As for for me

me..

So just what are we aiming for, we of the homophile movement? Legal rights? Recognition? Acceptance? I say that we haven't set our sights high enough.

We support ONE because of its very commendable aim of seeking to obtain our constitutional rights, so that we can send our magazine through the mails, associate with whom and where we please, and do what we like in private with mutual consent. This, I say, is not enough.

SO

What I want is acceptance-complete and public acceptance for what I am. I want my continuous day-time sham to end. I want people to be able to say: "Yes, I know George-he's a nice guy. Sure he's homosexual what?" I want to be my true self all the time, and not only behind locked doors or at carefully screened gatherings. I want to emerge from the underground. I want to behave in my own way; to wear what clothes I like when I like; to associate with whom I choose, where I choose; to entertain my real friends in my apartment without sneaking them in the back way.

Most gay people go to a good deal of trouble to put up a screen to hide their true selves from the straight majority; in my case, very plain clothes to the point of drabness; no jewelry; butch haircut; heavy walk, particularly if I'm aware that anyone is walking along the corridor behind me; bounding up stairs two at a time; feigning an interest in sports, and keeping quiet about my interest in the arts; hard-drinking; hard-swearing; off-color jokes about brothels; conversation punctuated with remarks beginning "This girl I used to go out with... (this one only occasionally -it's wise not to overdo it), and so on. In fact I've been putting on this act for so long now-since I came out

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some ten years ago that it's become part of me. Being a schoolteacher, I have to be extra careful, and I honestly don't think that any of my straight friends would suspect my real self for one instant, and probably wouldn't believe me even if I told them. I suppose they'd have to find me in bed with another man before they'd begin to suspect!

The reason for this is very simple: to the great majority, homosexuality is a closed book. They've heard about it, or read about it, particularly whenever a sensational trial such as the Montagu case comes along, but put it aside as something "unspeakable”, and pertaining to so very few that it's not worth considering. An example of this was provided by an old friend of mine, a man of the world who had been around, and mingled with the theatrical set. It seems that one night at a theatrical party he had been approached by a well-known (to me, at any rate) homosexual. Tim, my friend, next day expressed great shock to me, saying that he thought "that sort of thing had gone out with Oscar Wilde". How naive can you be!

The fact is that most people, if they think of homosexuals at all, think of us as screaming queens, wildly flamboyant in speech, dress, and gesture, and obviously effeminate. Of course there are people like this, but they are the minority of a minority. It used to make me mad to think that most straight people, if they knew I were homosexual, would put me down as a swish. I am a man who is no different from 95% of other men, except that I happen to be attracted to men, and not women. Last year Holiday ran an article on Fire Island, in which the boys of Cherry Grove were portrayed in camp as Chloe, and the girls as hard-faced, blue-jeaned dykes. This

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