THE IMPORTANCE

OF

BEING DIFFERENT

"When in Rome, do as you damn

please." John Arnold.

Homosexuals have some problems heterosexuals don't have. Agreed?

That's as far as we go. Once try to list or analyze the problems, or suggest remedies, and agreement vanishes. The Mattachine Society, nee Foundation, and ONE magazine hope to tackle said problems, but the means remain in dispute. And there is no little disagreement on the ends.

Are homosexuals in any important way different from other people? If so, ought that difference be cultivated, or hidden under a bushel, or extirpated altogether?

For myself, I must say with the French legislator, who had something quite different on his mind, "Vive la différence!"

While the magazine has been relatively clear in its policy, the Mattachine Society has become almost schizoid on the question of whether we're different. whether to admit it and what to do about it.

What can a Society accomplish if half of it feels its object is to convince the world we're just like everyone else and the other half feels homosexuals are variants in the full sense of the term and have every right to be? What can that Society do but tie itself in knots of protective coloration? What can it it do but publish statements one day contradicting those it published the day before, and seldom even knowing a contradiction is involved?

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Are homosexuals different?

That is, does the one difference which we all know about, make any other difference in their attitudes, habits, etc.? Is it possible to make any generalizations about homosexuals except that they are drawn to their own sex? Recalling that generalizations need only apply directly to most members of a group, I think several valid ones could be made, the sum and substance of which would be that homosexuals are different in more ways than they often know. But I am concerned with one particular point.

Homosexuals are natural rebels.

In our society, only freak conditions or cowardice or total ignorance of his own nature would permit a homosexual any alternative. A rare homosexual is protected by a thoroughly sympathetic family, which performs for him the function that the family performs for members of most other minority groups, that of providing, early in life when it counts, the spirit of group solidarity. Unfortunately for the rest of us, that "mystic bond " of wishful thinking ". . that makes all men one," is less cohesive than the family bond, which for us, is likely to be the first thing shattered.

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Leaving ignorance aside, for overt homosexuals, their chief problem is whether to do as society demands or whether to follow their own inclinations. For most, this is a moral crisis. The homosexuals find themselves impelled by wild and mysterious desires to cross the

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