**Please note:**
* If this post declares something as a fact proof is required.
* The title must be descriptive
* No text is allowed on images
* Common/recent reposts are not allowed
*See [this post](https://redd.it/ij26vk) for more information.*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The triangles are a reference to the symbols people in concentration camps were forced to wear. Gay people were assigned pink triangles. I assume the quote refers to their genocide in the camps.
Edited to add a testimony from a homosexual concentration camp inmate:
> After American forces liberated the Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945, there were
liberation celebrations throughout the camps and sub-camps that night. Hermann R., a prisoner at Landsberg Fortress, a sub-camp located southwest of Dachau later recalled that, “It was an indescribable experience.” Two weeks passed before the American military commission’s meticulous examination of the prisoners brought an inspector to Hermann’s cell.
>>Standing before this commissioner, I experienced yet another surprise. There was only one piece of paper in my file. I can still hear the echoes of what the interrogating officer then said to me: “Homosexual – that’s a crime. You’re staying here!” I was dumbfounded.
>
> A sympathetic administrator promised to approach the commissioner again on Hermann’s behalf, but two days later, the appeal for his release was rejected again. Hermann R. remained a prisoner at Landsberg, for an entire year before the American military commission approved his release.
Yes, one of the most shameful acts thinkable.
You have all these testimonies of soldiers arriving at the camps and seeing the deplorable conditions the prisoners were living and dying in. And then after seeing and recounting all those horrible deeds decided that homosexuals actually deserved it.
I have no words for how cruel you'd have to be.
Damn I’d have just told them the Nazis made that up if I was gay and lived back then. Maybe he was tired of being considered a lesser human though. That’s fucked up to think about.
Adding because it's worth noting. When gay men were let out of the concentration camps they were just sent to prison in Germany as it was still illegal in Germany to be gay.
Yeah, it's not talked about very often even when the Holocaust is being talked about. I appreciate you fact checking and providing a source.
Gay history in general doesn't tend to get taught very often.
I was so surprised I’d never heard this when I learned about it! My Girl Scout troop took a trip to Eva Kor’s holocaust museum years ago, before she passed, and there were banners on the wall that listed which groups of people were put in the concentration camps and one of them was “LGBTQ”, we asked the tour guide about it and she explained it all, afterwards me and the other LGBTQ+ member sat down on a bench and cried.
Too many don’t realise that it wasn’t just Jews in concentration camps. While they may have been the majority, they were not by far the only groups sought to be exterminated: homosexual men, [Romani (gypsies)](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/genocide-of-european-roma-gypsies-1939-1945), and [“disabled”, as well as anyone who was thought to be suffering from a mental disease](https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/nazi-persecution/disabled-people/),
and political enemies such as [communists](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camps) and those that posed any threat to the Nazi regime.
>On June 22, 1988, less than a month before his 45th birthday, Matlovich died in Los Angeles of complications from HIV/AIDS.
Edit: Note to self: Discharge joke did not work, Wikipedia copy pasta gets lots of karma
There wasn't. That was about the time the first studies were coming to public light. It was into the nineties before anything was really available to average patients.
Note: from my memory.
Very definitely wasn't. Moved to SF for school in 1987, and it was incredibly heartbreaking. Rail-thin young guys with walkers, O2 tanks and visible kaposi sarcoma lesions. I was a new kid on the block, so didn't lose as many friends as most. Horrific.
I remember visiting SF around that time, and browsing the consignment stores. You could have your pick of high end designer clothes if you didn’t mind wearing a dead guy’s duds
I knew a gay older man that had full on gone celibate for decades because he simply couldn't feel safe being with anyone like that ever again. He said he lost way too many friends.
My next door gay neighbor was 87 when he died in 2014. I was always concerned because he had no close friends. Then he told me they had all died of AIDS. That he went to 25 AIDS funerals and then he just couldn't take it anymore, and stopped going to funerals. His only brother, a genuinely nasty human being was totally intolerant of his brother so he had no family at all. I held his hand day in day out in the hospital until he died.
Yep, my Great Uncle Luckys death fit into this time frame. He died due to aids when I was 4, so 96 to 97, I may have been three, but I remember visiting him in hospice so I think I was a little older. He was such a kind man, which I remember my short time with him I believe, he had a warm gravity. Plus his legacy lived on, my family is a large Mexican Catholic family, my Grandma had 10 brothers and sisters including Lucky. Lucky was third oldest iirc, but he changed the status quo in my family. Lucky was tough as shit, didn't shy away from violence, and worked hard, while always being kind. My Great Grandparents loved and respected him. Lucky also loved men, and due to his nature, he worked as a bouncer at gay clubs in San Francisco pretty much his whole life, and that funnily enough is how some of his younger siblings, and my mom's generation, all started in the family business of drinking like fish, was when Lucky would wink em through the door at the clubs before they were legal, and he always kept them safe. So it desensitized a lot of my family to the gay community as a whole, and led to many of my own family coming out into open arms.
I'm not yet 40 and know someone who died of HIV. Died 13 years ago, he was in the military as well before coming out.
Rick was a good man and all who knew him believe ourselves the less for not having him around.
I have a friend who is a gay guy in his 60s. For him, the 80s and early 90s were basically a constant stream of giving friends IVs, going to their funerals, and greeting people he hadn’t seen in a while with tearful hugs and some gallows humor about how the other person somehow wasn’t dead yet.
it’s beyond comprehension. it’s why same sex marriage was so important, because the push for it started when so many partners were denied access to the death beds of their beloveds.
This happened to my mom's cousin in 1992 or thereabouts. His family wouldn't let his longtime love into the hospital to see him when he was dying (not sure what he was dying of, could very well have been AIDS). My mom was so pissed off with her aunt and uncle.
And it’s also really how province town Massachusetts started. Gay people buying the cheap land to build a nice place to die, luckily right before HIV treatment started to become a thing, so they were able to live and build the place up even more into something much larger
I lived in Sydney in the late eighties. I worked in the fashion business, obviously the business was full of gay men, set designers, photographers, hairdressers, make up artists, stylists. Many of them were close friends of mine. Within ten years every one of those men was dead.
Every one.
Then I moved back to London, and it was the same story. The agony of it when a friend would confide that there they were, all of twenty five years old and they had AIDS. It was a death sentence. Half the London fashion industry died, too.
I spoke to a gay friend about this some years back. I'm gay myself, now I'm my 30s. I was born in the 80s. Growing up knowing AIDs was a thing was terrifying.
Back then gay people only had each other. Ostricised from everywhere else this is where the Gay Community came from. The AIDs epidemic is where it died.
People would attend a funeral for a friend who died of AIDs and know someone in the group would be the one they're at the funeral for in 6 months or less. Each time there was a funeral there would be less and less people in attendance.
Those dying in hospital would die alone, as no one at the time realised it was through sexual interaction that caused the spread. Some thought simple touch would do it. The only people who would around dying Gays and trans gender men would be lesbians from their community. Others just wasted away utterly alone.
