With all the discourse surrounding rainbow t-shirts and the endless debate of whether kink belongs at Pride, it’s easy to forget just how important LGBTQAI+ rights are – a sentiment Vietnam veteran Sgt. Leonard Matlovich and his grave have come to embody.
Despite earning both a Purple Heart and a Bronze Heart for his service, Matlovich was discharged from the military after coming out to his supervising officer. He ultimately took the case to court, battling for LGBTQ+ rights in the military for five years.
“When T/Sgt. Leonard Matlovich handed his coming-out letter to his superior officer, a black captain at Langley Air Force Base, Va., the officer said: ‘What the hell does this mean?’” Time reported in their cover story on the military man that same year. “Replied Matlovich: ‘It means Brown v. the Board of Education.'
After a life of gay rights activism, Matlovich died in 1988 from complications of HIV/AIDS. He was just two months shy of his 45th birthday. Before his passing, he designed his tombstone, a nameless marker reading only “a gay Vietnam veteran” that he reportedly wanted “to serve as a memorial to all gay veterans.” Alongside the phrase two pink triangles, the symbols used by concentration camps to identify gay men, he chose to include a chilling revelation for his life.
"When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one,” it reads.
Pride – it’s more than a parade.
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