July 2, 1975: gay people and the military. (From the Archives of The Advocate).

Although the "don't ask, don't tell" quandary makes gays in the military seem like a new issue, the fight for lesbian and gay soldiers to serve openly reaches back more than a quarter century, to Air Force sergeant Leonard Matlovich. In The Advocate's first in-depth report on a single subject, the July 2, 1975, "Gay People and the Military" issue featured an interview with Matlovich.

A decorated officer with an outstanding record, Matlovich was an ideal person to challenge the ban. After reading a 1974 article in the Air Force Times about gay service people, he decided to come out to his supervisor. "For two weeks before I sent the letter," Matlovich recalled, "I never sweated so much in my life. But now that I've done it, I'd do it again and again." Predictably, a battle over his discharge ensued; eventually a court ruled that Matlovich was illegally discharged, but he opted to settle out of court rather then face a Supreme Court appeal to be reinstated.

The special report also included two lesbians in the Women's Army Corps who were fighting their discharge with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union; and a first-person account from an Advocate editor who came out to her superiors in the Coast Guard while working on this issue of the magazine: "They will never believe that there are hundreds of thousands of us unless we tell them."