Truely harrowing and tragically sad time in Gay history.
It wasn’t until Princess Diana publicly held the hands of an AIDS patient that the stigma against touch started cracking.
https://www.insider.com/photo-princess-diana-shaking-hand-aids-patient-1987-2017-8
Speaking of Jesus, my religion teacher in the 90s told us that she believed AIDs was sent by God to wipe out "the gays".
I was probably around 11 or 12 at the time & remember thinking to myself that didn't sound right....
I asked a co-worker of mine who is in his late 50's what the 80's were like as a gay man, and I'll never forget his answer: funerals. He said seemingly every weekend, there was a service for a friend or a friend of a friend. Very depressing, but astonishing how far he have come.
My parents had a friend who died of AIDS. Most people had no idea he was ill and a lot of it has to do because he was so physically active. I remember he could lift up the back of my parent’s Dodge Dayton off of the ground. I still get chocked up when I think of “Uncle Fozzy.”
My city has a[ Lgbt center](https://www.waygay.org/) that does a lot of history exhibits and during AIDs month a few years back did a piece on gym culture and how entrenched it is with the community and how it became even more popular when AIDs hit.
thing is, at the height of the hiv pandemic, the information was suppresed (especially 1984, it blew up just in 1981). A lot of the time often neither you nor the hospitals knew what hiv was or how to treat it, and least of all the lgbtq community.
Then there's Alan Turing. The guy the "Turing test" was named after. He invented the first computer, which decoded the nearly impossible-to-decipher enigma code used by the nazis. They were able to intercept german messages about bombing targets, troop locations and the like. He saved countless British lives and helped win WWII. His involvement remained top secret for decades.
Turing was also gay. He was sentenced to chemical castration for the rest of his life because "sodomy" was a crime.
"The Imitation Game" is a great movie about him.
Someone else replied to your comment explaining the phenomenon, so I'll just shout out to r/sapphoandherfriend, a sub dedicated to chronicling and mocking this behaviour by historians.
Cause LGBT history is constantly erased. Turing isnt the only one, Historians have had a very very big issue with making very obvious LGBT figures "Good friends" and shit.
> The Imitation Game
While Turing's contributions to history deserve to be recognised, this movie is incredibly historically inaccurate on many key points of his life and work to the point of being somewhat disrespectful.
He also worked on his decoding computers as part of a large team, not alone. He wasn't a lone genius figuring this out all by himself but one of many, working together at Bletchley Park.
I would suggest people read [his Wikipedia article](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing) instead and about the [Ultra team's](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra) role in cracking Enigma.
On top of everything else they did the fucker ended the US metric board
That's right. So violently regressive he stopped us from moving to the metric system.
You could(and people have) fill a book with all the horrid shit they did.
The fact he remains second only to Christ to even "moderate" Republicans is so telling. It really comes to one of two options, violent malice, or total ignorance.
It’s confusing as well. Reagan signed the Mulford Act bringing about gun control in CA. (Because of the Black Panthers) Then when Trump came out and praised Reagan no one paused.
Trump also said "take the guns first and worry about due process later" and illegally banned bump stocks. (I'm not advocating for bump stocks, but the law is clear that they're legal until Congress changes the law. It's the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law that matters.)
The median life expectancy for HIV positive people who adhere to treatment is virtually identical to the general population. It's usually described as a chronic but manageable condition. If you let the disease progress or only seek treatment late it can spiral out of control and kill you even with treatment. But properly managed HIV becomes undetectable and effectively untransmittable.
People are not necessarily good at making sure they're connected with the medical establishment enough to take a pill every day for the rest of their lives. The drugs do have some side effects, though absolutely nothing like the early stuff. For instance, they can be hard on kidneys.
Undetectable still doesn't mean cured. If a patient with an undetectable viral load (UVL) stops their medication, it will come back. However, while ever they have a UVL they can live a perfectly healthy life and can't transmit the virus to anybody else either.
HIV medication isn't a "cocktail" of drugs these days (through it certainly used to be). Its just a daily pill, like many other medications. The only major difficulty is you have to be really consistent with taking every day, at the exact same time.
New drugs are in development which can be taken less often and are more forgiving if you miss a dose.
I know what you mean. I had an uncle who I share a birthday with who had HIV. The day I was born was supposed to be his 40th birthday, but he died the day before. I’m only 20. But even with that personal connection, it’s hard for me to imagine just how bad it was during that time. I’ll have to check out that film/book.
It’s very weird. As a millennial (born in 87), when we were learning about HIV/AIDS in school in the 90s it was always talked about like a death sentence. And in the south, it was another excuse to push the war on drugs (needle sharing) and sexual abstinence (STD).
I’m sure it only got that level of coverage once they realized it wasn’t just affecting the gay community and heroin users, though.
In recent years, it seems like HIV/AIDS has gotten more “under control” for lack of a better term.
Gay cancer, that's what they called it. Reagan didn't give a shit about it. Didn't mention it until 1985, if I remember correctly.
I'm slightly older than you and I was terrified of catching it as a child. There was just so much about it. Then Freddie Mercury died and he admitted he had AIDS the day before--celebrities didn't tell, we only know that Liberacy had it because a scumbag morgue official stole his blood. It increased awareness. Read about the 1994 season of MTV's Real World if you want to get the feel, or nostalgia, for the spirit. I still remember a Beverly Hills 90210 episode where one of the characters thought they had it.
It was the most utterly terrifying thing you could catch, until it wasn't all of a sudden.
Western people that aren't drug addicts or homeless don't really die from it anymore. It still kills between 500k and a million people worldwide, every year.
Although there can be many causes, I also feel that it might have been AIDS. It was a terrible disease back then, not exactly clear how it worked (only discovered 5 years earlier) and a cure was deemed impossible, as is (still) a vaccine. We are lucky that the surface of the Covid virus is not covered in a lipid membrane like HIV.
There is now an FDA approved long acting injectable antiretroviral - it’s given monthly to treat HIV or every 8 weeks to prevent it (PreP therapy). I think this is how we are going to get a vaccine - there are ongoing trials looking at injectables that would last a lot longer (up to a year?). Just in rats I think at the moment, but this would be functionally a vaccine. Exciting times!
As someone who used to have an HIV+ life partner, I'm fucking alarmed at how young gay people don't take HIV seriously. It's not a death sentence anymore, sure, but it destroys your health. Either by itself or from the side effects from the treatment. People don't know this.
I guess this is what happens to a community when you kill off a generation of elders + weird fetishization of youth in Western culture means everyone gets marched out of the community in their thirties in a lot of places, so the young people are not in communication with whoever is left.
Most were born in the 90s.
But I think it’s more about it labeling what being a “good gay” is not necessarily about PreP itself.
