which I have read about, but now they are completely approved for their convenience and reliability by the Society in coperation with the Police Department. Incidentally, it is pleasant to realize that homosexuals are regarded by the Police as among their major allies in law enforcement and not as kinds of criminals, as I have read they were in the past.

The fourth service of the Society is to provide immediate HOTEL ACCOMMODATION, and I write these lines in my small but comfortable room in the men's tower. I am allowed to stay here one week only as the demand is heavy, but the Society has already begun to look for other accommodations.

I have saved the Society's two most important objectives for the last. They are (5) OPPORTUNITY TO MEET and (6) OPPORTUNITY TO MATE.

These have always been the major functions of the Society. I cannot imagine before the Society existed how homosexual men and women met, and everything I have read about the past seems to indicate they had grave difficulties. They didn't even have a symbol to identify themselves! Two homosexuals might know each other for months not being sure the other was also "gay." It is terrifying to think about!

You can spend whole days exploring this main building of the Society. There are the three bars, one for men, one for women, and one for both. They are appropriately furnished as replicas of the 20th Century "gay bars" with old-fashioned jukeboxes. There are the coffee shops, the dining rooms, the cabarets, the Grand Formal Banquet Hall, the Game Rooms devoted to bowling, billiards, ping-pong, chess and all other indoor sports, the Athletic Courts (where you can get into shape for a vacation at the year-round vacation resort in

one

accom-

the Ozarks). There are two fully equipped baths (men, women) in the basement, with steam rooms and dormitory or individual room modations for overnight. And there are the medical clinics and hospitals. There are also the special meeting rooms, devoted to a particular hobby or cultural interest. The stamp collectors, the camera fans, the balletomanes, and the politicians, all have their special meeting rooms, each stocked with its own reference books. Can you imagine the extent of the special libraries that serve the natural scientists, the social scientists, the historians, the literary critics, or the philosophers? The Music Library has a huge collection of records and with individual listening rooms. The Art & Architecture Library is world renowned. There are also concert halls of different sizes, and there is a art gallery for contemporary paintings.

Finally, I understand that near the top of both towers there are a few quiet and incense-filled meditation rooms for the most serious-minded group where they can meet one another and discourse at leisure on the eternal problems of life, love, and God. For though the Society is committed to no single religion or philosophy, eastern or western, it holds that each individual should have the freedom to choose from among the many traditional faiths, or to develop a personal philosophy.

This leads me to the final purpose of the Society-to provide the OPPORTUNITY TO MATE. Not all, nor even necessarily the majority of homosexuals, are interested in this. A very large number are content to live in the constant good-fellowship the Society offers, having a wide range of friends to the end of their lives though no single innermost companion. But others need this kind of deep, abiding companionship, and for