handicap or a talent...

In the July-August issue of Mattachine Review, an article by Luther Allen, "Homosexuality-Is it a Handicap or a Talent?" was published wi.h an introductory paragraph by Carl B. Harding. That paragraph was presented simply because it was from a previous let.er from Harding to Allen that the author based some of his premises in the article.

Admittedly Harding's criticism of Allen's views had no connection whatever with the author's statements the point of view of the author was simply based upon certain premises, and that they happened to be those of Harding was only happenstance.

But the clash of opinion accidentally, has become a controversy.

Allen's rebuttal follows herewith because the editors believe that it contains food for thought for every reader. While the subject now ap pears complete, as far as Authors Harding and Allen are concerned, the Review would like to receive comment from other readers on the subject.

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The real bone of contention which I pick with Harding is that I feel that he contrasts an ideal heterosexuality with homosexual reality, and therefore, anything less than the attainments of an emotional paradise on earth-which he equates with wife,

home and babies-means that one is sick or crippled.

We all need a certain Idealism. Some wise man has written that our ideals are to us as the North Star is to the mariner; a sure guide, but

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...the AFTERMATH

something never to be attained. It seems to me appropriate for the homosexual to develop and pursue homosexual ideals. It seems to me nonsense for the homosexual to recognize as valid heterosexual ideals ONLY. Then he becomes a purposeless drifter on life's seas.

In the same letter to me which stimulated me to write the "Handicap or a Talent" article, Harding wrote:

"I do recognize that heterosexuals have their problems too, but this does not dispel the fact that there are countless happy heterosexual marriages. Many of them are little short of paradise too, even with the difficulties and problems of living. I witness such happiness within some of my own relatives... I DO believe in paradise on earth and I have no respect for people who would procrastinate its enhancement here and now by relegating paradise to an unknown hereafter."

Certainly there are happy marriages. But I think it is sheer sentimantality to call these happy marriages little short of paradise." To my mind this sort of utopianism is juvenile. But the important point is that it is in relation to his vision of a heterosexual "paradise on eorth" that Harding sees the homosexual as a sick man and a cripple, comparable to the blind, amputees, etc. I do not call this thinking scientific.

I would like to state once more that I have no quarrel with the heterosexual ideal. I feel strongly, however, that it is a very inappropriate ideal for homosexuals to aim for or to measure themselves by.

Since writing the "Handicap or a Talent" article, I have read Pan-

mattachine REVIEW

theon Books' "The Many Faces of Love," by a French surgeon-psychologist, Hubert Benois. He writes:

"It can be called a perversion in the sense that, like the perversions arising from sexual repression, it involves the reversal of an ideal innate tendency. But note, on the other hand, how different it is from the perversions that follow repression. In repression, the subject feels himself oppressed in his totality by the innate Ideal, and it is therefore as a whole being that he rebels; the repressed person is a rebel. At the moment of a sexual inversion, however, there is a trauma, but not an oppression felt as something total; and the inversion that follows is an adjustment, and adaptation to the real, not a rebellion; the homosexual may be a rebel in other ways, but not on account of his homosexuality as such. The general, interior attitude of the homosexual towards life and towards other people is not at

If we are truly to find happiness we must, consistent at all times with our duties to our neighbors and to society, learn to live within ourselves for we can never escape... from ourselves. Respect for oneself, for our separate individuality, for the dignity of man, is the most valuable of all the achievements of mankind. It is the hallmark of the civilized man. SIR PERCY SPENDER

all like that of the repressed; he is not unbalanced, he can face existence with his homosexual tendency as others do with their heterosexual tendencies. He may feel towords a man all that a heterosexual man can feel towards a woman, and his homosexual feelings may be integrated with his life as harmoniously as the condition of the ordinary man allows. Although the homosexual may be unbalanced by the fact of his inversion, that is something secondary, due to his condemnation by public opinion; in that way he may become repressed, secondarily."

All in all I find that an extremely interesting passage, but the point which I wish to make is simply that the homosexual is "sick" or "perverted" or "crippled" ONLY IN RELATION TO AN IDEAL. Once that is realized it is slicing pretty thin to insist upon homosexuality being a perversion at all. Harding admits that his sexuality is not repressed. It has simply taken a different direction.

Every day increases the sheer weight of knowledge put into our hands, some new power control over natural processes. Our age is being forcibly reminded that knowledge is no substitute for wisdom. Far and away the most important thing in human life is living it. -RT. REV. F. R. BARRY 33

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