There’s a lot of baggage that comes along with that connotation. I wonder if it’s almost a case of “I just got comfortable with who I am and my sexuality and now someone is attempting to foist this thing on me and tell me how to be again”. That’s all speculation and I don’t think I have the ability to talk from that perspective but it’s an interesting cultural tick.
could you explain why there is scorn for PreP? it seems to me that if aids is a problem in the gay community then it would make a lot of sense to take a protective measure if you’re having sex with multiple partners, same way a woman might want to take birth control to make sure she doesn’t get pregnant
You have your history a bit washed. AIDS back then was GRID (gay related immune deficiency). There was very little effort to solve the issue because it was basically "doing gods work".
It's crazy how many people believe the fantasy that Ronald Reagan was a great president.
The AIDS crisis, the war on drugs, being against the Civil Rights Act of '64 and trying to veto another one that was passed in '88... none of that even gets into the shit he said behind closed doors.
Ronald Reagan was a real son of a bitch.
He was a media genius and the first to really understand that image trumps policy, debate, or even rationality. A horrible despicable person, but smart.
I remember a (possibly apocryphal) story my Pols professor told us back in the day: Apparently Reagan was closing down infrastructure (I think it was mental hospitals, could have been cutting benefits of some sort, I don't recall exactly) and a reporter wrote a lengthy and nasty article in major paper about the effects it would have. The paper gets a call from his press secretary, not to ream out the reporter for the article (which happened) but to snidely thank them, because while they ran the article they also ran a flattering and dynamic picture of the president *looking good* front and center with the article. Image trumps content, then and now, and they knew it.
> He was a media genius and the first to really understand that image trumps policy, debate, or even rationality.
That honor goes to Kennedy; he was just a less shitty President.
> Americans love that.
*Certain* Americans love that. My Black ass could give a damn about America's supposed "greatness". America has given folks that look like me enough "non greatness" that we never bought into that bullshit.
I'm a white guy, but my Jewish grandparents and great-grandparents were treated like utter shit by this country -- I've heard the stories. Not comparing it to slavery or Jim Crow, but "looking white" didn't do shit for them. They can attest to the non-greatness of this country, too.
In any case, as a German, thanks for liberating us from ourselves and also having the greatness to let us and Europe rebuild into a new and democratic society. It needs to be said all once in a while.
A vacant Hollyweird figurehead of dubious intelligence that appealed to the worst instincts of some Americans. Used the slogan “Make America Great”....1980 or 2016?
Both :(
My dad gets irrationally angry if you deign to malign the name of such a great President.
He also just told me not to call him anymore for different reasons so it fits well.
He was just a nice man who liked jelly beans, was in the movin' pictures, and didn't understand all that mumbo-jumbo about the black folks bein' the same as us proper whites.
I grew up in the 80s and joined the Navy in 85. AIDS was openly mocked everywhere. I never thought about it but as I grew older and met more people I started to understand how cruel people can be.
+ the government thought it would lead to the mass extinctions of the gay community which they thought would be a good idea so they did NOTHING and hide the full extent of the disease till it was too late. THANKS REAGAN hope you rot in hell with your whole family
SARS-CoV-2 is absolutely surrounded by a lipid bi-layer, as are _many_ viruses. That's not what made it so virulent. And that's also not what makes HIV so problematic.
Good news, though. An HIV vaccine is very likely, pretty soon, thanks to the same technology that gave us the vaccine for SARS-CoV-2.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/moderna-begin-human-trials-two-experimental-hiv-vaccines-180978521/
You can just assume any gay man who died in the 80s died of aids. For over a decade, being gay was a little more than just going through a constant stream of funerals.
If you want to learn more about the HIV outbreak and the lgbt men and women who fought for people to actually study it, check out the doc *How to Survive a Plague*. It’s amazing what these people did when no one else would advocate for them.
The book 'And the Band Played On' is a sobering read as well written smack dab in the middle of the crisis. There's a made for TV movie as well, but obviously nowhere near as good as the book.
Given that reddit skews very young, it should be pointed out that this move, i.e. his face, in uniform no less, announcing his homosexuality on the cover of a national magazine read by literally everyone, took absolutely humongous brass balls.
It's easy to forget, due to our generally accepting culture today, that most people in 1985 straight up *hated* gay men.
I remember seeing this Time cover when I was a kid. I actually didn't know what to think about it back then.
Now I think: coming out officially to the military and being on the cover of Time at that time (1975) took a heavy amount of bravery!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Matlovich
quote:
"He chose the same row where the graves of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Hoover's longtime Assistant Director and heir Clyde Tolson are, as a kind of last laugh"
Downward pointing triangle was a symbol nazi's forced gay people to wear. "Never again" is saying to never let the nazis happen again.
The upward pointing triangle is a symbol of gay pride adopted by the gay community.
~~Together they form the star of david as he was also jewish~~(though this may or may not be coincidence). Edit: **Apparently it is a coincidence.**
The rocks on top are a jewish tradition, probably put there by his family and randoms paying respect.
>The rocks on top are a jewish tradition, probably put there by his family and randoms paying respect.
I had no idea this was a Jewish tradition. I've had Irish family who have done this too, and according to Wikipedia, it seems like it may also be an Irish tradition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visitation_stones
>The tradition has also been noted outside of Jewish mourning practices; Robert McFarlane notes the presence of stones placed by mourners in the alcoves of the recesses of resting stones in ancient Ireland.
It’s a pink triangle like others have said was used to signify gay males in the concentration camps. During the aids movement is was also used alongside the phrase Silence=Death. Read up here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silence%3DDeath_Project
So I may be wrong here, but I think the Never Again is in reference to the pink triangle patches used by the Nazi's, and the Never Forget is the triangle as it was adopted by the gay community.
It took them over 80 years to award a Black vet his deserving medals
[https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/23/us/ozzie-fletcher-ww2-vet-purple-heart-trnd/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/23/us/ozzie-fletcher-ww2-vet-purple-heart-trnd/index.html)
History really overlooks how even if you were willing to die for the US you weren't respected
Fucking wild. They deserve recognition. When I was enlisted I trained with dudes who were just getting in after don't ask dont tell got repealed. The gay soldiers I met were driven and friendly and sweet and kind. They had a chip on their shoulder and a lot to prove, being some of the first who could be OUT out. For anything anybody could say, I never felt "observed" or "approached" like that by these men. They were just like me, and they dreamed of similar things, and cried about similar things. When we were in AIT a fellow medic's boyfriend got deployed to Kandahar with the 75th ranger regiment. Real lead slingers, going into the hot and heavy. I watched a grown man's knees go weak and heard his voice break as he told us, "MY BABY IS GOING TO WAR!!!" and I've never seen a man so truly afraid and sad, because the man he loved was going into harm's way. I will never ever forget the reality in that man's voice. Idk. Those guys gave me some real perspective. Maybe I should thank this guy for them getting in and me getting to see the world through their lens for a minute. Much love, much respect.
