On late summer evenings, a rose-blue light falls over Congressional Cemetery’s 60,000 gravestones, illuminating the dog walkers who move along its brick paths. A lot of history is buried in the country’s first national cemetery — Elbridge Gerry, a vice president who signed the Declaration of Independence, lies near the FBI’s stark memorial to its first director, J. Edgar Hoover.
Also interred here is a gay Vietnam veteran named Leonard Matlovich, whose black granite headstone is adorned with two pink triangles and the inscription: “When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.”
Matlovich, the first soldier to take the U.S. military to court over the gay ban, died of AIDS in 1988. Since his funeral, a dozen new graves bearing similarly striking epitaphs have gone up on that corner plot. One implores visitors to never “give into discrimination,” while another warns against accepting “liberty and justice for SOME.”
In the past 10 years the graveyard, at 16th and E Streets, S.E., has become an important touchstone for gay veterans who see it as a final resting place where they will be fully accepted. It has also become a destination for gay walking tours of Capitol Hill. Now, after a summer of landmark decisions and debates about the role of homosexuality in American society, a former high-ranking official in the Reagan administration is leading a movement to build a national monument there to honor gay soldiers.
“We need some kind of marker to show our society that gays have always been on the front lines,” said Henry Thomas, 62, a former assistant secretary of energy for international affairs. “We, as a group, are still denied such recognition by the federal law that says we cannot even say that we are gay or lesbian, not even at our own funerals.”
After a successful career in the Marine Corps, where he earned a Purple Heart while serving as a company commander in Vietnam, Thomas worked in several top-level government positions. A few years ago, he and his partner moved to Rehoboth Beach, Del., where he says he can live more freely.
“After I came out, it took me a year before I could walk down Connecticut Avenue or K Street, because I was worried that someone from that life would know I was gay,” Thomas said. “Finally being able to be open about who I am now is wonderful, and I don’t want to die feeling like I’m still in a prison.”
Although gay people have served in the armed forces since the country’s founding, little is known about the lives of gay veterans. According to a study by the Urban Institute released this summer, 1.3 million of the 25.1 million living veterans of U.S. wars are gay men or lesbians.
Don’t tell, even at the funeral
Yet one of the least-known effects of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the current military policy under which gays must keep quiet about their sexual orientation or risk losing their jobs, is that the soldiers must remain closeted at their own funerals if they desire full graveside honors. Arlington National Cemetery’s policy, for instance, follows the strict guidelines of the Department of Veterans Affairs, prohibiting any expression of homosexual unions on headstones.
But notions of funereal propriety may be slowly changing: Earlier this month, gay rights supporters in Sacramento unveiled a controversial state-sanctioned memorial to “Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Bisexual Veterans Killed in Action,” and a similar site has been built in Phoenix. According to Thomas, the idea of a national memorial at Congressional Cemetery has come to symbolize a dream of acceptance for a generation of aging gay veterans.
“Nowhere else can we acknowledge that we were among those gays and lesbians who served our country, honestly and openly,” said retired Lt. Col. Nancy Russell, 65, who heads American Veterans for Equal Rights, a national association of gay veterans that is planning a design contest for the memorial.
The cemetery, named for the hundreds of members of Congress buried there, is owned by the Episcopal Church and administered by a non-profit preservationist group that receives some public funds for upkeep. The board of directors is largely in favor of allowing the memorial to be built in the next few years, according to several members.
To Patrick Crowley, vice chairman of the cemetery’s board, a memorial would give official meaning to what is already an important site for the gay community.
“This would be a fitting place for gay vets, because people come to this part of the cemetery all the time,” Crowley, 42, said. “I can’t help thinking that it’s ironic that someone who signed the Declaration of Independence is buried here and, even in the 21st Century, everyone’s not equal yet.”
But Congressional Cemetery, which is used like a park by Capitol Hill residents, also relies on Congress to fund its upkeep. In 1997, the National Trust listed the cemetery as one of the 11 most endangered historical sites in America, and Congress responded by creating a $2 million endowment. Most of the money raised through matching funds has been allotted to cut grass and conduct renovation studies. But by one estimate, the graveyard needs $28 million to repair roads, preserve historic tombs and plant hundreds of trees, Crowley said.
Members of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on veterans affairs, housing and urban development, and independent agencies, which advocated the funds, have not expressed an opinion about the plan for the memorial. The subcommittee is headed by Sen. Christopher Bond (R-Mo.), who in 1993 voted against an amendment that would have eased the ban on gays in the military by giving the president discretion over the policy. Bond’s office did not return repeated telephone calls.
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The VA’s standing policy on appropriate headstone vocabulary was formulated more than a decade ago, when one veteran requested that the words “gay” and “proud” be inscribed on his headstone. Today, decorated service members desiring a full-honor military funeral at Arlington may make no reference to their domestic partners, even if they are their closest survivors.
“They can use personal inscriptions such as `beloved brother and son’ or `loving wife and mother,’ something that’s respectful and in good taste,” said Willie Alexander, spokesman for the VA, which decides protocol for headstones and memorials at Arlington.
“The headstones or markers that carry any reference to sexual orientation will not be inscribed, because the headstone commemorates their service to country, and it is not a forum for a political statement.”
Other agencies accept gays
In many government agencies, however, mentioning homosexuality and service to country in the same breath is no longer inherently political.
The Central Intelligence Agency, for instance, has an Agency Network of Gay and Lesbian Employees. The Library of Congress has also made an effort to include the testimonies of gay veterans in its Veterans History Project, said Lara Ballard, who during the past year has been videotaping aging gay veterans about their combat experiences.
Duke’s Silliman said that such grass-roots efforts at documenting gay people’s service, and the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in July to strike down a Texas law against sodomy, have sparked hope that military codes prohibiting homosexual acts might be modified.
For Thomas, immortalizing the service of gay soldiers has taken on an urgency, especially now that he serves as an adviser to District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams on veterans affairs. Since being diagnosed last year with prostate cancer, which has been attributed to exposure to Agent Orange, Thomas has been thinking about his legacy.
“For many of us, there is a very, very strong pent-up emotion, and as we look back behind us, we can recognize those who have been through shot and shell,” said Thomas, who still considers the 12 years he spent in active duty as the best period of his life. “Gays have always served in the military and carried their share of the load. We just want that to be acknowledged.”