Discharged Air Force Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich appeared on the cover of Time in his Air Force Class B uniform with the words "I Am a Homosexual", for which he was discharged, on the cover. The decorated Vietnam Veteran had come out just before with his status and it seems he had not become a practicing homosexual until after the war. He'd begin a protracted legal battle with the Air Force for reinstatement, which was offered to him originally with a promise that he discontinue homosexual activities, but he declined that. At the time, an exception to the rule prohibting homosexuals in the military existed which would have allowed that. Ultimately he'd accept a financial settlement. The rule itself was removed. It'd be somewhat revived in a different form in 1993 under the Clinton Administration's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
Matlovich was raised Catholic but had converted to Mormonism. He was subsequently excommunicated from the LDS for homosexuality. He died in 1988 at age 44 of AIDS. His actions made him a public figure in the homosexual rights movement, which was just beginning to become a thing at the time. The DSM classified homosexuality as a mental illness until 1973 and was only removed that year due to a paper published by a homosexual psychologist.
I can recall the issue of Time and it was quite shocking at the time.
Matlovich is probably largely forgotten now. The story is interesting in light of subsequent developments, mentioned in part above. Homosexuality was not expressly prohibited by military law for most of the U.S. military's history, but then homosexuality itself was not used as a term defining what it currently does until the late 19th Century. Servicemen were discharged for sodomy, without it expressly being in the military's legal code, as it was seen as a moral abomination, but not as a sort of character defining conduct. This occurred as early as the American Revolution.1 It wasn't until 1921 when it became an expressed military crime. It wasn't until World War Two however that the Service actively worked to bar homosexuals from the Service, making that policy one that had a much shorter period of being in existence than generally imagined. Interestingly a two man panel of psychologists who worked on mental profiles for enlistment just before the war did not recommend excluding homosexuals.
The prohibition was lifted in 2011.
Part of the reason that all of this is interesting is that I'd predicted that the Trump Administration would restore the prohibition on women serving in combat, which was lifted in 2013 (I don't think it should have been). So far, that has not been done, but the Administration has barred "transgendered" from serving. That frankly makes a lot of sense as a "transgendered" person cannot carry on that status without pharmaceutical assistance, something that obviously doesn't pertain to homosexuals. Anyhow, there doesn't appear to be any Trump administration move to restore the ban on homosxuals in the Service, which perhaps shows how far views have evolved on this matter. The prior Service policies clearly reflected widely held societal views.
Farmworkers in California working for Bruce Church, Inc. voted to join the United Farm Workers, in the first such instance of that occurring.
Footnotes:
1. It's been speculated on whether or not Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, the Prussian officer who introduced Prussian drill and training methods in the Army during the Revolution may have been a homosexual, although it wouldn't have been understood in that fashion at the time. There certainly seems to have been reason to suspect that and homosexual conduct was common in the Prussian and later Imperial German officer corps. That's interesting in and of itself as it was common for officers to enter the service in their mid teens and serve in consistently all male environments, which would argue for a environmental origin to the orientation.
The same is true, it might be noted, for the pre World War Two British officer corps, which was additionally impacted by the odd British education system which tended to warehouse the male children of the well off in all male boarding schools. At least a few well known British officers have been speculated about in this fashion.
In the U.S. military this environment didn't exist, and it's pretty difficult to find examples of well known servicemen who are suspected of having been homosexuals. Unlike European armies, the U.S. Army did not discourage officers from marrying, although it was often financially impossible for junior enlisted men to do so. Most U.S. officers in fact married at the usual ages, and long serving enlisted men often did as well. Getting out of the service after a single three year enlistment was common for enlisted soldiers who wanted to marry. Of course, like all armies, prostitution was rampant near U.S. Army posts, even on the frontier.
Related threads:
The Overly Long Thread. Gender Trends of the Past Century, Definitions, Society, Law, Culture and Their Odd Trends and Impacts.
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