them.

The homosexual is lonely and constantly searching for someone, and, unlike heterosexuals who never visit bars or stroll through public parks in search of a bed partner, a love object, or plain companionship, he spends every waking moment in bars, parks, latrines, bus stations seeking others like himself. He possesses an uncanny sixth sense which enables him to distinguish instantly others like himself yet he is constantly making passes at innocent males and being either soundly trounced or arrested for his lack of perspicacity.

But enough of this. Anyone can round out the picture for himself. The insidious part of this lovely picture is that it is all true! Homosexuals en masse are all of these things. So are all men! Yes, it is true-in the same way that the following is true: man has murdered, therefore men are murderers; man has stolen, therefore men are thieves; men have failed to keep their word, therefore men are untrustworthy; men have been unfaithful to their wives, therefore men are adulterers; men have had sexual relations with other men, therefore man is homosexual, men are homosexual. mankind is homosexual. But, alas, man never creates a stereotype in which he himself might be included.

Having said that the stereotype is "true," I hasten to add that it is, at least as I have written it, completely false for this reason-there is not one detail, not one characteristic in all this which makes a man a homosexual, nor need one single homosexual be any of these things. There is only one thing which makes a man a homosexual and there is only one thing which all homosexuals have in common and which distinguishes them from their equally imperfect heterosexual brothers and that is. of course, that they have a sexual preference for other males. Is this so different really from the fact that some

one

men prefer blondes?

But, as I said above, the stereotype serves as an excuse for not thinking and since the stereotype is indeed with us it does a great deal of damage. It is the stereotype which is in the mind of our legislators when they pass our laws, in the minds of our ministers when they denounce us from the pulpit, in the minds of our police officials when they decide to stamp out vice, and in the minds of the public when they are told that homosexuals are at large within their city. As I read The Sixth Man I could not help remarking how many times, over and over, Mr. Stearns introduced his subjects by saying: "Mr. A, who did not look at all like a homosexual, met me-." What Mr. Stearns was saying, or, if he were being honest, should have said, was: "Mr. A did not conform to my preconceived ideas of what a homosexual should look like." One might think that by the end of his researches or after writing this enough times he might have realized this himself but instead, as Mr. Marques, in his review, so aptly pointed out, he served only to underline and reinforce existing misinformation.

There is no doubt that our "stereotype" hurts; thousands of us suffer from its injustices every day. There is no doubt that many of us pay-not for what we actually are-but for what our fellows think we are.

There is, however, as there usually is, another side and a brighter side of the coin, and man or society, as they often are, are hoist on their own petard. For is it not this very stereotype, unfair, unjust, and inaccurate as it is, which makes it so easy for those millions of us who are not bold enough or free enough to declare ourselves for what we are, to continue to live and work side by side, undetected, and unsuspected by our fellow men, some of them despicable in themselves, who boast that "they can pick out a queer a mile off?"

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