TODAY IN GAY HISTORY – SEPTEMBER 8, 1975. A major news magazine explored the variety and progress of the gay rights movement six years after Stonewall and shock...ed the world with the story of a gay Purple Heart recipient. Some 75-80,000 gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals (and an unknown number of trans people) had been kicked out of the American military when Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich became the first named gay person on their cover; proudly declaring that he was gay in people's mailboxes and on newsstands across the globe—and that he would fight to stay in the Air Force. One gay man later said: “I remember where I was when I heard Kennedy had been shot and where I was when I first saw Leonard Matlovich on the cover of ‘TIME’.”

Nathaniel Frank, author of “Unfriendly Fire,” the definitive study of how the ban dating from WWII was codified into Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, summarized the effect on the world at large: "When Leonard Matlovich was on a magazine cover as a war hero, challenging the policy in the military, it began a national discussion on gay rights." It might be hard to imagine today, but even six years after Stonewall “gay rights” was primarily a topic only on college campuses and in the gay community itself; yet to really register on the radar of the average American in any way they took seriously. Tabloids had been demonizing gays for decades; when rarely addressed in mainstream media it was usually as "the sad 'gay' life of the homosexual.” The "TIME" article was the first many in many places saw, particularly the young, that told them it need not be like that and that there was an ever-growing movement fighting for our rights.

THEIR PREVIOUS COVER STORY ON GAYS came out.....wait for it......on Halloween 1969, four months after Stonewall. The actual "homosexual" pictured wasn't named, and the article inside was a horror show of homophobia's greatest hits—with one sign of "hope" for its readers: "A boy who likes dolls or engages in occasional homosexual experiments is not necessarily 'queer' . . . . While only about one-third of confirmed adult inverts can be helped to change, therapists agree that a much larger number of 'prehomosexual' children can be treated successfully.” Its final paragraph read: "The life of a homosexual is a pathetic little second-rate substitute for reality, a pitiable flight from life. As such it deserves fairness, compassion, understanding and, when possible, treatment. But it deserves no encouragement, no glamorization, no rationalization, no fake status as minority martyrdom, no sophistry about simple differences in taste—and, above all, no pretense that it is anything but a pernicious sickness."

WHILE THE 1975 ARTICLE WAS A HUGE LEAP FORWARD, beginning with its cover, the article inside carried forward some of the same attitudes, including a reference to "psychological concern" despite the fact that the year before the membership of the American Psychiatric Association had ratified the decision to stop labeling gays as mentally ill. That and other jabs were the result of the article's author, John Leo, being unable to fully control his visceral bigotry. Nearly forty years later he was still protesting gays being treated equally in every regard, and claiming people like Rev. Rick "gays = pedophilia" Warren were being misjudged and mistreated.

STILL "THE GAY DRIVE FOR ACCEPTANCE" paraded across seven pages that included photos and descriptions of several others including Massachusetts state representative Elaine Noble and Minnesota state senator Allan Spear, two of the four out gay politicians elected before Harvey Milk, as well as a gay church service and the proud Mother of a gay son. [PFLAG (then called Parents FLAG) was only two years old, tiny, and not yet a national organization.]

HOW DIFFERENT WAS THE WORLD when Leonard chose to out himself in order to fight the ban? That March, Gerald Ford had been President of the United States less than a year after the resignation in disgrace by Richard Nixon. Reports of the last American deaths in Vietnam and the first from AIDS were yet to happen. There were no cell phones or CNN. The first PCs were shipping but with only 1 KB of memory, and no keyboard, mouse, or screen. There was no Microsoft, Apple, nor public Internet. Heiress Patty Hearst was still a fugitive, and women were yet to enter the American military academies. A new Cadillac El Dorado was $9935 US, 8-track tape player extra, and gas 44¢ a gallon. There was no Pac-Man or Prozac, no McDonald’s drive-thrus, no test-tube babies. Median US income was $11,800, stamps 10¢, VCRs $1000+.

THE BERLIN WALL WAS STILL UP, Saddam Hussein had yet to invade Iran with America’s help, and the YMCA was yet to get advertising by the Village People they didn't want. Mao, Sadat, Jimmy Hoffa, Chaplin, John Lennon, and Elvis were still alive. Basketball legend Michael Jordan was in middle school, soccer superstar David Beckham wasn’t yet born. Barack Obama was 13-years old.

HARVEY MILK was in his second of four tries for office and politically unknown outside of San Francisco, and there were only two US gay rights groups with any national reach. There was no HRC, no NCLR, no SLDN. In addition to the tens of thousand of LGBs who had been kicked out of the American military by then, “sodomy” was still against the law in most of the United States. Not only were there no “gay marriages,” there were no gay civil unions or domestic partnerships. There was no gay rainbow flag or Gay Games. Martina Navratilova, 18, had yet to ask for US asylum let alone come out yet; neither had former Green Bay Packers running back Dave Kopay nor any other active or retired professional player in any sport, and Elton John was yet to marry for the first time—to Ms. Renate Blauel.

LEONARD’S COMING OUT LETTER to the Air Force came not just before “Brokeback Mountain” but also before “Rocky,” “Saturday Night Fever,” and “Star Wars”; not just before “La Cage aux Folles” but also before “A Chorus Line,” “Phantom of the Opera,” and “Cats”; not just before “Will & Grace” and Ellen but also before “Dallas,” “Cheers,” and “Friends.”

“GAY” STILL PRIMARILY MEANT “JOKE” to most of the world, and in no less than San Francisco a TV news anchor, not realizing his microphone was on, was heard referring to Leonard as a “faggot flier.” But countless other reporters besieged him for interviews. He was so unlike the negative stereotypes most accepted that one reporter actually asked him, “Are you really gay?” The Associated Press noted: “He could be your next-door neighbor, a mechanic, accountant or the family doctor. He wants what you want: a decent job, a comfortable home, love. His name is Leonard Matlovich, and he's one of the country's most controversial homosexuals. Today scores of Americans—gay and straight—are following the case of ‘Matlovich vs. the Air Force’ through the courts in a challenge to the military's long-standing ban against homosexuals.” [And, soon, that of others including Air Force Sgt. Skip Keith, Army Pvt. Debbie Watson and her partner Pfc. Barbara Randolph, and Sergeants Miriam Ben-Shalom and Perry Watkins.]

MANY REPORTERS were personally affected by his example. CNN’s Larry King: “I shared many of the prejudices that are still prevalent today but used to be more commonplace then. I owe my liberation from whatever stereotypes I’ve managed to escape to a remarkable man named Sergeant Leonard Matlovich.” Out writer and civil rights activist Malcolm Boyd described him as “the Charles Lindbergh of the Gay Movement.” And “Good Morning America’s” Charlie Gibson later said: “There are people you meet as a reporter that you come to care about and he’s one of them.” He would deliver a eulogy at Leonard’s funeral in 1988.

“Remember your roots, your history, and the forebears' shoulders on which you stand.” - Marion Wright Edelman.