Word: matlovich
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...acceptance in society. The story draws heavily on reporting from TIME correspondents across the U.S. Once all but taboo, the subject of homosexuality is now being treated with increasing-and increasingly open-concern in psychological, clerical and political forums as people like our cover subject, Air Force Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, struggle for what they regard as full civil rights. It is a struggle that often alarms the "straight" world...
...Leonard Matlovich, the Air Force technical sergeant who has begun a legal challenge to the military's prohibition of homosexual servicemen (TIME, June 9), now has some company. Last week the Army started proceedings to give less-than-honorable discharges to two lesbian WACs. Pfc Barbara Randolph, 22, of Indiana, and Private Debbie Watson, 20, of Texas, voluntarily admitted their sexual preferences to an interrogator as the result of a whispering campaign about their activities at Fort Devens, Mass. Both women intend to fight the dismissals, said Private Watson...
...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...
...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...
Fellow airmen at Langley continue to accept Matlovich as a fine noncom. He finds sexual partners by frequenting a gay bar in Norfolk twice a week, but now that he can be open about his way of life he is thinking of a more sedate arrangement: "I want a lover. I want to settle down." For now, his chief concern is working to dispel the military's timeworn fears. "We don't want any license to rape," says Matlovich. "We just want the right to work...