The aforementioned school of thought attempts to contrast heterosexual marriage with the present state of homosexuality (inaccurately equated with "promiscuity"), a contrast impossible to support, as any examination of divorce conditions in this country would immediately show. But let us further look into their case. If homosexuality "grows serious," they say, it takes on the burdens of heterosexuality which in turn tends to undermine the "pleasure" of homosexuality, that being based on the release from the binding nature of adult responsibility.

But we see how fallacious this is if we objectively investigate these two relationships as entities in their own right. With widely diverse origins and histories, with divergent aims, characteristics and presuppositions, these two patterns of relationship have, many centuries, come into being and in one way or another left their imprint on the mind of the race. How can anyone, moved by the superficial strength of social convention or personal prejudice, take one relationship, so uniquely formed, and forcefully fit it into the shape of the other? No, this cannot be done. Nor are homosexuals themselves innocent of the attempt to do this.

In his life a certain type of homosexual mimics heterosexual marriage. It is my belief that this leads to a distortion, even more to a despair of relationship. Homosexuals have a different role and they must create for themselves individual goals and purposes. To adopt children, take out insurance on each other, set up bourgeois house does not represent, for them, a solution. My opponent will counter with: What is the alternative? You say you want us to achieve recognition and dignity . . . How else do you expect us to do so? Not surely by barflitting?

6

We live in this year of grace 1953. As a type of relationship, homosexuality remains at the troubled dawn of history. In the past the homosexual's role has been the shaman, the witch doctor, the interpreter or intellectual midwife. And in direct inheritance an accepted role for him today is the artist (magician), the interior decorator, the analyst, Not as parent or pseudo-parents does the homosexual best relate himself to the child but rather as teacher.

In the years of grace to follow, and by means of love and grace, individual homosexuals must discover what they are and what they can become. To a certain extent they remain "uncreated." In 1903 the Wright Brothers built a machine that would go off the ground but they had not yet invented an airplane that would fly. By means of love, concern and self discipline the homosexual must construct for himself a relationship that will "fly.'

What holds many heterosexual marriages together is, I suggest, a basic male-female polarity, largely biologic in nature. Whereas in homosexual relations, although a polarity does exist, it is not of this obvious male-female sort, no, it remains a polarity of temperament, of interests, of character. To cement their relationship, two homosexuals must discover the nature of the Likeness-in-difference between them.* In a heterosexual relation, the focus of attention will be thrown on instinct. In a homosexual relation, on character.

If he looks ahead, as immense spectrum of relationship confronts the homosexual-a spectrum of possibility out of which-in order to find himself-he must choose!

In this connection what do I mean by "choice"? The homosexual (hardpressed and unillusioned as he is apt to be) can learn a great deal, I think, from the existentialists. In a certain

*See Plato's Lysis