"It has been said that the closest and truest friends we ever have in our lives are our parents. I believe this. But for the homosexual child, of all human relationships, perhaps the one with his parents is the most difficult." Miss Destiny was talking to us in one of her recent visits to our offices; she was talking in her hoarse, pseudo-feminine voice, gesturing with her hands in her nervous, and exaggeratedly feminine manner while she alternated at sitting or standing for no apparent reason. We sat, somewhat subdued, listening to Miss Destiny's common sense.

It has been our observation that most queens who have been around at all show a certain insight into the problems of living, with the exception of those problems having to do with their own motives. This insight probably comes from the fact that their minds are continually working, always analyzing their own and other people's motives. They are always on guard, and always trying to figure out how anyone could find their behavior as being in any way wrong. John Rechy completely overlooked this sagaciousness in Miss Destiny and her friends. In his best-seller, City of Night, he portrayed all queens from Pershing Square to Harlem as extreme individuals who appear outwardly and socially absurd. This, of course, was all the queens allowed him to see because although the queens' world is not all camp and carry-on, it is all they will allow the general public and their unsuspecting sexual companions to believe about them.

Their open display while strangers are looking on is what so infuriates the socially trained homosexual about the effeminate members of his minority. All of his life, despite the handicap of a socially unacceptable sexual orientation, the orthodox homosexual has set about trying to appear outwardly and sexually conforming in

every respect. The homosexual who passes as heterosexual learns to despise what he and most of his heterosexual counterparts consider is a misdirected display of the most flamboyant and irrational aspects of the homosexual personality. The queens, as if noticing this discomfort, seem compelled to outrage their spectators, and to take a special delight in deceiving sexual partners. They insist on destroying any image of themselves as serious, thoughtful, self-controlled, stable, reliable people. Yet, in actual fact, the majority of queens are absolutely steady of purpose.

"In the matter of my own parents," continued Miss Destiny, "I have had to live with a sort of helpless feeling toward them. My father and mother, like the parents of so many homosexuals, have rejected me. And this is a pain which is most devastating. I wanted my parents to love me, and I hoped that we could be friends, and I decided to make it plain that I was gay. I couldn't live a lie anyway. I found that being honest about my homosexuality with my parents was not the best thing. But I knew also that there could be no respect in deceit.

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"So you see, it is often difficult for the homosexual to find a workable and safe way to keep his parents as friends. Love, which is essential to any child-parent relationship, is especially necessary when the child is homosexual. Honesty, it turns out, is not always the best policy in these personal matters. And queens fundamentally honest. Misguided though you may believe us to be, illadvised though you may find our behavior, and mistaken though you may think our attitudes, we at least stand on our own two feet proclaiming exactly what we are. Part of the purpose of our conduct and dress is to force our personalities as far into the faces of the rest of the world as we

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