By Ann Landers
Dear Ann:
I am a homosexual. I know you receive thousands of letters from guys just like me so I will try to say something different to keep from boring you to death. For five years I have been aware of my problem. I've read a lot about homosexuality and most of the authorities agree it is caused by a poor relationship be tween a boy and his parents almost always the father. Somehow I can't blame my folks for the way I am. They are decent. hard working people and if they knew their son was a queer it would kill them.
I date some very pretty
girls and they go for me. but I'll take a guy any day. I only date them to cover up. I am a Roman Catholic. I attend mass every Sunday and put as much as I can in the basket. I go to confession regularly and pray for God's help to set me straight. After two years of tervent prayer I am begin ming to teel I am stuck with my fate and I should resign myself to it.
Please don't tell me to see A psychiatrist. i am not crazy. Furthermore. I see n sense in paying a man $40 an hour to tell me what I already know Is there any hope" What can I do to get over this table feeling that i am a treak and a fraud --Unalterable
Dear Unalterable:
You have told me not in suggest psychiatric help but I'm going to suggest it. any. way. I suggest it because arc miserable isome homosexuals are not) and you need to express your innermost feelings to some ear who will not judge. deprecate. humiliate or punish The experts on homosexrality with whom I consult tell me that while the chanees for a complete cure are extremely slim. the tortured homosexuals who hate themselves often profit from therapy. While it does not convert them into normal
males. it helps them to accept themselves without suilt and shame and ali self-destructive emotions that accompany these twin horrors.