DISEASE OR WAY OF LIFE?

RICHARD HALL

Dr. Edmund Bergler was much nearer the truth than he realized when he subtitled his book on homosexuality, "Disease or way of life?" Of couse, the good doctor was mistaken in separating the two categories so fiercely. "You are all sick" or "You are all a jolly third sex" is pigeon-holing of as strict a sort as anything Hitler did with the Jews, some Asiatics do with Americans, the British once did with Colonials or unreconstructed Americans still do with their Negroes. Presumably Dr. Bergler, an enlightened social humanitarian, would not stoop to stereotypes where these other groups are concerned. But-and this is due not to a lack of integrity on his part, but to a lack of imagination-he has falen prey to the old fallacy about homosexuals: they're all the same.

His sub-title, however, gives us one clue to follow through the confusing welter of sentimentalizing, ostracizing and stereotyping that is typical of most of the scientific literature on the subject. And the clue is simply this: homosexuality in some cases is a disease, and in other cases is a way of life-depending entirely on the feelings a homosexual has about himself. In short, the varieties of homosexual behavior are just as great as the varieties of any other large

human stratum. True, there is a general coloration taken on by the whole group-and we are all familiar with these mannerisms, turns of speech and general tensions-but if the investigator without bias or rancor will look closely, he will see the almost infinite range of human behavior within the homosexual world.

For example, there are men and women in this world who have not let society's obiter dicta about who should sleep with whom interfere with their private conceptions of themselves. They have retained a vision of themselves which is pristine, honorable and unshakeable. By a lucky chain of circumstances, they have not admitted the doubts and fear which would rust their self-respect and lead them into the sort of behavior which only breeds more trouble. These men and women, in a word, are not neurotic. They are homosexual, and that is all. They do not use that fact to dip into frenzies of self-hatred. They see homosexuality as a single undistorted fact-an urge to sleep with a member of one's

own sex.

At the other extreme are men and women who have accepted the words society whispers about homosexuality as gospel truth. In fact, the belief with which they adorn society's

7