seeing anyone other than homosexuals. without knowing anything except homosexuality.

In Europe we call this a ghetto, and we violently reject the very idea of such a thing. We have nothing in common with this, and we hate this false, morbid and grotesque concept of homosexuality. We don't want anyone to imagine that we have any desire to be considered a "minority group," for this we are not. We are not even a "group" at all. We are citizens who happen to have in common certain sexual preferences and certain problems of an emotional and personal nature, all of which are grossly exaggerated by popular prejudices. Just one point in common, and that's all.

On the psychological level, as well as on the intellectual, social, family and physiological levels, we defy anyone to find among homophiles any "common denominator" other than their sexual tastes.

We have, to be sure, our magazine Arcadie, and our club on the Rue Beranger. Hunters and philatelists also have their magazines, their meeting places as do the Auvergnats living in Paris and the Berrichons in Marseille. But, this in no way makes them minority groups nor sets them apart from society as a whole. Arcadie and our club do not have the aim of separating us from other men who have different tastes in emotional and sexual matters. They were conceived and created to inform homosexuals about their own interests and to defend their right to be treated exactly like everybody else. This is exactly the opposite of a campaign for minority status.

When we fight, when we raise our voices, it is because laws and public opinion do not treat homosexual love in the same way they do the other kind of love. When we shall have obtained that absolute equality which is, moreover, not out of line with

the traditional liberalism of our civil codes, we will have nothing more to fight for certainly not for the creation of a marginal homosexual society. The very idea fills us with horror.

What happens on the other side of the Atlantic affects us too keenlywhether in matters of politics, economics or the status of homosexuality -for us not to react to the peril which is taking shape over there. A few articles like that in Life and by some kind of osmosis, the European press will begin to be infiltrated in turn. And, of course, this American phenomenon will be imported intact to our countries in the same way that we have, for the last twenty years, been importing the fads and gadgets from the banks of the Hudson and the Potomac. The article in L'Express should sound in our ears like an air-raid alarm.

We know very well that the leaders of the American homophile movements are acting in the best interests of their cause, or, at least, what they believe to be the best interests. If in their eyes the attainment of a minority status constitutes an enviable goal for the homosexuals of their country, let them have it. It's their business. But we do not wish to be caught up in its tide.

Here, in Europe, it's our duty to cry: "No!"

Our ideal is to bring about the complete integration of homosexual love into society on all levels. We must emphasize those elements which unite homosexuals with non-homosexuals, not those which separate them. It would be criminal on our part to create artifically a feeling of isolation among homosexuals and to give them, in spite of themselves, the false impression of belonging to a world by themselves.

It is to be hoped that the responsible members of the other European homophile movements, Le Cercle,

7