For gay upl hopg for a ary burial, the fight for love don't end wh ath | CNN

Contents:

• LGBT VETERANS BOOTED OUT OF ARMY FOR BEG GAY W RIGHT TO LAY WREATH AT CENOTAPH
• LOVE AND ATH: THE LEGACY OF CONGRSNAL CEMETERY’S ‘GAY CORNER’
• JEFEY EPSTE CELEBRAT GAY PRI OM THE GRAVE
• FOR GAY UPL HOPG FOR A ARY BURIAL, THE FIGHT FOR LOVE DON’T END WH ATH
• ANTI-GAY GROUP PROTTS AT NATNAL CEMETERY
• ISRAELI ARY ACCED OF STAGG GAY PRI PHOTO

LGBT VETERANS BOOTED OUT OF ARMY FOR BEG GAY W RIGHT TO LAY WREATH AT CENOTAPH

Up to 20, 000 servicemen and women were dismissed om the armed forc for beg gay and some had their medals stripped - now LGBT support group Fightg Wh Pri has won the right to jo the march-pastLGBT support group Fightg Wh Pri has at last won the right to jo the marchForc veterans jailed or booted out for beg gay will lay an official wreath at the Cenotaph for the first time on Remembrance Sunday. Elae will be joed the ont rank of the LGBT ntgent by former Navy medic Chris Fergon, 60, and ex-naval officer Dunn Ltig Prean, 62, who add: “There’s a real sense of pri that there will be people who are openly gay marchg. It is right gay people are reprented – but this is about all those who gave their liv for their untry.

Although homosexualy was legalised Bra 1967 remaed a crimal offence the ary until 2000.

Up to 20, 000 gay servicemen and women were dismissed om the armed forc, while others were jailed.

LOVE AND ATH: THE LEGACY OF CONGRSNAL CEMETERY’S ‘GAY CORNER’

” But Sharon, of Donster, revealed she was gay after bullyg by ary vtigators and male soldiers. She said: “I didn’t know I was gay when I joed up. Spicn began to fall on me bee I had gay iends, then all spiralled.

But when the two-month nflict end the Special Invtigatns Branch arrted him after fdg out he was gay. Ex-naval officer Dunn Ltig-Prean said was right gay people were reprented. Along wh three other gay ex-Forc personnel, Dunn Ltig-Prean took the MoD to the European Court of Human Rights 1999 – leadg to the gay ban beg lifted.

JEFEY EPSTE CELEBRAT GAY PRI OM THE GRAVE

Dunn was on stroyer HMS Newstle 1994 – and set to be a ary assistant to then PM John Major - when his world me crashg down after he reported a bid to blackmail him over his homosexualy.

” Dunn later beme chair of Rank Outsirs, mpaigng agast the gays ban. Bra uld follow leads by the US, Canada and Germany who have all set up pensatn schem for gay troops hound out.

FOR GAY UPL HOPG FOR A ARY BURIAL, THE FIGHT FOR LOVE DON’T END WH ATH

LGBT prsure group Stonewall led the charge to get the forc gay ban lifted 1998 and that rulted the landmark cisn by the European Court of Human Rights. Now all three servic actively rec gay men and lbians and they send recg teams out to pri events.

In a quiet neighborhood of Southeast Washgton, Leonard Matlovich has been a persistent advote for gay rights sce the 1980s.

ANTI-GAY GROUP PROTTS AT NATNAL CEMETERY

Instead, he — or rather his tombstone — n be found Congrsnal Cemetery, which claims to be the world’s only graveyard wh an LGBTQ, why is Matlovich buried here — a bulic, 35-acre stretch of land near the Anastia River and RFK Stadium — and why did “Gay Corner, ” as some refer to , velop unr the cherry tre near his 6-by-8-foot grane grave marker? Part of the answer is a 10-send walk away: the fenced- grave of the untry’s most notor homophobe, J. “It was kd of a middle fger to Hoover, ” says Pl Williams, the cemetery’s much of the mid-20th century, Hoover’s FBI bugged, harassed and attacked gays wh the same vrlic vilence that the agency ed to go after civil rights lears, antiwar activists, alleged munists and others emed “viant” threats to the natn.

Hoover himself was, of urse, believed to be gay — and Tolson was thought (though never proved) to have been his romantic partner — but don’t expect to hear about that if you vis the cemetery. A Public Vlt was ed to hold the bodi of Prints John Qucy Adams, William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor, among others, until they were buried elsewhere the story behd Matlovich’s after-ath prott has s roots the mid-1970s, when he met the early gay rights activist Frankl Kameny — who 1957 had been fired om the Army Map Service for beg gay.

A 1974 Air Force Tim story reported that Kameny wanted to challenge the legaly of the ary’s ban on openly gay men. He was lookg for “someone wh a flawls rerd who the ary don’t already know is gay, and who is ready to fight as a tt se, ” rells Michael Bedwell, a iend of Matlovich’s and adviser to a project on gay history.

ISRAELI ARY ACCED OF STAGG GAY PRI PHOTO

That fall, Matlovich moved to G Street SE, across om the then-ndown cemetery, and he disvered that Walt Whman’s lover, Peter Doyle, was buried 1984, two years before Matlovich was diagnosed wh AIDS, he and Bedwell vised Père Lachaise Cemetery Paris, where Osr Wil’s grave is a popular gay statn. “This brought home the ia that gays need hero to intify wh, ” Bedwell says. For Matlovich, Congrsnal Cemetery had “gay ronance bee of Doyle”; he bought two plots near Hoover as a last lgh of sorts, explas Bedwell.

” Above those words are two pk triangl, an upward-potg one symbolizg gay rights and an upsi-down one that gay prisoners were forced to wear Nazi ncentratn the left of his grave is a most memorial to Kameny that reads “Gay is Good, ” a then-heretil slogan that the activist ed 1968.