there is in talking about "The LeftHanded Vote."

Left-handed people, too, constitute a "minority" of our population. But left-handedness, like homosexuality, is not mentioned in the platform of any political party. Further, left-handed people have nothing in common in their social backgrounds.

—

The minority status of a Negro, Catholic, or Jew is a thing that stems from a lifetime of association. From babyhood on, he is barraged but gradually-by social facts and situations that, on the one hand, teach him he is of a minority and set apart and, on the other hand, weld him into the minority. He is "raised" in his minority. Whatever may be the forces that cause the majority of these minorities to vote alike, they are forces stemming from social conditioning from living in their minority. And that includes those important many years prior to adulthood.

The "minority" status of a homosexual is a vastly different thing. Each homosexual, too, has had those many years of social conditioning prior to adulthood. But it was not at all a period of gradually growing up in, of gradually assimilating the facts of, and of gradually being molded by and into a minority. On the contrary.

A homosexual is not a homosexual until puberty. Perhaps he was slated to be one from the age of three, as some psychoanalysts believe. But until a homosexual "comes out," he knows nothing of the homosexual world, practically speaking. Until then, he is "raised" as, and is presumed to be, a heterosexual. Always, a homosexual is "raised" by heterosexuals, as a heterosexual.

After entering his "minority," the homosexual finds that his homosexuality does make some differences in his life and in his view of some things. But politics is not one of those things. Because politics simply does

not treat homosexuality, he will not find it necessary to even think about reviewing politics in the light of his new status. He will vote, therefore, entered any if he had never

as

"minority."

Unlike those of the true minorities, there is nothing in common in the social and economic backgrounds of homosexuals to make them alike. Negroes, Catholics, and Jews, besides the catch-all phrase of their being "raised" in their minority, are, specifically, often educated together. Also, the Negroes have the low economic status in common. The Catholics and Jews each have in common the religion and the interests of their powerfully organized churches.

In stark contrast, by comparison what do homosexuals have in common in background to make them alike, to make them think alike?

We weren't educated together. We didn't go to church together. Economically, we come from all income brackets.

Let's face it. There is one thing, and one thing only, that homosexuals have in common-homosexuality.

I am not saying, of course, that this sole common interest of ours is negligible. Neither am I saying, as some do, that being homosexual is merely like being left-handed. Even if we homosexuals didn't have the law and social discrimination to contend with, we would still have our need to associate with other homosexuals, and we would also still have our unique literature. Left-handed people don't seek out each other, and no left-handed young man is ever going to have the heavens open up and life suddenly made beautiful by stumbling on left-handed literature and falling in love with another lefthander. Being left-handed does not change, does not "color," one's life. A man's sex urge is the rock-bottom source of the fountain of his person-

7