field, and we were furnished with a State Charter. No one seemed to have bothered to investigate our purpose.

As secretary of the new organization I wrote to many prominent persons soliciting their support. Most of them failed to understand our purpose. The big, fatal, fearful obstacle seemed always to be the almost willful misunderstanding and ignorance on the part of the general public concerning the nature of homosexuality. What people generally thought about when I mentioned the word had nothing to do with reality. Against human stupidity even the gods fight in vain. What could one accomplish trying to help such people?

Nevertheless, we made a good start, even though at my own expense, and the first step was under way. The State Charter had only cost $10.00. I then set about putting out the first issue of Friendship and Freedom and worked hard on the second issue. It soon became apparent that my friends were illiterate and penniless. I had to both write and finance. Two issues, alas, were all we could publish. The most difficult task was to get men of good reputation to back up the Society. I needed noted medical authorities to endorse us. But they usually refused to endanger their reputations.

The only support I got was from poor people: John, a preacher who earned his room and board by preaching brotherly love to small groups of Negroes; Al, an indigent laundry queen; and Ralph whose job with the railroad was in jeopardy when his nature became known. These were the national officers of the Society for Human Rights, Inc. I realized this start was dead wrong, but after all, movements always start small and only by organizing first and correcting mistakes later could we expect to go on at all. The Society was bound to become a success, we felt. consider-

ing the modest but honest plan of operation. It would probably take long years to develop into anything worth while. Yet I was willing to slave and suffer and risk losing my job and savings and even my liberty for the ideal.

One of our greatest handicaps was the knowledge that homosexuals don't organize. Being thoroughly cowed, they seldom get together. Most feel that as long as some homosexual sex acts are against the law, they should not let their names be on any homosexual organization's mailing list any more than notorious bandits would join a thieves' union. Today there are at least a half dozen homophile organizations working openly for the group, but still the number of duespaying members is very small when we know that there are several million homosexuals in the U. S.

We decided to concentrate our efforts on the State of Illinois. The laws of Illinois in 1925 were comparatively liberal in that sodomy was of the common law type, that is, the existing sodomy law only involved one sex act, anal intercourse (pedication). All other forms of sex activity by the homosexual were punishable as "disorderly conduct," when in public. The punishment for sodomy was from one to ten years in prison. Sodomy included all extreme and rare acts such as the brutal raping of children and the causing of physical injury. Cases of this sort should really be included in the rape statute, but are not, thus making no distinction between the harmless sex act between consenting adults and a heinous crime. The "crime against nature" could, in Illinois, also be committed by a man with a woman, in the same manner or with an animal. The word homosexual does not appear in any sodomy laws of any penal code. In the new Illinois sex code there is a reference to "deviates," both homophile and heterophile.

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