Vennen, Vriendschap, the Belgian C.C.L. and the C.O.C. in Amsterdam, will rally to our banner and that they will, in turn, state their position in regard to this incipient danger-the gravest danger, perhaps, which faces us today.
The editorial has been reprinted in its entirety for three reasons. First of all, I find it interesting in itself, containing as it does a point of view which deserves to be read by as wide an audience as possible. Second, and more important, however, I feel that the article demonstrates the existence of a serious cross-cultural misunderstanding which, in the interests of homophile unity, someone should attempt to clarify. Third, I feel this article provides me with a point of departure for the discussion of certain ideas of my own regarding what constitutes the real danger facing homosexuals today.
At the outset I should like to state as clearly as I know how that I agree completely with Arcadie's views as to the undesirability of a segregated homosexual society. What really puzzles me, however, is to know how Arcadie was ever led to believe in the first place that the creation of such a society is the goal of American homophile groups or their leaders. That Arcadie believes this to be the case is self-evident. That Arcadie is mistaken, I state, for myself, at least, and, I hope, for ONE, categorically. I hopefully suggest that I can make the same statement for all other homophile groups in the United States. Somewhere there has been a breakdown in communications, or this erroneous conclusion has been arrived at as the result of the often dangerous practice of trying to interpret the behavior of another culture in terms of one's own, and which often leads to what I have described above as a "cross-cultural misunderstanding."
On two occasions that I recall, ONE
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has published items in which there was proposed the establishment of some kind of exclusively homosexual group. One of these items was in the form of an article in which the author discussed the feasibiity of establishing a homosexual monastery; the other was in the form of a letter to the editors in which the writer stated that he would like to recruit a group of male homosexuals to live on and operate a working ranch. So far as ONE is concerned these items were published on the same basis as are any other articles or letters submitted by its readers as expressions of individual opinion and for whatever interest they might have to some or all of ONE's readers. The letter might have been completely serious; the monastery article obviously bordered on fantasy and, I'm sure, was intended to be in terpreted as such. I can think of no other items in ONE's pages which have ever suggested such an idea.
While the idea that homosexuals constitute a minority group is not new, it is certainly true that the two terms have been linked together with increasing frequency in recent years. I. myself, in a recent editorial written for ONE (Sept., 1964) based much of what I had to say on a comparison of the conditions which face homosexuals as a group and those problems which have faced other minorities. Possibly (although Arcadie does not say so) this editorial may have been instrumental in touching off the Arcadie article.
Now, 'minority' in a dictionary sense is nothing more nor less than the state of being fewer in number. Lines separating the fewer from the more can be drawn wherever one chooses to put them with the result that minorities of some kind exist everywhere, changing from place to place, from day to day, and from situation to situation. Ordinarily, however, we think of minorities only in
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