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Gay Activist Matlovich Helped Military Members

By Harrison Wagner

Posted October 19, 2015

Our "History Through Headlines" segment takes us back to October, 1975. Gerald Ford was President, Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here was the number one album and a prominent gay activist visited Bloomington.

The headline reads, "Matlovich: All Need Equality." Leonard Matlovich was a decorated Air Force pilot who fought in the Vietnam War. In 1975, he was discharged for being gay. He dedicated his life after that to battling for gay rights.

Matlovich's friend and activist ally, Michael Bedwell, says he was the best-known gay activist of his time, inspiring many to come out as homosexuals.

"I've read and been told, by any number of people, that he was the first gay person that ever made them feel positively about themselves, both in and out of the military," Bedwell says.

He first met Matlovich when he was the head of the now defunct Bloomington Gay Alliance. The group invited Matlovich to come and speak at its second Gay Awareness Conference. His speech focused mainly on self-affirmation, a topic that held strong meaning in his own life.

"He had only accepted his own gayness only a couple of years before. He was 30 when he came out," he says.

That same year he was featured on the cover of TIME Magazine. Through his work, he helped other gay military service members receive honorable discharges.

Leonard Matlovich contracted HIV in 1986 and died from AIDS in 1988. His tombstone does not bare his name; instead it reads, "When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one."

Michael Bedwell will be giving a presentation on the history of the ban on gays in the military on October 22nd at the Lilly Library. That's also the 40th anniversary of Leonard Matlovich's discharge.

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