That park, the hot night, and the boy in handcuffs faded from my memory

long ago, only to come vividly to mind once more when I picked up a recent copy of ONE. In it was Lyn Pedersen's appalling news story of the groups who are exploiting homosexuals for their own selfish ends in an American city. I saw the one boy in jail grow into a hundred, a thousand.

Perhaps some readers of the same article will write to ask why ONE goes out of its way to publicize such happenings. "Prejudice will fade away by itself if we don't make things worse by fighting it," I hear them say. Or, more directly, "For God's sake, don't rock the boat." I, for one, do not believe that attacks stop simply if those attacked remain quiet and agreeable. Most homosexuals have little enough self-pride without following such a course. Perhaps there is room for the Uncle Tom attitude in part of the homosexual population, but what we surely need are movers and doers. What about the frightened kid on the wrong end of a pair of handcuffs? Are some of us ever going to have the courage to come across the road to give him a hand?

We homosexuals are a small minority, bound together whether we like it or not by the attitudes of the Outside, attitudes we all too often reflect in our own, unconscious self-evaluation. We are different from most minorities because we have none of the supports and comforts by which other groups make their lives easier. As yet, for example, we have no tradition in which to take pride, we have no common voice, we invoke no bonds which draw us together, we have no group of sympathetic outsiders willing to go to bat for us, we have no heroes of our own. Many of us fail to understand our own existence, or to find any motivation for our lives.

ONE is the frail but brave beginning of a homosexual voice. Through it we

may develop knowledge, bonds of understanding, sympathetic interest, perhaps even the beginnings of a homosexual tradition in which we may take pride. The almost pathetic eagerness with which some readers pledge support to ÔNE is an inarticulate expression of the promise they see.

For those of us who are homosexuals ourselves, the temptation to go by on the other side, so far as the boy in the park is corncerned, is very great. We are satisfied to have him dealt with in such a way as will reflect on us as little as possible. We say angrily, and a little fearfully, "Anyone who makes such a spectacle of himself deserves just what he gets!" Perhaps it is true, for the life he has come to lead is ugly and sordid, without objective or hope. But surely we can see that no one would embark on such a career, exposed to the jeers and contempt of most people, a prey to all the injury which those from whom he seeks satisfaction can inflict, unless he has reached the desperate point where he has no feeling of security and no hope of sympathy or understanding from outside his own meager resources. If this boy were an alcoholic or a drug addict there would be those to whom he could turn who had themselves won through on the same battle. Not so with homosexuals. Those who "wear the mask," as Cory phrases it, are fearful of their own exposure. Those who have had the mask ripped away are frequently so unstable themselves that they could scarcely be expected to give stability to another. There are even fewer sources of help beyond our group: the psychiatrist, the pastor, the doctor, the family and friends are frequently ignorant, and much more frequently frightened and therefore angry.

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