The Letter
JUNE 5, 1974
UNITED STATES NAVAL ACADEMY
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND
For Midshipman Vernon “Copy” Berg, the graduation ceremony at the Naval Academy seemed somehow representative of the times. President Nixon, just two months away from resignation, was the commencement speaker. Copy’s family photo album commemorated the day: There was Copy’s sister in a black miniskirt, his younger brother in a Fu Manchu mustache, and Berg’s lover, Lawrence Gibson.
His time together with Gibson seemed about to end. Copy had known for several months that his first duty station would be in Gaeta, Italy, with the Sixth Fleet. He had been excited about striking out on his own, but Gibson seemed crestfallen to him. Copy had ignored the older man’s entreaties that he could not live without Berg, until the night before graduation, when he went to Gibson’s apartment and found him dazed and stumbling, apparently suffering from what looked to Berg like a drug overdose. Years later, Gibson would not discuss this period of his past, but to Berg it looked as if he had attempted suicide. It was enough to make the twenty-two-year-old midshipman feel terrible about leaving Gibson behind.
Okay, Berg recalls finally agreeing, Gibson could join him in Italy the following year when Berg had completed his technical training in the San Francisco Bay Area. The next morning, Gibson joined Midshipman Vernon E. Berg III, Berg’s father, the commander, and the rest of the family for the commencement at Annapolis.
Newspaper accounts of the graduation ceremony mentioned that the day reflected the tensions of the times. A month earlier, the House Judiciary Committee had begun hearings on whether to impeach Nixon. Already, a host of administration officials had been indicted, including two former Attorneys General. Calls for Nixon’s resignation mounted. The President had long ago stopped making public appearances where he might encounter a hostile audience, which was just about everywhere in the country; now he spoke mainly in foreign countries or on military bases. If Nixon thought Annapolis would be an entirely friendly site, however, he was mistaken. Some midshipmen refused to stand for the Commander in Chief. When each company mounted the stage for the customary presentation of a gift to the commencement speaker, the President found himself accepting such items as a rubber lizard. Ignited by the unpopular war and accelerated by the distrust in public institutions that the Watergate scandal had caused, the questioning of authority that had begun years ago in the Summer of Love reached even here.
The topic that loomed larger even than President Nixon at the Naval Academy, however, was whether women should be admitted to Annapolis in years to come. In February, the United States Merchant Marine Academy on Long Island had enrolled its first two female “midshippersons.” The first WACs had begun training to be military police; in August 1974, the Army opened its first coed barracks. Meanwhile, after Congress ordered it to admit women for the first time in its 184-year history, the Coast Guard was trying to figure out how to adapt what had always been an all-male service. As Chief Boatswain Mate Royce Jones, an eighteen-year veteran in charge of the new women recruits, told The New York Times, “We don’t want to take the woman out of the women. Maybe you’ve seen movies of the old Marine women sergeants. This is not what we’re looking for. We don’t want them acting like a bunch of Russians. We hope we never have to have the women on the front lines in this country, but they certainly are nice to have behind you.”
The other service academies were still adamant in refusing admission to women. Major General James Allen, the superintendent of the Air Force Academy, went on record as being firmly opposed to women cadets. West Point superintendent Major General Sidney Berry also vowed women would never attend the Army academy. At the Naval Academy, the idea that women might one day inhabit their beloved Bancroft Hall horrified Copy Berg’s classmates.
Nevertheless, even as dissension echoed through the Pentagon, political trends forced changes. Six days after the Annapolis graduation ceremony, Senator Hugh Scott, a senior Republican solon, announced he would accept applications from females for all the service academies. Women seemed to be gaining on every front. In the 1974 elections, Connecticut voters elected Ella Grasso as governor, the first time in the history of the United States that a woman who was neither the widow nor the wife of a previous governor won the governorship. Voters elected eighteen women to the House of Representatives, a record number. Most significantly, 130 more women won election to state legislatures, bringing the total number of female state legislators to 600, nearly double the number of just five years earlier. For the military, such political realities meant that one year after vowing never to accept women at West Point, a senior officer at the military academy recalls Major General Berry summoning New York fashion designers to choose uniforms for the incoming female cadets.
