after a heterosexual unit. It might be possible and even very necessary for three individuals, or four, to share a relationship in order to give themselves and each other the love and companionship, the intellectual aid, and the help they all need to meet the problems of life.

The irrationality of the homosexual does not derive from the fact that there are two, nor from the fact that they are seeking love, nor fidelity. It derives from something that goes beyond any of these things. It derives from the fact that the homosexual is so often engaged in mechanically, irrationally, and futilely copying heterosexual values, mores, and ways of life without asking himself whether these values are valid for his group in general and for himself in particular. As a result, so much of the guilt with which we are ridden is not a result of unresolved oedipal complexes-although I believe there is a great deal of that-and it's not the result of being made to feel ashamed by a hostile society and I believe there is a great deal of that-but it is a self-inflicted guilt resulting from our own failure to live up to certain aims, copied mechanically from another life, which we should never have set for ourselves in the first place.

I would like to say at this point that for many, many reasons and I don't mean merely public relations-that a homosexual movement cannot look upon the word "cure" as the dirtiest word in the English language, but this is what I find to be the case. I ask myself, what, psychologically, are the fears of these people? What are the fears at the idea of cure? Why make such a fear-ridden ghost of the whole thing?

You cannot start off with the premise that anyone who says that this particular type of drive can be changed is telling a lie, and anyone who says it can't is telling the truth, because it just makes no sense to start

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that way. I would like to ask those who begin their arguments this way what their own particular problems are that it should be so difficult for them to even face the question of whether a person may be able to undergo certain changes. Then, I would ask myself what we mean when we speak of cure and what are the arguments against it. Now there are some who say, and one hears it often, that when you speak of cure you must be speaking of illness, and that we must not think of this as an illness or a disease. I say that those homesexuals-and their number is legion-who are distinctly disturbed, who are having tremendous difficulties with themselves and with society, who are compulsively self-defeating, who are obviously neurotic, and perhaps come close to being institutional cases, should be cured of their difficulties. And if, in order to do this, it means to the therapist, or to society, curing them of their homosexual drives, I am all for it. To close the door on this approach and to say that this is an area of personality which cannot and must not be touched, is entirely self-defeating. It is completely illogical. It is thoroughly irrational, and it is not going to work.

There are those who say that you don't send the heterosexual to be cured. I say that you send the disturbed people, homosexual and heterosexual to be cured, if they can be cured (and it is a damned hard thing to do in any case), and if, in the process, the sex drives of these people have to be changed, and if they can be changed, then it is highly desirable to change them. The aim is to achieve a good mental, emotional, and societal adjustment for everyone, and I do not see anything so fearful about the idea that some people have been able and have found it desirable to make a change.

I know that within the movement the idea of making such a change

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