TO BE ACCUSED

IS TO BE GUILTY:

2. The Ever-Present Past

I am particularly interested in the idea behind your magazine and the purpose of the Mattachine Foundation. My own experience offers ample evidence of the necessity of eliminating discrimination against the homosexual minority.

A couple of years ago, I was doing relief work in Germany. My work was with a private Relief Organization which functioned, as all such agencies must in occupied territory with the approval of the State Department. A year of my twenty month term of service lay behind me. I was full of pride which springs from the knowledge of a job well done, and I felt secure in the good relationship I had established with my fellow workers. All this was particularly gratifying, since for a period of years, my life had been full of turmoil and confusion known by all maladjusted homosexuals who have not recognized their plight.

I knew no others like myself, and had spent years involving others in emotional attachments which were essentially foreign to their nature. This frustrating and guilt ridden course led finally to a nervous collapse which was followed by a period of therapy as an out-patient of a psychiatric clinic.

Now, some five years later, life had begun to look like a happier proposition. I found myself increasingly attract-

ed to men and was becoming confident that the future would find me able to establish a normal emotional attachment with a man which would eventully lead to marriage.

I shall never forget the pride I felt, that day in Germany when I was told I had been chosen to represent our Relief Unit at a conference in another city some 500 miles away. I was met at the station, after an overnight journey from Frankfurt by one of our workers. She escorted me to headquarters where I was to meet with our two top supervisors. As I sat down with them in the conference room I suddenly became aware of an uneasiness in their manner and a tension in the atmosphere. I felt with cold dread the discussion would not be concerned with German Refugees, but rather, in some unpleasant fashion, with me. My first thought was that someone in my family had died and this manner of breaking the news had been chosen to soften the blow. Little did I know, the numbing shock, the sickening embarrassment and the bitter hurt I was to endure instead.

I was told that my record from the Psychiatric Clinic had been brought to the attention of the State Department. Since my problems had been of a homosexual nature, the State Department demanded my immediate expulsion from Germany. Reservation had been made for me on the plane that very night for the United States. My Chief Supervisors regretted that there was nothing further that they could do.

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