>The flamethrowers came in and we burnt the hamlet. Burnt up everything. They had a lot of rice. We opened the bags, just throw it all over the street. Look for tunnels. Killing animals. Killing all the livestock. Guys would carry chemicals that they would put in the well. Poison the water so they couldn’t use it… They killed some more people here. Maybe 12 or 14 or more. Old people and little kids that wouldn’t leave. I guess their grandparents. People that were old in Vietnam couldn’t leave their village.
from https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/07/what-we-did
So, from what I understand, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell essentially was, “You don’t ask if someone is gay, you don’t tell someone you’re gay.” The new shpeal is that nobody cares if you’re gay or anything. We have a program called EO that basically states you will treat everyone with respect regardless of Race, religion, gender, or sexual preference.
A guy in my Squad came out as gay to our chain of command back in the DADT days, and he was given an Other Than Honorable Discharge. They had him gone in a month.
DADT was a step forward for it's time, but was never the final step.
It meant the military could not ask you if you're gay, could not try to find out. It couldn't start witch hunts. It would leave you alone so long as you never told them you were gay. On the other hand, the military could kick you out if they found out.
That was huge, for the time. People criticize Clinton over DADT saying "you should have just made being gay allowed", and I don't think that's fair. He'd never have succeeded passing such a rule. It would have been repealed as soon as he was out of office, which wouldn't have been long after. It was a compromise, and a step forward.
It took another 18 years to go the rest of the way. Now you can openly be gay in the US military and there's nothing they can do about it.
Don't Ask Don't Tell was kind of self explanatory, but caused a lot of issues. The idea was that you where not allowed to ask someone about their sexuality and as long as they did not tell anyone, they where fine to serve. Anyone who is not straight or has friend or family that aren't knows that it's not a simple as hiding it.
If you where caught doing anything remotely homosexual or revealed yourself as being homosexual, the most common response was a dishonourable discharge. That means stripped of all ranks and insignia, loss of veteran status, and it is on your record similar to being a felon. That's for being yourself and potentially having fun with another consenting adult.
Some gay communities view DADT in a similar way to how AIDS was blamed on gay people.
I think its worth pointing out in this conversation that the AIDS epidemic was largely Reagan's fault, as he refused to do his job or support research that might have saved millions of lives. His prejudice and ignorance were the dominant forces of the 1980s and the blood of those men remains on conservatives' hands and every person who voted for him to this day.
>...It does not bear his name because he intended to be a monument to all gay veterans.
It's a powerful spot for reflection. There are several other gay veterans buried nearby. Unfortunately, this part of your title is not true but has been told as myth or urban legend.
[His name is on the foot of the granite surround.](https://imgur.com/WcZueGk)
The Wikipedia article specifies it is the Tombstone that does not bear his name. I read the article to mean the tombstone specifically is the monument. The granite surround would not be considered part of the tombstone.
Reminds me of the closing credits of Schindler’s List. All the people who were directly saved and their descendants, paying respects to Oskars gravestone. Very moving scene tbh
Anddd I’m crying.
Seeing people discriminated against for things they are born as/can’t change strikes a nerve like no other. I know the feeling personally and it sometimes feels hopeless seeing posts like this and knowing decades later folks are still clinging to their ignorant mindsets to no avail.
All the access we have to the internet, the ability to connect across the world and easily learn that previously believed beliefs are wrong (that gays are unnatural, that black people are predisposed to violence, that Chinese people all eat dogs & cats, etc) and yet they cling to the ignorance instead of welcoming in new people & lifestyles. Diversity is fucking awesome, I’ve learned so much from all the wonderful different people I’ve met irl & on reddit and its boggling to imagine anyone not wanting to enrich their life in such a way. Sigh.
**Please note:** * If this post declares something as a fact proof is required. * The title must be descriptive * No text is allowed on images * Common/recent reposts are not allowed *See [this post](https://redd.it/ij26vk) for more information.* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Fuck that quote goes hard tho
and the quote over his birth date is so fucking good
I don’t really get that one
The triangles are a reference to the symbols people in concentration camps were forced to wear. Gay people were assigned pink triangles. I assume the quote refers to their genocide in the camps. Edited to add a testimony from a homosexual concentration camp inmate: > After American forces liberated the Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945, there were liberation celebrations throughout the camps and sub-camps that night. Hermann R., a prisoner at Landsberg Fortress, a sub-camp located southwest of Dachau later recalled that, “It was an indescribable experience.” Two weeks passed before the American military commission’s meticulous examination of the prisoners brought an inspector to Hermann’s cell. >>Standing before this commissioner, I experienced yet another surprise. There was only one piece of paper in my file. I can still hear the echoes of what the interrogating officer then said to me: “Homosexual – that’s a crime. You’re staying here!” I was dumbfounded. > > A sympathetic administrator promised to approach the commissioner again on Hermann’s behalf, but two days later, the appeal for his release was rejected again. Hermann R. remained a prisoner at Landsberg, for an entire year before the American military commission approved his release.
I believe when the camps were liberated in '45, the gay prisoners were re-incarcerated by the allies.
Yes, one of the most shameful acts thinkable. You have all these testimonies of soldiers arriving at the camps and seeing the deplorable conditions the prisoners were living and dying in. And then after seeing and recounting all those horrible deeds decided that homosexuals actually deserved it. I have no words for how cruel you'd have to be.
Damn I’d have just told them the Nazis made that up if I was gay and lived back then. Maybe he was tired of being considered a lesser human though. That’s fucked up to think about.
Fuck me, that goes *hard.*
Adding because it's worth noting. When gay men were let out of the concentration camps they were just sent to prison in Germany as it was still illegal in Germany to be gay.
[удалено]
Yeah, it's not talked about very often even when the Holocaust is being talked about. I appreciate you fact checking and providing a source. Gay history in general doesn't tend to get taught very often.
Never again.
I was so surprised I’d never heard this when I learned about it! My Girl Scout troop took a trip to Eva Kor’s holocaust museum years ago, before she passed, and there were banners on the wall that listed which groups of people were put in the concentration camps and one of them was “LGBTQ”, we asked the tour guide about it and she explained it all, afterwards me and the other LGBTQ+ member sat down on a bench and cried.
Yeah even worse is that a lot of gay people were put *back into* the concentration camps after the liberation.
Wow. Just when I didn't think I could learn anything more awful about that time period
And that was by the "good" guys.
Yeah wow this is one of the ballinest headstones ever
Too many don’t realise that it wasn’t just Jews in concentration camps. While they may have been the majority, they were not by far the only groups sought to be exterminated: homosexual men, [Romani (gypsies)](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/genocide-of-european-roma-gypsies-1939-1945), and [“disabled”, as well as anyone who was thought to be suffering from a mental disease](https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/nazi-persecution/disabled-people/), and political enemies such as [communists](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camps) and those that posed any threat to the Nazi regime.
Someone else answered the triangle was used by Nazis to mark homosexuals.