As years went, 1974 was not such a bad time to be gay in the United States military, at least in comparison with the other years that were to come. The armed forces were still struggling to maintain manpower levels in the new all-volunteer Army, so as few people as possible were being discharged unnecessarily. In fact, during calendar year 1974, the armed forces dismissed only 875 people for homosexuality, according to Pentagon statistics. The portion of discharges characterized as “Undesirable” had dropped precipitously, too, from 419 in fiscal year 1970 to 79 in fiscal year 1974. Taken together, the number of gay people drummed out of the military in 1974 was lower than it had been in the past twenty years, and almost as low as it would be for nearly the next twenty years.
Pressure mounted on the Defense Department to stop coding its discharges with “spin numbers,” which had branded tens of thousands of veterans homosexual, even though most had honorable discharges and were not even aware that these numbers existed on their separation papers. When congressmen began complaining to the Defense Department, the end of spin numbers followed close behind. The change reflected an appalling new phenomenon with which the Pentagon suddenly had to cope: congressmen coming to the aid of homosexuals. It would have been unthinkable five years earlier. Where would it end?.
JULY 1974
CATHEDRAL STREET
WASHINGTON, D.C.
By the time Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich appeared at Frank Kameny’s two-story brick house a half block from the Potomac River, he had already confided that he was indeed the “friend” for whom he had placed the phone call several months earlier. Kameny’s enthusiasm built as Matlovich recounted his military résumé. The man held the Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, two Air Force commendation medals, and a recent Air Force Meritorious Service Medal, had done three tours in Vietnam, and had altogether eleven years of unblemished service. Central casting could not have provided a better test case to take to the Supreme Court. Kameny, however, was no lawyer. Fortunately, a former Air Force lawyer had already volunteered for the job.
David Addlestone had never thought much about homosexuality before his days in the Air Force. He and his wife had some older gay friends in college, but they were polite enough never to discuss the issue openly. As a lawyer for the Judge Advocate General in the Air Force in 1967, however, Addlestone defended an enlisted man who had gotten drunk one night and made a pass at a younger airman. The Air Force wanted to give the man an undesirable discharge. Such treatment irritated Addlestone’s civil-libertarian streak. The defendant, after all, had served the Air Force well. Whatever his transgression, it had occurred when he was off duty and had hurt no one. In researching the regulations, Addlestone discovered an odd clause in the Air Force’s gay policy that allowed exceptions to the ban on gays. “Immaturity” or some other extenuating circumstance could excuse a suspected homosexual. The exception could not be invoked solely because an airman was drunk or solely because he had outstanding service or solely because of a one-time experimentation with homosexuality. (Some gays sarcastically called the policy the “Queen for a Day” rule.) At the administrative hearing, however, Addlestone argued that in this case all three of these circumstances applied to the accused, therefore he merited the exception to the policy. The administrative board agreed and refused to discharge the airman.
This outcome informed Addlestone of something he had long suspected. Most United States Air Force officers also believed, as he did, that the military regulations against homosexuals were draconian, if not altogether archaic. During his remaining years in the Air Force, the lawyer grew more deeply offended by a policy that was invoked only against that minority who were unfortunate enough to get caught. It was rank hypocrisy, Addlestone thought, and it needed to end.
Once he was out of the military and had started practicing law in Washington, Addlestone kept abreast of developments in military law and by 1971 had become a counsel at the Military Law Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. When Frank Kameny called him in early 1974 and said he believed he had the perfect test case to challenge the exclusion policy, Addlestone was eager to meet Kameny’s Air Force sergeant.
While Addlestone’s five-year-old son played on the floor in the same room, Matlovich explained that he could not stand the hypocrisy of teaching equal opportunity while working for an organization that would not extend the same equality to him. Addlestone was as enthusiastic about Matlovich’s military record as Kameny had been, but he felt obliged to describe the repercussions such a case could have on Matlovich.
“Do you really want to throw away eleven years of service? You could retire in just eight years. You’ll be losing all that,” he said. And he warned that Matlovich might lose his relationship with his family. His father was a lifer. He might not appreciate his son battling the Air Force. “It’s your life that could be ruined by this,” Addlestone concluded. “In my opinion, we’ll probably lose this case.”
“I can’t go on living like this,” Matlovich said. “I can’t be a hypocrite.”
It struck Addlestone that after so many years of living in doubt, Matlovich at last was sure of something and would stick to his guns. Furthermore, the lawyer liked Matlovich immediately. They had both been raised in South Carolina and spoke with the same slightly southern drawl. Addlestone agreed to take the case, though when to force the issue remained to be seen. Normally, the government had the advantage of control. They made the charges; all the defense could do was react. It was a rare opportunity for the ACLU to choose the time and place of the disclosure. With Matlovich now assigned to Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, just a four-hour drive from Washington, Addlestone began his legal research with the confidence that they could afford to bide their time until the perfect moment.
