Regarding Mr. Barnes' strange and unqualified statement about the lesbian being relieved and glad not to have to attempt two readjustments to her self-hood, 1st, to some male; 2nd, to her children and that she finds it possible to heighten her womanliness through love and sexual union with another woman, I have a number of reactions. One is that Mr. Barnes seems to know nothing of the true nature of love, if in his years of loving he has found no need for re-adjustments in his self-hood because of it. Two-regarding sexual attraction-Mr. Barnes may live in some realm of human experience I have never known, but if I have never known it I'm certainly in the majority for once in my life. I have never seen a homosexual union wherein there was masculine attraction for masculine traits or feminine attraction for feminine traits. Where 'like' may attract 'like' in the thought realm, opposites still attract opposites in the sexual realm. Masculinity seeks its feminine counterpart and vice-versa in the heterosexuals and homosexuals alike. My womanliness could never be heightened by the femininity in another woman, but only by her masculinity. Conversely, my masculinity is heightened by the womanliness of the woman I love, not by her masculinity. My love and I appear to the gay world to be both predominately masculine. Many who perpetuate the stereotype of heterosexual marriage in their homosexual marriage, frequently to the death of part of themselves, cannot understand us as they know opposites attract. We know this too... but we are not deceived by appearances. I have known of similar cases in the homosexual male marriage. Both partners looked exceedingly masculine to an outsider. The lovers knew themselves to be a fantastic mixture of masculinity and femininity and had no intention of allowing the richness of their potential to be warped by either heterosexual or homosexual stereotypes.

"Flaming queens" or "stomping dikes" alike are interesting. While I would not assign them to the pits of Hell, I would not exactly knight them for nobility either. I have never known any who weren't walking time-bombs of hatred. They certainly don't feel any responsibility to anybody or anything . . . except their own warped vision of themselves. Far from being some crowning achievement as Mr. Barnes sees it, I would consider this condition a living prison of mind for one to flee as fast as one found understanding to do so.

I am glad I am homosexual, probably as glad as Mr. Barnes, but not because I think that makes me superior to anybody. I'm glad, because that's the best way of life for me. I'm glad I found out fairly young instead of spending my life repressing my homosexuality as many unfortunate people feel they must. Outside of that, I think it's more apropos for anybody to say, "I'm glad I'm alive," or "I'm glad I'm me."

Mr. A. of New York writes: Although I've never gone around shouting that I am glad I am homosexual, I feel much the same as Hollister Barnes does. And if it became possible for me to change to a heterosexual I wouldn't do it.

In a way I am proud too. Because it is almost as if I have a secret. Not just a secret within myself, but a secret that I share with many others. Amongst us it becomes a bigger and better secret. It isn't the fact that I am gay and that nobody knows it because I am not one of those

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