2.2.

report on Social Service

In the past two years of its existence, One, Incorporated, has received hundreds of letters, telephone calls and personal requests for advice and assistance. This is hardly surprising, for ours is the only nationally-known, publicly operating institution for the benefit of homosexuals. And the homosexual minority, according to some authorities, the largest minority in America today, has no agency, public or private, established to help solve the problems. of these people. It was inevitable that they would turn to us.

What are the problems of the homosexual minority? Many are the same ones heterosexuals have to deal with-jobs, housing, vocational guidance, medical and psychiatric assistance. But among homosexuals these problems have special aspects analogous to those of racial and religious minorities. A Negro out of work is not the same as a white man out of work. A Catholic in need of psychiatric counseling is often quite different from a Methodist in need of the same therapy. Similarly, homosexuals looking for jobs or housing have special problems which no agency even pretends to handle.

But for some problems besetting the homosexual there is no analogy among other minorities. How does one reply, for example, to the homosexual who wants to know how he can perpetuate his "marriage" with another homosexual? There are no text books on homosexual marriage to which one can go for the answer, and most "authorities", when confronted with such a question, merely reply that homosexual relations are illegal and degenerate anyway and the best solution lies in marrying a charming young girl and rearing a family. This kind of reply to a homosexual is like telling a man dying of thirst that he has drunk too much already and what he really should have is a good book with which to improve his mind.

Torn between the sharply conflicting demands of a heterosexual society (itself often schizoid) and his own, innermost needs, the homosexual often finds himself in a morally and socially untenable position where he desperately needs advice. The legal problems of giving such advice are almost overwhelming. I wish I could quote you some of the letters in our files to illustrate these points, but of course this would be impossible.

In these few minutes allotted me I have tried merely to indicate something of the breadth of the tremendous social problem-the solution of which must be attempted somewhere, somehow, and very soon. Between five and fifteen million homosexual men and women in this country will not forever remain silent, will not perpetually remain enslaved by the hypocritical morality of the dominant culture-a culture which has by no means solved its own problems.

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