one

magazine

EDITORIAL

Volume XVI Number 2,

Editor, Richard Conger,

EDITORIAL

March/April 1972

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 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 Associate Editor, James Kepner to avoid. Thinking things through undeniably is hard work. Why do it

Contents

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MORALITY, Public, Legal, Homophile .3 by Charles Guzzetta

.6

THOMAS....

by Richard F. Hall

1972 MIDWINTER SESSIONS .......8

TOUR ANNOUNCEMENT...

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COMING OUT.

..10

by Jim Kepner

BOOKS.

ART & POETRY...

.15

by Sidney Bronstein

COVER PHOTO:

The Rev. Troy Perry Founder,

Metropolitan Community Churches

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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.

Politics, religion and the ways you spend money all fall within the range of the homophile viewpoint, your viewpoint toward being homophile and about other homophiles-what they should and should not do, their threats to or attractions for you. Or you may feel that you aren't "really" homophile at all but that you just play around now and then. Well, that too is part of your viewpoint.

A generic, or collective, homophile viewpoint is something still more elusive and complicated. It is to the task of exploring and defining such things that ONE long has addressed itself. The exploration necessarily must be multi-faceted. It calls for research, for intuitive as well as for scientific explorations. History must give us its clues and records. Most important of all is life as homophiles themselves live it from day to day.

The pages of ONE Magazine have for the past twenty years been gaining here and there flashes of unexpected insight concerning such matters. It truly has been an exploration of the outer spaces of the inner man. We don't see this work being done in very many other places and so it is to the discovery and the exposition of the homophile viewpoint that we dedicate our pages each month.

We aim to range widely and far, to explore horizons as distant as those of the astronomers and the astronauts. Perhaps those physically measurable distances are only a small part of the story. The promise of more is incalculably exciting. Let's really cruise, or would you rather stay safely down in that ditch? Yours is the choice.

Richard Conger, Editor

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ONE Magazine is published at $1 per copy; subscriptions $10 per year. Copyright © 1972 by ONE, Incorporated, 2256 Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90006. Not responsible for unsolicited manuscripts unless postage and self-addressed envelope enclosed.