priate and ambiguous to use the word "marriage" in connection with two homosexuals who have decided to live together in what they may hope and intend will be a permanent relationship, it is actually dangerous and is, in my opinion, all too often the prime cause of that relationship's early dissolution. Our acceptance of the fallacious absolutism of the male-female principle, and our conditioned acceptance of the meaning of the word "marriage" seduce us into a type of behavior which may lead us in direction directly opposed to that we intended to follow. Furthermore, they establish goals and objectives which are unattainable and therefore doomed to failure at the outset.

In addition to the obvious advantages of forming a permanent and intimate partnership with another person, many homosexuals consciously or unconsciously feel that by doing so, and only by doing so, can they prove to themselves, and demonstrate to their friends, their families, and society that their feelings are just as clean, natural and free from any reason for guilt as those enjoyed by heterosexuals. Thus, since they know no other word, they "marry" and proceed perhaps unconsciously, to shape their arrangement as closely as possible to the pattern of their understanding of the word they use to label their relationship.

But, as I have already said, "mariage" means male and female, husband and wife, father and mother, masculinity and femininity, breadwinner and bread-maker, dominant and recessive. We were all born and, to a greater or lesser degree, reared in households in which most, if not all, of these factors prevailed. Consequently, we cannot conceive of a “real marriage" in which these factors do not exist and so, consciously or unconsciously, the homosexual couple strives to create a husband and wife,

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a male female relationship. Some homosexual couples deliberately and whole-heartedly go all out to emulate in every respect a typical heterosexual menage. It is ironic in this day and age when the traditional relationships between husband and wife and their respective prerogatives and obligations are becoming increasingly tenuous that homosexuals should go to the lengths they sometimes do to create a situation theoretically based upon a sexual differentiation which simply does not exist. Even when the principals themselves are able, or at least try, to ignore the patterns which their use of a word imposes upon them they may find that their friends will not allow them to do so. As soon as it becomes known that Jack and Jim or Jane and Joan have

taken an apartment together their friends cannot accept their relationship as the real thing until they have determined who wears the pants and who the skirts.

In the beginning it may sound like fun and may indeed appear to add to the solemnity of the affair. Unfortunately, and all too often, the actors in this little household drama soon find they have forced themselves or have been forced into roles which are not compatible with their natures and which they are unable to play for a long run. Jim may find that whatever his role in bed he does not really like playing wife to Jack just because he is the better housekeeper of the two. Perhaps secretly he believes himself to be more masculine and he begins to resent being referred to as Jack's wife. On the other hand, Jack, while he may be pleased at the inferred compliment to his own masculinity, may one day discover that he does not find Jim nearly so attractive in the costume of the "little woman" as he had found him when he was wearing pants just like his own. Both may soon begin to

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