that humanity will progress from this point on. Human society has ceased to be a thing of accident, mercly of local frictions or amalgamations among petty groups scattered at random about the earth. Our technological advancements, and the evolution of our political thoughts and institutions have bound all peoples into one or another kind of intellectual design. Our future, therefore, will depend upon the logic and depth of our thinking, and no longer upon the chance associations or the haphazard conquests of the past. At no time has humanity held so much of its future within its own intellectual discretion.

In view of the great contributions already made to human culture by distinguished members of our own ranks, there should be no doubt that the homosexual minority can play a very creditable role in the evolution of human rights and in the fulfillment of the democratic ideal not because it is homosexual, and certainly not if it is under the delusion that sexual rights are humanity's chief or only rights, but because its individual members have been compelled, like the members of many other minorities, to visualize the full nature of human rights perhaps more clearly than those who are complacently entrenched in traditional conceptions and majority attitudes. Thus this group can, if it will, make a distinct contribution to the social discovery and revaluation of human rights on all levels, a discovery and revaluation which stands as the issue of greatest human importance during this apocalyptic era. But it can do this only if it devotes its primary attention, not to what it is against, but to what it is for. The positive, constructive, forward-looking approach is indispensable. First of all, such an approach holds before it a goal not merely a personal goal, but a high and beneficent social goal. Secondly, it concentrates upon the unifying, cohesive principles of society, rather than upon the superficial distinctions which tend to

divide society. Lastly, it will bring about for our minority a gradual erasure, both personal and collective, of the various. social definitions which place the homosexual group in its present category, definitions which have, by their very nature, aggravated our sense of dissociation from society, instead of fostering our assimilation and integration into society at large.

All persons deserving of democratic opportunity have an equal stake in democracy, and stand to gain equally by remaining loyal to the democratic ideal, and living it. For various psychic reasons, the homosexual is often in a particularly advantageous position to tap the creative resources which lie within the human consciousness. These creative resources are the origin of our cultural riches in all of their phases intellectual, esthetic, scientific. Encouraged and brought forth from within under the free skies of democratic principle, and socially accepted on their own merits regardless of the personalities involved, the cultural contributions of individuals are, so to speak, the flower and fruit of practical democracy. Quite logically, therefore, it seems that there could be

programme of greater importance for the modern homosexual than to bend every effort towards the positive, cultural achievements which can prove the social worth of every human being, irrespective of race, sex, or other material condition. Along with all selfrespecting human beings, there are a great many homosexuals who seek spiritual dignity and social usefulness. To the extent that we achieve these, we will find not only the ties which can lead us onward towards the solution of a common problem, but we will also discover deeper bonds, bonds of mutual respect and self-esteem which reach through all barriers of misunderstanding wherever these may exist bonds from which can be forged the realistic sense of brotherhood that, in the end, can unite all of humanity.