Matlovich’s decision to fight the military’s exclusion of gays came as he settled into a new routine within the huge array of military bases around the Norfolk area, the region locals called Hampton Roads. At night military men with their telltale short haircuts and without the longish sideburns fashionable in the posthippie era packed the local gay bars. For the first time, Matlovich could socialize with other gay military people, but when he spoke of challenging the regulations he found that such talk genuinely frightened many of his new friends.
Matlovich would not be deterred, however, even though he dreaded both the moment when he would tell the Air Force he was gay and the inevitable aftermath of telling his parents. Still, he felt he had no other choice. For years, he had spoken about the need for the United States to attain justice and equality for all its citizens. Now, he had actually begun to believe it.
FEBRUARY 1975
FORT DEVENS
AYER, MASSACHUSETTS
Private First Class Tanya Domi knew it was going to be a horrible mistake the moment she heard that the two WACs were going to turn themselves in as lesbians. She could understand the pressure on them, of course. The fear among the WACs stationed at the post, the site of the Army’s latest lesbian investigation, was almost palpable.
Fear had become an unwelcome subplot to the nineteen-year-old’s year-long WAC career. She had been a card-carrying member of the National Organization for Women since she was sixteen. She was a committed feminist and supporter of civil rights causes when she was student-body president of her Catholic high school in Indianapolis, but she had not done well in college, and so she had joined the Army in January 1974. She had not known she was gay when she enlisted.
It was during her basic training at Fort McClellan, Alabama, where all the WACs were trained, that Tanya realized the Women’s Army Corps was lesbian heaven. Not long after that, she got her first kiss. By the time she was assigned to Fort Devens in March, she did not hesitate when a group of WACs invited her to a gay bar, The Other Side, in Boston.
Within days of the trip, however, somebody informed on the group and Domi soon found herself being interrogated by military investigators. The way Tanya recalled the day, one was kind, the other hostile.
“Lesbians are disgusting,” one said. “We find them repulsive. They have no place in the United States Army. We’re going to do everything we can to get rid of all the lesbians.” Meaningfully, he added, “We know you’re a hard-core homosexual.”
Since Domi had done no more than visit a gay bar once and steal two or three kisses in the laundry room at Fort McClellan, she did not consider herself a hard-core lesbian. She confessed to the kisses, insisted that she was not really gay, and her company commander called the investigation off, given the fact that her sexual experiences represented “an isolated experience.”
But the larger investigation continued and by December 1974, the CID was rumored to have the names of between forty and fifty lesbians. Many of these women were heterosexual—any hug between two women was often interpreted to be lesbian lovemaking. The probe turned fierce. At a commander’s call, a new hard-assed female captain announced, “If you’re a lesbian, I’m going to get you.” The WACs were pressured to make lists of other lesbians and everybody talked about the “buddyfuckers,” as those who turned their friends in were called.
During this atmosphere of hysteria, a pair of lovers, Private First Class Barbara Randolph and Private Debbie Watson, both members of the honors platoon, decided that they would turn themselves in as lesbians. “They’ll destroy you,” Domi warned them. Everybody seemed hell-bent on self-destruction, she thought.
But the two women were adamant. They would not act as if they were ashamed of something that was perfectly natural to them. Maybe it was time to get out of the Army and start a life together. Soon, a third woman and then a fourth woman told Tanya that they were giving themselves up. More lists were in the making. A few weeks later, Tanya learned that her security clearance was being revoked; she would be charged with being a lesbian.
Tanya retreated to her room. While the other women around her seemed to be falling apart, she read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. She identified with the book’s assertion of self-reliance and individualism; she read everything by the author, gaining strength and growing angry at what was happening. Then she called the Boston chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, who referred her to the group that counseled gays in the military, the Legal In-Service Project, or LISP. She also talked to Frank Kameny, the Washington activist advising Matlovich. By the time the Army filed charges against her, Tanya had a civilian lawyer, to whom she had also referred Debbie Watson and Barbara Randolph.
If they really wanted to make a statement about the way the Army treated gays, the lawyer advised Watson and Randolph, they could go public with their case and fight their discharges openly. The women liked the idea. They preferred to stay in the Army, and this might be the only way they could. If they were on their way out, they had nothing to lose.
