EDITORIAL

A viewpoint is a way of looking at things. It is the spot where one plants his feet and sees what may be seen. A viewpoint is limiting in one way but then it can also be expansive. It all depends on the height of one's eye level. Stand in a ditch and the horizon doesn't extend very far. Stand on higher ground and the range range is greater.

What of the homophile viewpoint? An anomalous term, some would say. Repugnant, others would call it. Many homophiles are themselves rather vague. Do I really have a viewpoint, they ask? Frankly, say they, I try not to think about such things any more than I can help.

It is not strange that "thinking about things" should be something to avoid. Thinking things through undeniably is hard work. Why do it at all when it is pleasanter to gaze on that pretty thing coming down the street or to anticipate that even prettier thing that may be walking along just past the next corner?

Yet some of us get more than a little fed up with a steady diet of visual stimulations. Besides, after a time the stimulation sort of wears off. If you hadn't already noticed this you soon will. When this happens you just about have to say to yourself, what's it all about? What do I want-really? What am I doing about what I really want? How should I go about doing what I really want? And the first thing you know you are getting yourself a viewpoint.

A homophile viewpoint is the way a homophile looks at the world with his own special eyes. There's no use trying to deny that your eyes are special. They are. You can't possibly view marriage and children, for instance, as does the non-homophile. That you happen to be married or to have children doesn't alter the situation at all. For, inevitably, you are compelled to think about that marriage and those children from the viewpoint that you are homophile; that you believe homophiles should marry and have children, or that they should not; that you are going to try hard not to allow your tendencies to harm them, or that you don't care at all if they do.