Maybe in the future we can establish a greater knowledge of why people are gay and society will come to realize that it would do better to let homosexuals be than to try to force us into marriage and child bearing, which would probably just lead to a greater increase in our numbers.

Another bit of interesting information about our group is that we range from the rather effeminate type who has always known he is gay and has never tried to change, to those of us who have fought against it for years and who have tried to get out of gay life through all means availablechurch, psychiatric care, marriage and suppression.

Among the girls in our group, some are very feminine and others are quite butch, but all have good jobs and manage to keep their families and associates out of their personal lives. This is true of the boys, too. Some of us have let our families know of our true personalities and in all cases at least a great amount of acceptance has been achieved, if not complete understanding.

Dear A.L..

Sincerely, A. L.

I wish to thank you for your very frank letter about genetics and homosexuality. This according to my way of thinking is the basic factor producing homosexuality. Your letter comes at just the right time to give information about the role of genetics in the production of homosexual individuals. From time to time in my column in ONE I have mentioned various factors which contribute to the production of a homophile.

In the last issue of ONE, for July, I. discussed the role of the Mother figure. This covers but part of the picture of the enviornmental factors at work. However, in that article I indicated that basic biological factors exist upon which enviornmental factors operate as molding influences.

The chief of these is the blending of elements inherited through the bodies of the Mother and Father. The testicles or male sex glands and the ovaries or female sex glands, in addition to functioning as endocrine glands which supply chemical regulators for the body, produce special sex cells (sperm from the Father and eggs or ova from the Mother.) These sex cells or gametes carry small bodies which stain deeply called chromosomes within which are tiny chemical packets called genes which regulate the formation and function of organs of the physical body. These chromosomes are sorted out before the body in which they reside can function sexually to produce new individuals. This sorting process is a complex process known as reduction division, and it results in the mature sex cells or gametes carrying half the number of chromosomes found in ordinary body cells. In the mature gametes, the picture is further complicated by the fact that in human males there are 47 X-chromosomes and one small chromosome which is quite different from the others called a Y-chromosome. The functions of the X and Y chromosomes have been carefully studied in the lower animals and it has been found that offspring which have all X chromosomes tend to be females, while those which carry X chromosomes and a Y chromosome tend to be males. Thus sex determination according to X and Y chromosomes would seem to be a very simple matter, but in human beings genetics is so tremendously complicated there are other factors at work which make it more difficult to determine if a given individual is male or female.

While it seems very likely that the balance of X and Y chromosomes may be a strong determiner in the production of a male or female body, there are so many other complex factors at work that we cannot say a

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