We need countless books showing the homosexual's honest potential, not removing him out of the frame by some deus (or dea) ex machina, before his problem can be solved. There is the whole world to write about any man's discovery of the world and himself, and his learning how to satisfy his hungers.
To fulfill its greatest potential function, this literature must, like all literature, express an ethic, must indeed create one, step by step great homosexual ethos related to the ideals of the whole community.
By his very nature the homosexual rejects the prevailing concept of goodness in masculine character. But if he goes on to reject many other accepted values, what common ground can he ever find with the majority? Only in a literature about the homosexual which embodies and expresses an ethic recognized by millions shall we see the beginning of what has been called a "homosexual culture." A culture emerges when a group comes to hold some basic ideals in common, expressing this concensus in patterns of thought and conduct related to the aspirations of all humanity.
However, there is as yet little agreement among homosexuals regarding anything beyond the fact that they would like some sort of "acceptance" by society.
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Yet no worthy society would ever "accept" the sickly irresponsibles who live the schizoid life of promiscuity demanding the "right" to solicit it in any market place, seeking constant conquests over near strangwhose sex is tied to the aggressive impulse, not to the love impulse. Nor is the effeminately-mannered male likely to be ever more than a pathetic or comic character in any society or literature. Effeminacy in a male reveals little of the nature of his sex drive but testifies eloquently to the inadequacy of his personality. Homosexuality need no more be accompanied by effeminateness in our society than it was in ancient Greece. Our literature needs to make this distinction clear.
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The ultimate potential social contributions of homosexuality may be explored in millions of words.
We can only hope that gifted writers with important things to say will come forward to fill the vacuum. We can only hope that some will describe heroes other men might emulate instead of poor bastards whose story is a pure funeral march.
Each of us seeks patterns to copy – whether in Greek myth, SatEvPost romance, newspaper sports page, or Bible, movie or comic strip. (Recommend reading: "The Hero of a Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell an extraordinary psychological study: Bollingen series, Pantheon Books.)
When the homosexual appears widely in literature, not as a doomed weakling, but as a man whose supposed handicap becomes the very foundation of his achievement, the same literature that sets useful patterns for the homosexual will be read more widely, affecting society as well, creating human friendliness toward the whole man where none existed before.
But can homosexuality become "the whole foundation" of any man's achievement?
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