and perhaps gone and forgotten the change is secured and the public day after.

Traditionalists however, blandly ignore statistics and common sense and insist that "you can't change human nature," that "the eternal verities remain," that "change is superficial," that even the cave man had the same traits and habits we see about us daily. This is nonsense. As to the eternal verities that do remain, conservatives are shocked at the degree to which they (as the Grand Old Party, the Constitution, this or that orthodoxy) are transmuted into something quite different from what they formerly were.

The philosopher Heraclitus, in an age when Greek society was chang-' ing almost as fundamentally and as fast as our own, said you cannot step twice into the same river, so fast do new waters rush in upon you. The Banks wash away, the channel shifts, headwaters run dry, deltas grow. And how much more in flux a complex society?

Perhaps a chief reason many fail to recognize the extent of change is that change is not quite constantmore an ebb and flow that may advance and fall many times before. washing away a beach.

Those attempting to advance a cause, build an organization, or educate the public, often tend to view change as like building a brick wall. Add one brick at a time and soon the wall is done. But if something meanwhile knocks it down, all the work is lost.

Social change is not so simple. An organization is put together and may fall apart and be rebuilt or replaced many times before its aim is accomplished. It may indeed have to repeat the same achievement many times before it sticks. A campaign to change a law may be successful, and pendulum-like public reaction erase the gain. Yet in time the 26

forgets its former attitude.

The Mattachine is concerned lest it seem radically to challenge established order. It is well the public should be assured that an organization of homosexuals is capable of being responsible, and conservative, so long as the conservatism is no mere "protective coloration." !!

But we would wrong those we seek to help if we denied that the eternal verities the Mattachine wishes to uphold are in fact, and of their own accord, changing from day to day. "Change is a law of life," as President Eisenhower recently said, "and unless there is peaceful change, there is bound to be violent change." This does not mean that church, state and family, to which the Mattachine has pledged allegiance, will necessarily pass away. Change is not always devastating. These may indeed pass away, as other seemingly eternal institutions have done. Or they may merely adopt new form or substance, as they have often done before.

But the world in which church, state and family-and homosexuals -exist is constantly changing in complex, interlocking, often contrary ways, and any "eternal verity" that stays afloat must come to terms with change.

Opinions (and customs and laws) on most moral questions are likely to change and often faster than we think possible. But in what direction? Admitting that change is inevitable, which way is it going, and can we affect it? For this we must look at the forces producing change.

On the one hand is rationalism and liberalism-the conscious attempt to create a better, saner life. The rationalists may come up with various answers to a given problem, but we can reasonably hope for the best from this quarter. It is with

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these that prejudice is first overcome.

On the other hand, making for erratic change, are the irrational "forces of history"-economic pressures, misguided movements, personal ambitions, prejudices. The world isn't composed purely of rationalists, nor are rationalists reasonable always. The irresistibility of change produces fear in most men, resulting' in insecurity and hysteria. In our slow progress, we never know when we may be overtaken by this wave of the past, as German homosexuals were in 1932, and all our gains lost in a moment of fury.

But what sort of changes can homosexuals expect?

Less persecution? Rights to act as heterosexuals do in public? Legal status for homosexual marriage? Right to live where and as we please? Segregated areas with freedom inside the zone? Abandonment of the necessity to "pass"? Some: special status, or mere acceptance? Or general treatment aiming at cure?

The "natural horror" of more or less heterosexual males to homosexquality is no more immutable than any other contemporary social attitude, but whether it first gives way to a reign of tolerance or to a reign of terror we can't predict. The near future will likely see both. For the distant future, we can but be enigmatic, as oracles always are, and say if man moves toward a rational society, homosexuals can expect better conditions.

The legal changes proposed by the American Law Institute (See article on Judge Hand, July-August issue) are a straw in the wind, though we must not forget that the public travels more slowly than its leaders. These proposals are made by influential men, whose plan for renovating and standardizing archaic and conflicting legal codes will have weight in many legislatures. More and more leaders realize the need

for revised attitudes on this subject. Even homobaiters often apologize, "We don't want to persecute nobody."

We must not suppose the new outlook to be unconnected with generally changing attitudes on morals. It is significant that the A. L. I coupled homosexuality and adultery. classing both as private acts, perhaps immoral but not properly in the legislative realm. It is widely felt that attempts to legislate morals are inconsistent with separation of church and state, In a society of vastly diversified views, many heterosexuals also have an interest in the principle that the state is not the executor of morals, except in cases of harm.

We ought not be lulled by opinions of some leaders into forgetting 'the lurking danger of prejudice. Nor need we be unduly pessimistic. The wild "homo" crusade in England in 1954 seems likely to result in liberalized laws. Similar hysteria in Miami, Minneapolis, Provincetown, Charlotte, Washington and Santa Monico has been followed by voices of sanity and toleration.

So long as "omniscient" psychiatry is a veritable Babel on what homosexuals are, public acceptance will be slow. Perhaps acceptance is not what awaits us Psychiatrists may make good their aim to cure us all. Or they may decide variety is not without advantages.

Two possible directions face us; one, a sort of 1984, a world of deadening conformity and regimentation, with psychiatrists for police, and the other, a more liberal, "open" society, in which all would have lattitude for working out their own destinies. And between these two chief possibilities a number of middle roads open, offering greater or less freedom for social variants.

Which road will we take? Alas, oracles are never that specific.