like something of a Judas, and I'm always afraid that if I deny John often enough I might begin to deny him to myself."

Well, these are the problems, or at least the ones I've thought about so far. I wish I knew how to solve them but I don't. We're always reading in "learned" exposés of gay life that homosexuals have "an extensive language all their own." What a misstatement! The fact is that we have no language at all. It may be true that we have a vocabulary of "camp" words, an "argot" of a kind, but even these nowadays, it would appear, are used as glibly by "sophisticated" heterosexuals as by homosexuals themselves. But all the words in the so-called "gay" vocabulary have basic and original meanings which have no or little honest application to any of us or to the lives we lead. We just do not have one single word which expresses any of the things which are most important to all of us. Perhaps I should concede that there is one, though not everyone agrees that it is important or even necessary, and that is the word "homophile," a coined word of fairly recent mintage, but which is rapidly gaining acceptance among thinking homosexuals for the reason that it emphasizes the emotional rather than the purely sexual attraction between two individuals of the same sex. This is only the beginning, however. "Homophile" is a learned word, a literary word and it's not very likely that we're going to start saying "my homophile friend" because it just doesn't help very much. What we need now are words to live by, words which will say with dignity and honesty what we want them to say, words which will permit us to live without guilt, words which will serve our purpose instead of distorting us into the miserable caricatures of men and women we too often are.

GEORGE WELCH

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