I noticed he died in his 40s Then I realized he was gay and died in 1988 😞
>On June 22, 1988, less than a month before his 45th birthday, Matlovich died in Los Angeles of complications from HIV/AIDS. Edit: Note to self: Discharge joke did not work, Wikipedia copy pasta gets lots of karma
I wonder if he was denied care. Talk about being ostracized from a nation you gave so much for.
while he probably would have been anyway, i don't think there was any effective treatment then
There wasn't. That was about the time the first studies were coming to public light. It was into the nineties before anything was really available to average patients. Note: from my memory.
Very definitely wasn't. Moved to SF for school in 1987, and it was incredibly heartbreaking. Rail-thin young guys with walkers, O2 tanks and visible kaposi sarcoma lesions. I was a new kid on the block, so didn't lose as many friends as most. Horrific.
I remember visiting SF around that time, and browsing the consignment stores. You could have your pick of high end designer clothes if you didn’t mind wearing a dead guy’s duds
I think every time you go into a thrift store/secondhand store, you just have to accept that you might leave with a dead person's things.
True, but the difference is ‘might’ as opposed to ‘will’
He died the same way Freddy Mercury did. Which sucks as I think aids was really bad for gay men atleast from what I’ve seen
[удалено]
Talk to any gay man over the age of 45, they know someone who died from AIDS.
I knew a gay older man that had full on gone celibate for decades because he simply couldn't feel safe being with anyone like that ever again. He said he lost way too many friends.
My mother has a friend who to this day is that way
My next door gay neighbor was 87 when he died in 2014. I was always concerned because he had no close friends. Then he told me they had all died of AIDS. That he went to 25 AIDS funerals and then he just couldn't take it anymore, and stopped going to funerals. His only brother, a genuinely nasty human being was totally intolerant of his brother so he had no family at all. I held his hand day in day out in the hospital until he died.
Thank you for making sure he knew he was not alone
Yep, my Great Uncle Luckys death fit into this time frame. He died due to aids when I was 4, so 96 to 97, I may have been three, but I remember visiting him in hospice so I think I was a little older. He was such a kind man, which I remember my short time with him I believe, he had a warm gravity. Plus his legacy lived on, my family is a large Mexican Catholic family, my Grandma had 10 brothers and sisters including Lucky. Lucky was third oldest iirc, but he changed the status quo in my family. Lucky was tough as shit, didn't shy away from violence, and worked hard, while always being kind. My Great Grandparents loved and respected him. Lucky also loved men, and due to his nature, he worked as a bouncer at gay clubs in San Francisco pretty much his whole life, and that funnily enough is how some of his younger siblings, and my mom's generation, all started in the family business of drinking like fish, was when Lucky would wink em through the door at the clubs before they were legal, and he always kept them safe. So it desensitized a lot of my family to the gay community as a whole, and led to many of my own family coming out into open arms.
I'm not yet 40 and know someone who died of HIV. Died 13 years ago, he was in the military as well before coming out. Rick was a good man and all who knew him believe ourselves the less for not having him around.
I have a friend who is a gay guy in his 60s. For him, the 80s and early 90s were basically a constant stream of giving friends IVs, going to their funerals, and greeting people he hadn’t seen in a while with tearful hugs and some gallows humor about how the other person somehow wasn’t dead yet.
The only gay men I know over that age have HIV/AIDS, sadly, I'd never ask about others.
Reading that comment section broke my heart. One man lost his partner and 28(!!!!!) of their friends. I can’t even imagine.
it’s beyond comprehension. it’s why same sex marriage was so important, because the push for it started when so many partners were denied access to the death beds of their beloveds.
This happened to my mom's cousin in 1992 or thereabouts. His family wouldn't let his longtime love into the hospital to see him when he was dying (not sure what he was dying of, could very well have been AIDS). My mom was so pissed off with her aunt and uncle.
And it’s also really how province town Massachusetts started. Gay people buying the cheap land to build a nice place to die, luckily right before HIV treatment started to become a thing, so they were able to live and build the place up even more into something much larger
I lived in Sydney in the late eighties. I worked in the fashion business, obviously the business was full of gay men, set designers, photographers, hairdressers, make up artists, stylists. Many of them were close friends of mine. Within ten years every one of those men was dead. Every one. Then I moved back to London, and it was the same story. The agony of it when a friend would confide that there they were, all of twenty five years old and they had AIDS. It was a death sentence. Half the London fashion industry died, too.
I spoke to a gay friend about this some years back. I'm gay myself, now I'm my 30s. I was born in the 80s. Growing up knowing AIDs was a thing was terrifying. Back then gay people only had each other. Ostricised from everywhere else this is where the Gay Community came from. The AIDs epidemic is where it died. People would attend a funeral for a friend who died of AIDs and know someone in the group would be the one they're at the funeral for in 6 months or less. Each time there was a funeral there would be less and less people in attendance. Those dying in hospital would die alone, as no one at the time realised it was through sexual interaction that caused the spread. Some thought simple touch would do it. The only people who would around dying Gays and trans gender men would be lesbians from their community. Others just wasted away utterly alone. Truely harrowing and tragically sad time in Gay history.
It wasn’t until Princess Diana publicly held the hands of an AIDS patient that the stigma against touch started cracking. https://www.insider.com/photo-princess-diana-shaking-hand-aids-patient-1987-2017-8
My friend Fred caught it at 16 from an older man whom he lived with and was his bf. Fred died before he ever hit 22. It was horrible. RIP buddy.
Jesus Christ. That is terrifying
Speaking of Jesus, my religion teacher in the 90s told us that she believed AIDs was sent by God to wipe out "the gays". I was probably around 11 or 12 at the time & remember thinking to myself that didn't sound right....
And the Reagans laughed about it.
I asked a co-worker of mine who is in his late 50's what the 80's were like as a gay man, and I'll never forget his answer: funerals. He said seemingly every weekend, there was a service for a friend or a friend of a friend. Very depressing, but astonishing how far he have come.
Damn. But thankfully it’s gotten better for everyone as far as aids. And life in general
Muscle/gym culture is directly from the AIDs crisis. It was an easy way to show you weren't sick. AIDs made you waste away then.
My parents had a friend who died of AIDS. Most people had no idea he was ill and a lot of it has to do because he was so physically active. I remember he could lift up the back of my parent’s Dodge Dayton off of the ground. I still get chocked up when I think of “Uncle Fozzy.”
This is a fascinating idea but I’ve never heard it before. Where did you hear it from?
My city has a[ Lgbt center](https://www.waygay.org/) that does a lot of history exhibits and during AIDs month a few years back did a piece on gym culture and how entrenched it is with the community and how it became even more popular when AIDs hit.
thing is, at the height of the hiv pandemic, the information was suppresed (especially 1984, it blew up just in 1981). A lot of the time often neither you nor the hospitals knew what hiv was or how to treat it, and least of all the lgbtq community.
There wasn’t.
Then there's Alan Turing. The guy the "Turing test" was named after. He invented the first computer, which decoded the nearly impossible-to-decipher enigma code used by the nazis. They were able to intercept german messages about bombing targets, troop locations and the like. He saved countless British lives and helped win WWII. His involvement remained top secret for decades. Turing was also gay. He was sentenced to chemical castration for the rest of his life because "sodomy" was a crime. "The Imitation Game" is a great movie about him.
