or a mass movement, or a political party, and so must be without mighty legions of the dissatisfied, the guilt-ridden, the hungry, the oppressed. The Society must seek not the over-burdened (they might be helped eventually), but it must call to it the sane, the creative, the mature those who have reached enough inner stability and maturity so that they can now take upon themselves the conscience and responsibility for their weaker fellows. No faith is to be found there, no dogma, no list of commandments on what the faithful should believe or discredit. The Society is nothing more and nothing less than a clearing hewn out of the forest. For the first time, the open light of the high sun can reach the dank, dark forest ground. There is at last an arena in the open where the conflicting arguments can be fought out. (And let the best man win!) What's More, I Like to Swish

The Society offers the prospective member the glorious opportunity to have one's cherished prejudices shaken by the roots. Offering the chance to be disturbed, angered, and distressed, it offers on the other hand, through the medium of exchanging and sharing experiences, the chance to learn, to develop, to become a bigger person, because now one can embrace a larger humanity. No mean achievement, that, in a day when we are told more what we should hate than what we should love! I call to mind again all the talk in the September issue about our brothers who like to swish. Yes, they had stood at one time as a threat in my sub-conscious, but after a few meetings, I marveled to see develop my understanding and sympathy for their unique problem. I even started swishing more myself and found it to be rather fun. It's your trademark, part of our tribal lore. It answers an inner need, the vague anxiety all of us feel at sometime or another. (Sorry, but the editors must challenge this. Take it from us, Buster, it ain't so.)

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What I'm talking about here is nothing more than old-fashioned fellowship, along with its companion virtues of trust and tolerance. This kind of fellowship which the Society is trying to build is something unique with homosexuals. It cuts across every previous grouping in gay life: the esoteric cliques who lock themselves up into musty corners, the gay bars with their transient clientele and their preoccupation with mating dances like dodo-birds, the haphazard group of the gay party, where, as Auden says so prettily, "Someone vomits; someone cries." It is a new kind of fellowship where we are no longer "sisters", competition for each other, or "tricks".

Suddenly Uncommon Sense

Through our Mattachine meetings, we have found that we are not so different after all, that what we have suffered has much in common with what most of our countrymen have suffered. We have come to see that ultimately, our problem is not the superficiality of gay life, say, but the shallowness of our entire society. If we fight promiscuity in our own ranks, we fight the neuroses which breed this sort of thing within all men, regardless of their sexual definition. We are not working for our sexual freedom as such, nor are we working just for bigger, better, happier homosexuals. We, along with many others (let's not forget the many others!) are working for a bigger, better, happier, more comprehensive society. No pressure group, no newer religious sect, stimulating newer resentments, shifting newer areas of conflict, will achieve this goal.

Yes, we are members of a minority, but rather let us work for the day when all men will stop thinking in the cramped categories of minorities when one can be defined as a human being first and foremost. Who gives a damn then for money or power or pressure groups or lobbyists when your nights are still haunted by the phantoms of ignorance and

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