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Attorney David Addlestone began to craft the legal arguments that he hoped would go all the way to the Supreme Court. He had no doubt that Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich’s military record provided the perfect set of facts to argue in his court case; what he needed now were constitutional arguments. Though homosexuals had been making legal breakthroughs in state courts and on the lower federal courts in recent years, the nation’s highest court had never agreed even so much as to hear a case relating to gay civil rights.
A few arguments were obvious. The Constitution’s equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Ninth Amendment, had been interpreted to include a right to privacy. In rereading the Air Force regulations, Addlestone stopped again at the obscure subsection that allowed for exceptions in the overall exclusion of gays from the Air Force: “It is the general policy to discharge members of the Air Force who fall within the purview of this section. Exceptions to permit retention may be authorized only when the most unusual circumstances exist and provided the airman’s ability to perform military mission has not been compromised.” What constituted such “unusual circumstances” was not spelled out. It was a typical piece of have-it-both-ways regulating that let the Air Force keep whom it wanted and get rid of the rest.
But more than that, Addlestone knew that legally any government regulation must make it clear what constitutes a violation. If there were exceptions, these also had to be specified. Along with pursuing the constitutional arguments for Matlovich’s case, Addlestone would challenge the legality of the regulation, based on its vague exceptions.
Matlovich made the drive from Hampton to Washington frequently to consult on the developing legal strategy. After months of research, Addlestone drew up the letter Matlovich would hand his commanding officer.
It had been a decade since the escalation of the Vietnam War had begun, that period that caused the reevaluation of so many tried-and-true American traditions. And it had been nearly six years since the riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, the event that had challenged the American ethos, the ideology of masculinity for which millions of Americans had altered their lives and aspirations in order to try to be people they were not. Now that was slowly changing.
Finally, the questions reached deep enough to penetrate the institution most wedded to tradition and resistant to social change, the military. In those first few months of 1975, the battle would be engaged for the first time, and from that moment on the challenges would never stop.
MARCH 6, 1975
TO: THE SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE
THRU: CAPTAIN DENNIS M. COLLINS
4510TH SUPPORT SQ. (T.A.C.)
FROM: T/SGT. LEONARD MATLOVICH, 463–76–2847
1. After some years of uncertainty, I have arrived at the conclusion that my sexual preferences are homosexual as opposed to heterosexual. I have also concluded that my sexual preferences will in no way interfere with my Air Force duties, as my preferences are now open. It is therefore requested that those provisions in AFM 39–12 relating to the discharge of homosexuals be waived in my case.
2. I will decline to answer specific questions concerning the functioning of my sexual life.… However, I will be glad to answer any questions concerning my personal life if reasons are given detailing how the questions relate to specific fitness and security concerns rather than the generally unconstitutional provisions of AFM 39–12 relating to the discharge of homosexuals. If more specific criteria other than the notion that homosexuals are morally unqualified for service in the Air Force can be shown as basis for questioning, I will answer the appropriate questions….
In sum, I consider myself to be a homosexual and fully qualified for further military service. My almost twelve years of unblemished service supports this position.
Leonard Matlovich
T/Sgt., USAF
Matlovich read the letter again and again. It was a clear, crisp day in Hampton when he decided to deliver it. The Air Force was the only life he had known, and within minutes he would hand in the letter that would end it all. The thought opened a huge pit in the bottom of his stomach, but he remembered Rosa Parks, who would not move to the back of the bus, and the little girl whose family had filed the suit known as Brown v. The Board of Education that had resulted in the historic Supreme Court decision ending segregation in schools. He felt compelled to keep walking toward his boss’s office.
When Matlovich entered, Captain Dennis Collins, a black officer in charge of race-relations instruction, was standing at his desk in front of a big poster that read I DON’T DISCRIMINATE—I HATE EVERYBODY. Collins never contradicted the oft-reported account of what was said next.
“Captain Collins, I have a letter I’d like for you to read,” Matlovich said. “But I think you ought to sit down before you read it.”
“I’ll stand,” Collins said.
“I mean it,” Matlovich answered. “You’d better sit down.”
“I’ll stand,” Collins said again, taking the letter.
Collins read the first few sentences and slumped into his chair.
“What does this mean?” he asked.
“This means Brown versus The Board of Education,” Matlovich replied.