its imperfection. Present homosexual culitself straight. Then as it achieves freeture is there; and whether that of the dom it enters its new life with the wholefuture will be a development or a reness, the self-respect, that men must have action from it has no bearing. Without to live freely.

it, any homosexual culture to come would But we as a group do not respect ourlack even a point of beginning.

If we can face the promiscuity and the effeminacy of our group we can face this as well: that we are a true living group; one that exists because of its inner coherence, not fortuitously through pressure from outside. Let some of our civil rights champions take notice. It's of course tempting to claim rights with a claim that the lack of them is all that distinguishes us from those who enjoy them. It's to say that we're not really a minority at all but some part of the majority that strangely enough has been singled out for discrimination. So the champions admit sex, and no more. They take homosexuality literally lying down only; standing up, they refuse to be counted. This schizophrenia of theirs of course is their weakness. For one thing, as a tactic it can't work; heterosexuals of good will aren't fools. For another, it cuts them off from what's potentially their first support. The pub crawlers, the overt homosexuals whom they despise have more sense that to stop living their own life to follow leaders so-called who deny it. The real point though is that the solution itself denies half the problem.

All repressed groups faced with the first step toward emancipation face this too: that the group must free itself also from within. The pressure against it has distorted it. As it fights outwardly for freedom it must search inwardly to make

one

selves. We are we and wish we were not: we do not accept ourselves, for that matter. Mirrored in small in your magazine, we eye one another, gape and we shriek protest. I think that we had better say nothing at all to each other without first thinking; without first asking many things of ourselves, understanding ourselves so, and then speaking quietly, hesitantly as well, as we admit that we know little and are perplexed. I think that as each one of us speaks so, all of us will know more, recognizing ourselves in one another. The end is an understanding of our group. And at the end, only then, some of us will know enough to speak for us all.

Who are we? What are we to contribute to mankind? We know so little of ourselves that to define ourselves now is to exclude many of us. We had better

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