widely different origins, who, from a very recent date, have been living together, but who have kept alive their own racial individuality. The Negroes are only a particularly conspicuous example of a minority group; there are other groups who are, but less obviously so, equally minorities-the Italians of New York, the Swedes of Chicago, the Chinese of San Francisco. For these peoples, recognition of their status as a minority group is a condition of their survival. The day when American society will be completely unified (as is French society in which Bretons, Provencals, Auvergnats, and Picards are completely integrated within the national body) will come when American minority groups will have become completely absorbed.

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In the meantime, these groups exist, and their existence conditions American concept of society. And our homosexual brothers in America, within this framework, are directing their efforts towards recognition of themselves as a minority group. Sociological studies on the group behavior of homosexuals grow grow more numerous every day. The editorials of One and the Mattachine Review point out on every possible occasion that homosexuality is a "sub-culture"-that is. a culture separate and distinct from that of the nation as a whole. Emphasis is deliberately placed on the differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals as a result of the Americans' thinking being conditioned by the segregation of society into different groups.

The newspapers are now taking up this idea. A report of the American Medical Association uses the expression of a homosexual "subculture." The New York Times and other important daily and weekly periodicals are popularizing it. The issue of Life for the 27th of last July (comparable in circulation to our Match but with a broader distribution proportionate to

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the universality of the English language) attempts to put the matter back into its proper perspective but without any clear idea of what to propose in its place.

Now, in the very manner of the encroachment denounced by Etiemble. the European press begins to echo these theories from across the sea. L'Express, accepting in good faith the pronouncements of its American counterparts, writes in its issue of the 23rd of July, 1964, that American homosexuals are in process of creating a society apart, a "closed" world (this being the title of the article), with their own bars, their own restaurants, their own stores, their own movie theaters, and it expresses astonishment that Anglo-Saxon puritanism has not rebelled. But why should it? It's just another example of a typically American phenomenon the birth of but still another minority group, nothing more, nothing less.

Have you read Ebony? It's an illustrated slick-paper magazine in the same class as Match and Jours de France, with magnificent photographs, and pages and pages of various interesting items, and so forth-but it's all directed to the Negro minority. Everything in Ebony is black-there's not a single photo of a white man. From an ad for beer X or automobile Z to a serious article on art or literature, everything is about Negroes. This is a "subculture," American style. And it is this sort of thing that some responsible leaders of American homophile movements dream of a little artificial world, restricted, stifling, in which everything would be homosexual-not only bars, restaurants and movie houses, but also homes, streets (already in New York there are several streets inhabited almost exclusively by homosexuals), and districts like the Negro districts of Harlem and Brooklyn. A world in which one could live his entire life without

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