is now being conducted by the State of California Dept. of Mental Hygiene at U.C.L.A. Although this was undoubtedly a part of Dr. Bowman's original plan, the study now in progress concerns primarily "antisocial sex behavior" involving acts of violence and attacks on minors. Homosexuality per se is not an essential part of this problem and therefore, does not form a specific part of the investigation.

I have discussed your organization with those directly concerned with the above program, and you will I am sure, be interested to learn, as I was, that the law-abiding, socially useful homosexual is rapidly becoming of little legal interest, and prosecutoin of this large group is being discouraged throughout the state. For the first time, a distinction is being made, and attention is being directed only to those who, by force, violate the freedom of others for sexual reasons, and the well-adjusted homosexual is considered as separate from this group as the usual heterosexual. If nothing more comes of the current state research program, I am sure that you will agree that this is real progress. Those to whom I talked regarding your society felt that before long, the Committee to Outlaw Entrapment would find itself fighting a straw man, since the legal emphasis is decidedly shifting in the above-mentioned direction.

However, even if the possibility of entanglements with the law should in this way be forever removed from the life of the homosexual, there remains, as you point out, the tremendous prejudice of the surrounding heterosexual world against something they cannot understand. This prejudice is based on lack of facts regarding homosexuality, and the unfortunate part of it is that the science of medicine does not have any substantial body of information to offer in explanation of this constantly recurring natural phenomenon. One of the reasons has been the failure on the part of homosexuals themselves to recognize this lack and to do something positive about it in an organized way. If they do not produce the necessary data, it is unlikely that anyone else will.

It seems to me that your society is in a unique position to make worthwhile basic contributions to human knowledge concerning homosexuality. With such a large cooperating group, research projects could be undertaken, and the data so obtained be reported in the scientific literature to become a permanent addition to medical and then to general information. It does not seem to me that the homosexual can successfully demand that the world accept him, even by the subtle maneuver of demonstrating his conformity in all other phases of life as long as the present ignorance exists, and as long as the homosexual himself doesn't actually know whether he is "normal" or "abnormal".

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