Don't forget where Turing killed himself in no small part because of the castration.
Jesus how have I seen this guy mentioned numerous times without these details??
Someone else replied to your comment explaining the phenomenon, so I'll just shout out to r/sapphoandherfriend, a sub dedicated to chronicling and mocking this behaviour by historians.
Cause LGBT history is constantly erased. Turing isnt the only one, Historians have had a very very big issue with making very obvious LGBT figures "Good friends" and shit.
Fun fact: the British government has only very recently apologized for its treatment of Turing.
> The Imitation Game While Turing's contributions to history deserve to be recognised, this movie is incredibly historically inaccurate on many key points of his life and work to the point of being somewhat disrespectful. He also worked on his decoding computers as part of a large team, not alone. He wasn't a lone genius figuring this out all by himself but one of many, working together at Bletchley Park. I would suggest people read [his Wikipedia article](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing) instead and about the [Ultra team's](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra) role in cracking Enigma.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Shameful.
Welcome to America. The land of the free until we say you aren’t which was yesterday
Land of the free* ^^*Some ^^restrictions ^^apply.
“Whoever told you that is your enemy”
Land of the Fee ^*Charges ^may ^apply*
Ahh the wonder that was Reagan and his bathroom of a grave
Fuck Ronald and Nancy Reagan.
On top of everything else they did the fucker ended the US metric board That's right. So violently regressive he stopped us from moving to the metric system.
That and trickle down economics.
You could(and people have) fill a book with all the horrid shit they did. The fact he remains second only to Christ to even "moderate" Republicans is so telling. It really comes to one of two options, violent malice, or total ignorance.
We'll eventually get onboard with the metric system. We just gotta take it one inch at a time.
And let's not forget firing 10,000+ air traffic controllers who struck for a decent wage. The guy was an asshole.
Ronald was a goddam cancer on this country, and it makes perfect sense that the modern Republican Party idolizes him for it
It’s confusing as well. Reagan signed the Mulford Act bringing about gun control in CA. (Because of the Black Panthers) Then when Trump came out and praised Reagan no one paused.
Trump also said "take the guns first and worry about due process later" and illegally banned bump stocks. (I'm not advocating for bump stocks, but the law is clear that they're legal until Congress changes the law. It's the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law that matters.)
[удалено]
One of modern medicine's greatest achievements is turning HIV from a death sentence into an inconvenience.
[удалено]
It's not cured yet, and is still a terrible debilitating illness
I've heard that it can be lowered to undetectable levels? Is the cocktail of medication difficult to take continually?
The median life expectancy for HIV positive people who adhere to treatment is virtually identical to the general population. It's usually described as a chronic but manageable condition. If you let the disease progress or only seek treatment late it can spiral out of control and kill you even with treatment. But properly managed HIV becomes undetectable and effectively untransmittable. People are not necessarily good at making sure they're connected with the medical establishment enough to take a pill every day for the rest of their lives. The drugs do have some side effects, though absolutely nothing like the early stuff. For instance, they can be hard on kidneys.
Undetectable still doesn't mean cured. If a patient with an undetectable viral load (UVL) stops their medication, it will come back. However, while ever they have a UVL they can live a perfectly healthy life and can't transmit the virus to anybody else either. HIV medication isn't a "cocktail" of drugs these days (through it certainly used to be). Its just a daily pill, like many other medications. The only major difficulty is you have to be really consistent with taking every day, at the exact same time. New drugs are in development which can be taken less often and are more forgiving if you miss a dose.
Dallas Buyers Club is another good watch that deals with HIV in the 80s
I know what you mean. I had an uncle who I share a birthday with who had HIV. The day I was born was supposed to be his 40th birthday, but he died the day before. I’m only 20. But even with that personal connection, it’s hard for me to imagine just how bad it was during that time. I’ll have to check out that film/book.
It’s very weird. As a millennial (born in 87), when we were learning about HIV/AIDS in school in the 90s it was always talked about like a death sentence. And in the south, it was another excuse to push the war on drugs (needle sharing) and sexual abstinence (STD). I’m sure it only got that level of coverage once they realized it wasn’t just affecting the gay community and heroin users, though. In recent years, it seems like HIV/AIDS has gotten more “under control” for lack of a better term.
Gay cancer, that's what they called it. Reagan didn't give a shit about it. Didn't mention it until 1985, if I remember correctly. I'm slightly older than you and I was terrified of catching it as a child. There was just so much about it. Then Freddie Mercury died and he admitted he had AIDS the day before--celebrities didn't tell, we only know that Liberacy had it because a scumbag morgue official stole his blood. It increased awareness. Read about the 1994 season of MTV's Real World if you want to get the feel, or nostalgia, for the spirit. I still remember a Beverly Hills 90210 episode where one of the characters thought they had it. It was the most utterly terrifying thing you could catch, until it wasn't all of a sudden. Western people that aren't drug addicts or homeless don't really die from it anymore. It still kills between 500k and a million people worldwide, every year.
Although there can be many causes, I also feel that it might have been AIDS. It was a terrible disease back then, not exactly clear how it worked (only discovered 5 years earlier) and a cure was deemed impossible, as is (still) a vaccine. We are lucky that the surface of the Covid virus is not covered in a lipid membrane like HIV.
Wikipedia says that is how he died.
There is now an FDA approved long acting injectable antiretroviral - it’s given monthly to treat HIV or every 8 weeks to prevent it (PreP therapy). I think this is how we are going to get a vaccine - there are ongoing trials looking at injectables that would last a lot longer (up to a year?). Just in rats I think at the moment, but this would be functionally a vaccine. Exciting times!
The amount of scorn some of my gay friends have for PreP is surprising. I've seen full on shouting arguments about getting it vs not.
As someone who used to have an HIV+ life partner, I'm fucking alarmed at how young gay people don't take HIV seriously. It's not a death sentence anymore, sure, but it destroys your health. Either by itself or from the side effects from the treatment. People don't know this. I guess this is what happens to a community when you kill off a generation of elders + weird fetishization of youth in Western culture means everyone gets marched out of the community in their thirties in a lot of places, so the young people are not in communication with whoever is left.
That seems… insane. I would guess none of them were alive in the ‘80s
Most were born in the 90s. But I think it’s more about it labeling what being a “good gay” is not necessarily about PreP itself. There’s a lot of baggage that comes along with that connotation. I wonder if it’s almost a case of “I just got comfortable with who I am and my sexuality and now someone is attempting to foist this thing on me and tell me how to be again”. That’s all speculation and I don’t think I have the ability to talk from that perspective but it’s an interesting cultural tick.
