Gay Veterans Gather to Honor Their Own

[MountainLaurel]

It was a short ceremony, and not that many people came. Maybe 25, and one small white dog. People gathered around the grave. There was the American flag and the rainbow-colored gay movement flag. There was the singing of the national anthem and poetry and the remembrance of fallen soldiers and the playing of taps on a trumpet in the brisk winter air.

It was late afternoon yesterday, Veterans Day, and the gathering point was at the tombstone of former Air Force tech sergeant Leonard Matlovich. The November sky over Congressional Cemetery, a Capitol Hill landmark, was a clear pale blue. Matlovich became a gay icon in 1975 after he told his superiors he was gay and was booted out of the service as a result.
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He died of complications from AIDS in 1988 but became in death an inspiration for what is one of the few Veterans Day memorial services, if not the only one, that specifically honor gay service members. "Don't ask, don't tell" is the military's official policy, and gays cannot openly serve in the armed forces.

A handful of gay veterans want to be buried near him. Here is the tombstone of F. Warren O'Reilly, 1921-2001, whose stone bears the epitaph "A Gay World War II Veteran." Next to him is Tom "Gator" Swann, born in 1958, and not dead yet, but whose tombstone reads: "Proud Gay Veteran."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/11/AR2008111102629.html

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