very society within the sphere of western culture includes a number of men and women who at least nowadays-call themselves homophiles, whereas their fellow-citizens describe them by the fairly neutral, but not quite colorless name, homosexuals, or other terms more affectively charged with feelings of derision, aversion, loathing, disgust or even hate.

One of the most remarkable aspects of this phenomenon lies in the fact that those showing the homophile such striking aversion, often tacitly, and sometimes explicitly, presuppose that those homophiles all know each other-or at least recognize each other at first glance-and that they are linked with each other in some mysterious way which implies a threat to their fellow-members of society. Experience teaches us that with certain political groups, who see a possibility of exploiting the fear thus described for the attainment of their aims, the possibility of fanning this smoldering fear into a violent flame of hatred against "the homosexual" is a very real one.

No better safeguard exists against fear, prejudice, hatred, and all that may result from them, than an answer to the dispassionate question, how may we describe the homophile members of society from a sociological point of view?

They certainly form no mass. One may speak of masses only when (accidentally or incidentally) a comparatively large number of persons has flocked together without any mutual bond, except that they are, for a short time, enthralled by the same event, and concentrate their attention on it.

Should we then speak rather of a community of homophiles within the larger community of which they form a part? A community is characterized by the fact that it rests upon common, collective cultural possessions, in many ways typical precisely of the community in question, and formed in the course of time (sometimes during many centuries) into what we may call its typical "way of life". In spite of the fact that the world has known homophiles for many centuries, it would be hardly possible to make us believe that a communal cultural treasure, characteristic of them, had been created. A specifically homophile culture does not exist.

If a community from its cultural possessions, develops organizational forms of its own, it then takes the character of a society, the citizens of which know they have to observe rules, laid down and maintained by authorities, with sanctions, in case of non-observance. One might be tempted to believe in the existence of a mysterious homophile "society", were it not that, even on rapid investigation, all these fairy tales prove to have sprung from the florid imaginations of the fearful...

Therefore, our only conclusion can be that the homophiles are a group, the members of which feel themselves strongly and permanently linked together by the circumstance of being predominantly attracted to persons of their own sex. And it is this very permanency which distinguishes the group from the mass.

Now it appears to me that this consciousness of belonging together is so important for the homophiles, and is experienced by themselves as a fact of such importance, that it fully justifies our maintaining the existence of a group of homophiles. This can be completely endorsed by anyone who has once witnessed how deeply young people are moved by the realization that, with their deviation of personality structure, they do not stand alone in a hostile world. This is not meant to be anything more than a statement of a sociological fact.