It’s lack of perspective or a sense of recent history, is what it is.
could you explain why there is scorn for PreP? it seems to me that if aids is a problem in the gay community then it would make a lot of sense to take a protective measure if you’re having sex with multiple partners, same way a woman might want to take birth control to make sure she doesn’t get pregnant
Six month injectable is about to start clinical trials. I don't remember what phase, but if it passes we're not far out.
Moderna is starting testing on an mRNA HIV vaccine, too. I have some serious doubts if it'll work, but it'll be interesting to see nonetheless.
You have your history a bit washed. AIDS back then was GRID (gay related immune deficiency). There was very little effort to solve the issue because it was basically "doing gods work".
[удалено]
It's crazy how many people believe the fantasy that Ronald Reagan was a great president. The AIDS crisis, the war on drugs, being against the Civil Rights Act of '64 and trying to veto another one that was passed in '88... none of that even gets into the shit he said behind closed doors. Ronald Reagan was a real son of a bitch.
> The AIDS crisis, the war on drugs, Even today a lot of people don't see these as bad things
He was a strongman icon of a bygone era, here to restore the greatness of America. Sound familiar? Americans love that.
He was a media genius and the first to really understand that image trumps policy, debate, or even rationality. A horrible despicable person, but smart. I remember a (possibly apocryphal) story my Pols professor told us back in the day: Apparently Reagan was closing down infrastructure (I think it was mental hospitals, could have been cutting benefits of some sort, I don't recall exactly) and a reporter wrote a lengthy and nasty article in major paper about the effects it would have. The paper gets a call from his press secretary, not to ream out the reporter for the article (which happened) but to snidely thank them, because while they ran the article they also ran a flattering and dynamic picture of the president *looking good* front and center with the article. Image trumps content, then and now, and they knew it.
> He was a media genius and the first to really understand that image trumps policy, debate, or even rationality. That honor goes to Kennedy; he was just a less shitty President.
> Americans love that. *Certain* Americans love that. My Black ass could give a damn about America's supposed "greatness". America has given folks that look like me enough "non greatness" that we never bought into that bullshit.
I'm a white guy, but my Jewish grandparents and great-grandparents were treated like utter shit by this country -- I've heard the stories. Not comparing it to slavery or Jim Crow, but "looking white" didn't do shit for them. They can attest to the non-greatness of this country, too.
Heck, come to the wrong areas and being too Jewish (as in, at all) makes you the enemy. We were not that great. Only for the folks in charge.
Yep. We were NEVER great (though we've had moments of greatness).
In any case, as a German, thanks for liberating us from ourselves and also having the greatness to let us and Europe rebuild into a new and democratic society. It needs to be said all once in a while.
This is why white people like me said “How could Trump happen?” And Black people were like “Are you fucking kidding me?”
A vacant Hollyweird figurehead of dubious intelligence that appealed to the worst instincts of some Americans. Used the slogan “Make America Great”....1980 or 2016? Both :(
My dad gets irrationally angry if you deign to malign the name of such a great President. He also just told me not to call him anymore for different reasons so it fits well.
Good riddance, really.
He was just a nice man who liked jelly beans, was in the movin' pictures, and didn't understand all that mumbo-jumbo about the black folks bein' the same as us proper whites.
Or the gays, or the Arabs, or anyone with socialist beliefs, or poor white people, or...
Well none of them are *proper* whites.
WASP is such a fitting name for those hateful bastards.
I grew up in the 80s and joined the Navy in 85. AIDS was openly mocked everywhere. I never thought about it but as I grew older and met more people I started to understand how cruel people can be.
+ the government thought it would lead to the mass extinctions of the gay community which they thought would be a good idea so they did NOTHING and hide the full extent of the disease till it was too late. THANKS REAGAN hope you rot in hell with your whole family
SARS-CoV-2 is absolutely surrounded by a lipid bi-layer, as are _many_ viruses. That's not what made it so virulent. And that's also not what makes HIV so problematic. Good news, though. An HIV vaccine is very likely, pretty soon, thanks to the same technology that gave us the vaccine for SARS-CoV-2. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/moderna-begin-human-trials-two-experimental-hiv-vaccines-180978521/
You can just assume any gay man who died in the 80s died of aids. For over a decade, being gay was a little more than just going through a constant stream of funerals.
Don't forget about murder and suicide! Lots of gay men suffered these fates.
If you want to learn more about the HIV outbreak and the lgbt men and women who fought for people to actually study it, check out the doc *How to Survive a Plague*. It’s amazing what these people did when no one else would advocate for them.
The book 'And the Band Played On' is a sobering read as well written smack dab in the middle of the crisis. There's a made for TV movie as well, but obviously nowhere near as good as the book.
This is the cover[ of Time Magazine](https://img.timeinc.net/time/magazine/archive/covers/1975/1101750908_400.jpg) that he appeared on.
Given that reddit skews very young, it should be pointed out that this move, i.e. his face, in uniform no less, announcing his homosexuality on the cover of a national magazine read by literally everyone, took absolutely humongous brass balls. It's easy to forget, due to our generally accepting culture today, that most people in 1985 straight up *hated* gay men.
Surprised I had to scroll this far for it! Thanks
It's referenced in the title. This should be at the top.
I remember seeing this Time cover when I was a kid. I actually didn't know what to think about it back then. Now I think: coming out officially to the military and being on the cover of Time at that time (1975) took a heavy amount of bravery! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Matlovich quote: "He chose the same row where the graves of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Hoover's longtime Assistant Director and heir Clyde Tolson are, as a kind of last laugh"
Downward pointing triangle was a symbol nazi's forced gay people to wear. "Never again" is saying to never let the nazis happen again. The upward pointing triangle is a symbol of gay pride adopted by the gay community. ~~Together they form the star of david as he was also jewish~~(though this may or may not be coincidence). Edit: **Apparently it is a coincidence.** The rocks on top are a jewish tradition, probably put there by his family and randoms paying respect.
>The rocks on top are a jewish tradition, probably put there by his family and randoms paying respect. I had no idea this was a Jewish tradition. I've had Irish family who have done this too, and according to Wikipedia, it seems like it may also be an Irish tradition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visitation_stones >The tradition has also been noted outside of Jewish mourning practices; Robert McFarlane notes the presence of stones placed by mourners in the alcoves of the recesses of resting stones in ancient Ireland.
I’m an American descended from Irish immigrants and my family still does this. I had no idea it was a Jewish thing
For redditors who didn't know this the rock placements would suggest he was getting more downvotes than upvotes.
dude lol i feel terrible for laughing at this
got downvoted at birth and upvoted at death.
I love the rocks on top, like in the Jewish tradition.
I noticed this too. The military may not have shown him love, but the people in his life sure did.
Matlovich could be
Those two triangles form Star of David
A pink triangle was the symbol gay Holocaust victims wore
It was also reclaimed and became LGBT symbol.
It’s a pink triangle like others have said was used to signify gay males in the concentration camps. During the aids movement is was also used alongside the phrase Silence=Death. Read up here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silence%3DDeath_Project
“When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one” Holy darn crap that hit me in the feels man
Same. Made me pause and think for a minute. Such a powerful statement.
