought my discharge was to continue what Leonard had started."
2011 Veterans Day Observance. Left to Right: ban victims, former Lt. Dan Choi, Sgt. Ian Finkenbinder, & Capt. Jim Pietrangelo. Photos by Tracey Hepner.
Clockwise: gay veterans Ian Finkenbinder, Miriam Ben-Shalom, Jim Pietrangelo, Mara Boyd, Rob Smith, transgender veteran Autumn Sandeen, gay veterans Dan Choi, & Evelyn Thomas
Transgender Navy veteran Autumn Sandeen
Ban victim, former Air Force ROTC cadet Mara Boyd
Photos above of November 2010 GetEQUAL event by Sean Carlson, Talk About Equality
In 1995, Chicago AVER President Jim Darby & his partner Patrick Bova had a commitment ceremony next to Leonard's grave.
