SAN FRANCISCO — The airman’s dress blues are faded, the footlocker he carried through three tours in Vietnam has gone to rust. Yet the epitaph he chose to mark his grave is still as fresh as today’s headlines: “When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.”
Leonard Matlovich’s medals, uniform and other personal effects make up the centerpiece of “Out Ranks,” a new exhibit that documents the tortured relationship between gay troops and the U.S. military from World War II to the present.
Matlovich, who died in 1988, was a decorated Air Force sergeant who came out to his commanding officer a month before the fall of Saigon, hoping to challenge the government’s ban on gay service members. In 1975, the idea of an openly gay combat veteran was incongruous enough to land him on the cover of Time magazine.
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