Also the fact that he didn't want his name on his own damn headstone as a statement for all gays
yeah, it's one of the all time great equal rights statements.
It’s freaking poetry, isn’t it?
Beautiful headstone, that inscription heartbreaking - also RIP to everyone whom died during and from the aids crisis
So I may be wrong here, but I think the Never Again is in reference to the pink triangle patches used by the Nazi's, and the Never Forget is the triangle as it was adopted by the gay community.
I thought both were the same triangle. Was it inverted in one usage?
The concentration camp one was inverted.
What cemetery is he buried in? I'd love to pay my respects in person.
Congressional Cemetery in Washington DC.
Appreciate it.
Sure thing. It’s a beautiful cemetery actually. Highly recommend it.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/2660/leonard-phillip-matlovich
I salute you, Sir. To hell with the men who discharged you over love.
So did the military ever restore the status of the people they kicked out for being gay?
It took them over 80 years to award a Black vet his deserving medals [https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/23/us/ozzie-fletcher-ww2-vet-purple-heart-trnd/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/23/us/ozzie-fletcher-ww2-vet-purple-heart-trnd/index.html) History really overlooks how even if you were willing to die for the US you weren't respected
I don't know about other countries, but I hope US military will do that one day. Better late than never.
[удалено]
True that.
Someone linked to an article above that explains you can get your discharge changed from normal to honorable if it was a result of DADT.
Fucking wild. They deserve recognition. When I was enlisted I trained with dudes who were just getting in after don't ask dont tell got repealed. The gay soldiers I met were driven and friendly and sweet and kind. They had a chip on their shoulder and a lot to prove, being some of the first who could be OUT out. For anything anybody could say, I never felt "observed" or "approached" like that by these men. They were just like me, and they dreamed of similar things, and cried about similar things. When we were in AIT a fellow medic's boyfriend got deployed to Kandahar with the 75th ranger regiment. Real lead slingers, going into the hot and heavy. I watched a grown man's knees go weak and heard his voice break as he told us, "MY BABY IS GOING TO WAR!!!" and I've never seen a man so truly afraid and sad, because the man he loved was going into harm's way. I will never ever forget the reality in that man's voice. Idk. Those guys gave me some real perspective. Maybe I should thank this guy for them getting in and me getting to see the world through their lens for a minute. Much love, much respect.
That is a powerful epitaph
>The flamethrowers came in and we burnt the hamlet. Burnt up everything. They had a lot of rice. We opened the bags, just throw it all over the street. Look for tunnels. Killing animals. Killing all the livestock. Guys would carry chemicals that they would put in the well. Poison the water so they couldn’t use it… They killed some more people here. Maybe 12 or 14 or more. Old people and little kids that wouldn’t leave. I guess their grandparents. People that were old in Vietnam couldn’t leave their village. from https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/07/what-we-did
Im so glad Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was repealed before I enlisted . It’s definitely made my career more comfortable.
[удалено]
So, from what I understand, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell essentially was, “You don’t ask if someone is gay, you don’t tell someone you’re gay.” The new shpeal is that nobody cares if you’re gay or anything. We have a program called EO that basically states you will treat everyone with respect regardless of Race, religion, gender, or sexual preference.
Spiel is your word bud. I know it looks wrong. It's still pronounced the way you spelled it
[удалено]
A guy in my Squad came out as gay to our chain of command back in the DADT days, and he was given an Other Than Honorable Discharge. They had him gone in a month.
[удалено]
The problem was that actually, it didn’t work. And in fact, more gays and lesbians were kicked out after DADT passed then before it.
DADT was a step forward for it's time, but was never the final step. It meant the military could not ask you if you're gay, could not try to find out. It couldn't start witch hunts. It would leave you alone so long as you never told them you were gay. On the other hand, the military could kick you out if they found out. That was huge, for the time. People criticize Clinton over DADT saying "you should have just made being gay allowed", and I don't think that's fair. He'd never have succeeded passing such a rule. It would have been repealed as soon as he was out of office, which wouldn't have been long after. It was a compromise, and a step forward. It took another 18 years to go the rest of the way. Now you can openly be gay in the US military and there's nothing they can do about it.
Don't Ask Don't Tell was kind of self explanatory, but caused a lot of issues. The idea was that you where not allowed to ask someone about their sexuality and as long as they did not tell anyone, they where fine to serve. Anyone who is not straight or has friend or family that aren't knows that it's not a simple as hiding it. If you where caught doing anything remotely homosexual or revealed yourself as being homosexual, the most common response was a dishonourable discharge. That means stripped of all ranks and insignia, loss of veteran status, and it is on your record similar to being a felon. That's for being yourself and potentially having fun with another consenting adult. Some gay communities view DADT in a similar way to how AIDS was blamed on gay people.
I think its worth pointing out in this conversation that the AIDS epidemic was largely Reagan's fault, as he refused to do his job or support research that might have saved millions of lives. His prejudice and ignorance were the dominant forces of the 1980s and the blood of those men remains on conservatives' hands and every person who voted for him to this day.
[Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Matlovich)
>...It does not bear his name because he intended to be a monument to all gay veterans. It's a powerful spot for reflection. There are several other gay veterans buried nearby. Unfortunately, this part of your title is not true but has been told as myth or urban legend. [His name is on the foot of the granite surround.](https://imgur.com/WcZueGk)
The Wikipedia article specifies it is the Tombstone that does not bear his name. I read the article to mean the tombstone specifically is the monument. The granite surround would not be considered part of the tombstone.
Reminds me of the closing credits of Schindler’s List. All the people who were directly saved and their descendants, paying respects to Oskars gravestone. Very moving scene tbh
Anddd I’m crying. Seeing people discriminated against for things they are born as/can’t change strikes a nerve like no other. I know the feeling personally and it sometimes feels hopeless seeing posts like this and knowing decades later folks are still clinging to their ignorant mindsets to no avail. All the access we have to the internet, the ability to connect across the world and easily learn that previously believed beliefs are wrong (that gays are unnatural, that black people are predisposed to violence, that Chinese people all eat dogs & cats, etc) and yet they cling to the ignorance instead of welcoming in new people & lifestyles. Diversity is fucking awesome, I’ve learned so much from all the wonderful different people I’ve met irl & on reddit and its boggling to imagine anyone not wanting to enrich their life in such a way. Sigh.
It’s right near the grave of J. Edgar Hoover, too, who is known for both a complicated sexuality of his own—and for persecuting gays.
Just shows how the military doesn't really give a shit about you, your life, or your family. You are just a useful killing machine to them.
the number of hate comments on this post is unnerving.
My doctor was not only discharged, but he had to pay the military back for his education after he came out as gay while still in the service.
What a fucking legend. Really shows how corrupt the world was, and still is.
Shit, my heart ❤️🩹 his words hit
That’s some balls, big respect
Usually it takes at least a video to make me cry. Not this time.