way or another not just great writers but also great MEN of their timesgreat political or social leaders toward humanitarianism or political reform? Why is it that so very few of the writers today come into this category despite their literary excellence?

For the reason we will have to look to the times we live in, to this latter half of the Twentieth Century. It is not adequate to reply that all authors (and everyone else, for that matter) have lived in troublous days, times of stress. No previous generation of men has ever lived on so tiny a planet with its entire surface battered, flattened and welded into minutely defined areas of influence and control and armed to the teeth for defense or offense whichever seems most expedient. No, no one calling himself an artist could be insensitive to a world which, while provided with the means of supplying abundance to all, reels at the edge of cosmic destruction. It is quite understandable that our contemporaries-artists in particular-should be victims of the fear, the confusion, the desperate search for an answer-a way out. Hence the cults, the introspection, the moral disintegration.

Homosexual writers, being part of this frightful environment man has brought himself to, naturally turn out "literature" identical to that of the dominant culture with the superficial exception that it deals with homosexual subjects. And since few top-notch writers will risk their reputations with a homosexual subject, the field is left to the mediocre.

But there is a way out of the morass of degenerate mediocrity. Ideals of the original Mattachine, concepts eloquently set forth by Cory, and principles adopted by ONE magazine (all indirectly reinforced by Kinsey's researches) embrace an altogether new approach: Homosexuals are not necessarily neurotic and, when they are, their neuroses generally spring from their homosexuality in a heterosexual world. This approach provides an entirely new, optimistic rallying point for America's five to fifteen million homosexuals and should be a clarion call to all of them aspiring to do creative writing in the interest of their minority. As Arthur B. Krell pointed out in an earlier issue:

"The literature we need is not chiefly to serve the future; the need is now. When writers use their new freedom to show the homosexual impulse in man as like fire, neither good nor evil in itself, but applicable to good ends, and when they show such expression linking a man to humanity's noblest aspirations -then we shall be on our way out of the homosexual woods."

The homosexual writer is actually in a uniquely favorable position: By breaking away from the contemporary, morbid traditions he can write sincere, honest, realistic things which will not only be a guide and source of inspiration to other members of our minority but may actually play an important role in influencing the main stream of Western literature. If he is going to take advantage of this position he must emphasize positive qualities in the homosexual life and culture and avoid negative ones. While, for example, it is perfectly true that some homosexuals lead futile and degenerate lives, the constructive, forward-looking writer who believes in himself and what he is writing will not dwell upon these things but build his stories and poems and essays upon a belief in man in general and the worth and potential of the homosexual in particular.

But already I can see next month's mail full of condemnation and accusation: "David Freeman says homosexual writers should write, not about the way our people actually live but about the way he THINKS they OUGHT to live."

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