THE HOMOSEXUAL &

Democracy

It is not often that one has the opportunity to participate in a situation of historical importance, one wherein the remote consequences are likely to affect the happiness and welfare of countless numbers of people. One Institute with its plans and activities seems to this writer to be such an occasion.

The theme of the history of Western Europe in its social development has been twofold. It has in both cases referred to the obtaining of the goods of life which have changed but little in their major categories in historic times. Man wants the satisfaction of certain basic economic needs: food, clothing, and shelter, a satisfying family or love life, participation in community life as a respected member, health or physical welfare, a religious or philosophical outlook on life, that is, some understanding or explanation of the world wherein he finds himself, wholesome recreation activities, and finally the means of communicating with his fellows. Of course there are infinite variations in detail, but essentially man's wants, or values, if you wish, fall into these categories and he spends his time and effort to secure the satisfactions thus included. The theme of the development of the history of Western Europe refers first to the distribution of the satisfactions of life. Some men have always enjoyed the goods of life, such as they were, but all too often at the expense of others, that is. by exploiting them, or by climbing on their shoulders, one might say. At this point history shows the unending struggle to achieve a broader distribution of the goods of life and the principle emerges that everyone is entitled to such of the goods of life as he has the capacity and interest to make use of in so far as he does not encroach upon the same right of others. This principle may be termed that of democracy and its ever greater realization becomes the goal of social evolution. Some thoughts on this subject are the content of the present paper.

The second aspect of the theme refers to the technique by which the goods of life are obtained and is the more philosophical side of the ques-

THOMAS M. MERRITT, Ph.D.

tion. Here it suffices to say that man is coming to an ever greater recognition that rationality or intelligence provides the technique above all others for the increase of his welfare and happiness. This topic will be elaborated in the second part of this study.

As was said before, in all epochs some men have enjoyed such goods as there were and it has been man's fate to have to strive unrelentingly sometimes to dislodge a greedy and monopolizing minority from positions of power and perhaps oftener to secure the recognition of the majority if one belongs to an unpopular minority. The content of history is largely made up of examples of such efforts. A few will be given.

The often-praised cultures of Greece and Rome were superstructures built upon slavery of a most degrading kind. It is said that the free youth of Greece, when the Helots became too numerous, went out at night and killed them for sport as modern youth might shoot rabbits. The long struggle of the centuries to abolish slavery is only too well known and, that the battle for human equality is not yet entirely won, recent events of so-called racial antagonism prove only too clearly. The light colored ethnic groups may yet have to undergo profound humiliation before they grant justice and equality to the darker peoples in the pursuit of the goods of life.

In this writer's opinion there is no darker picture in history than that of the exploitation of children in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries with the coming of the industrial revolution in Scotland and England in the newly established factories where they were chained to the machines and died like flies. It took a whole social movement created by Robert Raikes. Robert Owen. Charles Dickens. Heinrich Pestalozzi. Friedrich Froebel, and others to break the hold of the industrialists and emanci pate the children, and child labor abuses still appear from time to time.

For many centuries women were subordinated and exploited by men. Even in the United States, which has

been one of the foremost countries in the world to recognize the rights of women, as well as in England, the struggle for the right to vote was carried on with a bitterness that is now being forgotten. In England Emmeline Pankhurst was considered a fanatic or worse when her women threw acid in the mail boxes to get the attention of Parliament. Recently it has been proposed to raise a monument to her memory. In the Middle East where the movement for the emancipation of women is still in the earlier stages. an old sheik was reported to have killed his several grown daughters rather than have them appear in public without the symbolic and oppressive veil.

The repudiation of colonialism in our own time is a late recognition of the fact that the beauty and charm. of the life of the aristocracy of Europe has little justification when based, as it has been, on the degradation and. misery of the more primitive peoples of the world. The intolerable poverty of India reflects no credit on the great British Empire. It has taken the world-wide upheaval of two great wars to bring about awareness of the injustice of the subordination of one nation to another.

Although they have existed. throughout recorded history. homosexuals have doubtless not thought of themselves as belonging to a minority group in society which suffers unjust discrimination and limitation in its freedom to seek the satisfactions of life, precisely as any other group. Thus in a sense they are the last minority group to join the procession toward a more perfect democracy. As in the cases previously mentioned, a group of courageous and self-effacing leaders stand at what is practically the beginning of the movement to secure fair and just treatment for this minority. It is here that One Institute finds its historic importance. one of the very first organized attempts to change the situation both as to the attitudes of the individuals within the group and as to those of society in general which is as far from real understanding as were those of a bygone age who held that slavery was ordained of God. Education, publication. conferences, counselling all these activities and others serve to awaken a consciousness of the problems involved and give knowledge which will support valid solutions. Its success and appeal thus far give promise of a future which may well invite the cooperation of all who are interested in bringing about a happier and more democratic world.

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