ARMED FORCES: Homosexual Sergeant

• Share

With a chestful of ribbons (Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Commendation Medal from three tours in Viet Nam) and Airman's Performance Reports studded with ratings of "absolutely superior," Leonard Matlovich, 31, is the very model of a modern technical sergeant. He is also a professed practicing homosexual. As such, he has become a celebrity in the armed forces, which every year drums out hundreds of homosexuals on grounds that they "seriously impair discipline, good order, morale and security." Tall and redhaired, Matlovich has become, in the words of American Civil Liberties Union Lawyer David Addlestone, "a beautiful case" for legally challenging the military's prohibition against homosexuals.

Long Odyssey. He is doing just that. In March, Matlovich, a race-relations instructor at Virginia's Langley Air Force Base, wrote his commanding officer: "I have arrived at the conclusion that my sexual preferences are homosexual, as opposed to heterosexual." The Air Force began moving to give Matlovich a general—less than honorable —discharge. But Matlovich has fought the customary procedures by demanding that a three-officer board review his case, and says that he will take his fight to the Supreme Court if necessary.

Matlovich's act was the culmination of a long personal odyssey. The son of a career Air Force sergeant, Matlovich grew up on military bases in such places as Charleston, S.C., Alaska and Guam. In 1963, after graduating from high school in England, he joined the Air Force. "I knew I was homosexual then," he says. "I had been since I was in the seventh grade."

Ultraconservative in politics and social values, he looked with great loathing upon his sexual desires. To bolster his selfesteem, he says, he clung to racist views. "I kept thinking that if there was someone lower than me on the totem pole, it was not so bad. It was a defense mechanism."

Gay Bar. In 1971, however, Matlovich began training as a drug-abuse and race-relations instructor at Hurlburt Field in Florida, and his prejudices began to evaporate. As he came to realize that his contempt for blacks was ill-founded, his stereotyped disdain for homosexuality crumbled too. All along he had denied himself sexual contact; now, with considerable trepidation, he visited a gay bar in Pensacola and had his first homosexual encounter.

The Pentagon plans to hold to its rulebook. The presence of homosexuals in the service, it argues, could impair recruitment; other young men might feel anxious about living in close quarters with them. In addition, Defense Department officials contend, homosexuals cannot command respect as officers or noncoms and are prey to blackmailers. Replies Matlovich, who had top-secret clearance in the 1960s while working as an electrician on Minutemen ICBM silos: "Who's going to blackmail me?"