"The Gravest Danger"

by Marcel Martin

In a recent issue of ARCADIE, the French homophile magazine, there appeared an editorial entitled "The Gravest Danger." I have translated this article, and it is reprinted below for reasons which I shall make clear in the comments which will follow it.

Etiemble, in a sensational recent work, Parlez-vous franglais?, has drawn the attention of the French public to a danger, the manifestations of which have been multiplying since the last war-the invasion of Europe. and especially France, by the language, customs and manner of thought of the Americans.

The world being what it is in this year 1964, everything which comes from beyond the Atlantic is invested with an extreme importance-an excessive importance if one but reflects that the United States, is, after all. inhabited by only six per cent of the world's population. The financial and technical resources, the military and economic power which the United States has at its disposal sometimes lead one to accept as being universal that which is really only an American

phenomenon. Now, American society is a sick society-recent events should have served to recall this fact to those who have forgotten it, and to convince those who might hitherto have doubted it. And we European homosexuals, unless we state plainly and unequivocally our complete disagreement with the aims and methods of some of the United States' homophile movements, are in grave danger of suffering the consequences of that sickness.

American society is, by definition, a badly integrated society. It does not exist as a coherent unit. It is composed of a large number of groups and sub-groups, the existence of which seems so natural to the sociologists on the other side of the Atlantic that they tend to think of every societv in terms of majority or minority "cultures." Recent events in Harlem and Rochester show clearly where this leads.

The historical origins of this situation are clear. They lie in the fact that the United States is not "a" people but a mosaic of peoples of

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