You, as a homosexual, know that your "coming out" changed your whole life. It was like coming out of a cocoon. The world thereafter to you. was a whole new world. The transition perhaps was a rough experience, perhaps a delightful discovery, probably some gradation in between. Anyway, you know it was a momentous transition.

What happened? You know what events transpired in your own case. You probably just call that series of events your "coming out." But what happened in the larger intellectual and impersonal sense?

Why did the homosexual world choose the phrase, "Coming out"? Why not, just for instance, "initiation," or "debut"? And is it "coming out" in the sense of coming from somewhere, from something, or is it "coming out" in the sense of coming out into somewhere or something? Or both?

Regardless of its origin, sociologically our slang phrase is very illuminating. For, as sociologist Mrs. Suzanne Prosin puts it, homosexuals are a minority, but in a way they are a minority in reverse since they come from a majority and go into a minority; they are "raised" on the values of the dominant group and then must unlearn some of those values when they leave.

When you "came out," that "new world" you entered was, in your case -because what you prefer sexually is against the law, against religion's teaching, and absolutely forbidden by the majority-because of that, your "new world" is only another word for "minority." "Coming out" is our slang phrase for coming from a majority and going into a minority. What values changed when you "came out"?

Your attitude toward sex, certainly. Before you "came out" you accepted the majority's teaching about the evil-

ness of homosexuality, that it was absolutely beyond the pale. You learned from the church that it was so horrifying that it was unmentionable, the "abomination," so far more evil than just ordinary heterosexual sex like adultery that it couldn't even be listed with the Ten Commandments. You learned it was against the law and accepted the majority's judgment when they sent people to prison for it.

Your values in this regard are now a far, far cry from the majority's. It has to be or you wouldn't be holding this particular magazine in your hands right now.

The chances are, also, that when you "came out" you left behind you at least a goodly portion of the majority's belief in the divinity of either the Christian or Jewish religion you were raised in. You might still occasionally go to church. But as a thinking (and practicing) homosexual you probably just "go," maybe with your mother or heterosexual friends, as part of "passing."

Which brings us to another thing that changed when you "came out, one of the very first things, the vast importance of which you learned quickly from the first other gay people you met, in case you didn't know it already from having been raised in the teachings of the majority you learned to "pass." You learned the absolute necessity for secrecy from the majority (which, immediately, included your family and the police, but also all other heterosexuals) regarding the truth of your sexuality.

This unfortunate necessity for secrecy (or, as Dr. Merritt, Professor Emeritus of ONE INSTITUTE, put it in a lecture on Homophile Ethics and Philosophy, "the necessity of wearing the mask"), colors the life of every homosexual. It stems from there being immeasurably more prejudice against