insecurity over the worthiness of homosexuals, such as they really are. The homosexual does not need to be either glorified or denigrated. He only needs to be accorded a decent amount of human dignity as a person.

The propaganda of those who would distort, by commission or omission, will only hurt the homosexual. not help him. It cannot alleviate the distress of the individual, who will feel more left out, more alienated. even by his own champions. His guilt will increase as he sees that even the organizations fighting in his behalf are not for him, but for other. "purer," more "decent" people.

And it cannot ameliorate social conditions, for the public must of necessity be disillusioned with movement that bases its pleas on a foundation of falsehood.

The hustler, the cruiser, the lonely and the distressed, the muscle flexer, the partner-changer, the effeminate hairdresser, the closet queen who is frightened and the clothes queen who is courting social ridicule: yes, even the poor disturbed people who are caught up in the sad world of sadomasochism—they are all our brothers. and their cause is ours.

This is the message of The Homosexual and His Society.

ON MATTERS PERSONAL AND IMPERSONAL by Donald Webster Cory

Whatever else may be said about the review by Dr. Ray Evans of The Homosexual and His Society by Donald Webster Cory and John LeRoy (One, January 1964), it should go far toward destroying any suspicion that the American homophile movement consists of a group of heroworshippers whose charismatic leader (as a graduate thesis on this subject recently contended) is Cory. In this sense, the review will contribute toward an atmosphere of a free interchange of ideas, in which these ideas. are evaluated on the basis of their intrinsic worth, and not because of their identification with any individual. But that having been said, it is difficult to take seriously the Evans diatribe, and if it were not for my respect for this movement, and my sense of responsibility within it, I would choose to ignore it.

In another article, my collaborator and I deal with the content of Evans' review; here I wish to confine myself to some personal matters. Although personal, they cannot be ig-

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nored, because they were raised in a publication which proclaimed itself, and accurately no doubt, "the homosexual world's best-selling magazine."

Early in the review, Evans quotes me as stating that my "own thinking is largely sociological in orientation," and proceeds to comment that: "No mention is made of Cory's qualifications to speak sociologically, and there is no evidence of competence as a sociological thinker." The implication of the remark is all too clear, and any effort on the reviewer's' part to escape responsibility by squirming out of such an implication and interpreting his own remarks, out of context, as simply a call for proof, must be in vain. For in the context of this review, in which everything I am saying and writing at this time is under attack, he is doubting the integrity of my claim to have qualifications to speak sociologically.

Now, first I will substantiate the claim, before I review the reviewer. As the editors of One know, I have