committee

produced the first fairly complete brochure for the Society, a pamphlet called "The Mattachine Today.' Basically a sound policy has been followed in publications. This has resulted in the publication of newsletters each month in the Northern and Southern areas. In addition a plan for the publication of a monthly Mattachine magazine has been prepared."

From the Legislative report of that convention, I would like to quote a statement which has as much meaning and import as it did then anu always will. "The need for us to register and vote in all elections is apparent. For us to assume this obligation of American citizenship cannot be unless overstressed. For, vote, we, as individuals and as an organization, have no real right to criticize officials and the laws they enact."

Cooperation on two projects in the research field had also been implemented by this time. A group of individuals was furnished from the Los Angeles area to Evelyn Hooker, Ph.D., for a research project to determine whether or not there was a difference in the social adjustments or pathological personality structure of the homosexual in comparison with that of the heterosexual. Dr. Hooker's first preliminary report of her findings was subsequently given be fore the American Psychological Association convention in September 1956.

The other project was that of furnishing a great number of persons who had had a brush with the law to Dr. Alfred Kinsey and his staff. These case

histories will play a great part in a forthcoming work to be published by the Institute for Sex Research, "Sex and the Law." Dr. Kinsey, on his last visit here before his untimely death, again thanked us for the great number of histories we were able to furnish him. "Success to the work you are doing," he said. "I hope that our publication, when it is printed, will contribute continuously to helping your group."

It is interesting to note that at the time of the first convention. of the Mattachine Society, inc. there were active chapters of the Society located in San Diego, Long Beach, six in Los Angeles. Berkeley, Oakland, Emeryville, three in San Francisco, Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit. At the present time chapters are located in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and New York. Application for chapters in Denver and Washington, D.C., are to be acted upon by this convention.

The second annual convention. of the Mattachine Society, Inc., was held in Los Angeles May 14-15, 1955. The Chairman of the Board of Directors stated significantly, "The organization of people, the merging of individuals into group effort is a measure of our progress as a Society, for the term exerts a leverage upon human effort that enables us to do together things that would be far beyond the range of any of us working alone."

In the legal field, work was begun by the organization's Legal Committee in Chicago on a proposed legal brochure which would contain information which would be of guidance and help

mattachine REVIEW

to individuals not only in the State of Illinois, on whose laws it would be based, but to all individuals who were in ignorance

of the law in general. That brochure has now been completed and is available.

Perhaps the most sign.ficant progress had been made in the publishing of the first issues of the Maftachine Review in January 1955. At last the Mattachine Society, Inc., would have an official publication in which, if the fullest and best uses were made of its pages, it could bring to th public truths where before only half-truths and hearsay existed It might be able to bring enlightenment to a darkness of self-imposed ignorance It would be a journal wherein the pros and cons of this great field of

sex behavior so blithely bunched together under the one term-. Homosexuality, could be discussed without prejudice, fear or malice.

There is no doubt that a great deal has been accomplished in the pages of the Review since its first publication. But some believe that it is not being used to its fullest potential, that it is not enough of an official organ of the Mattachine Society. Perhaps they are right. (Editor's Note The publication of this opening address to the 1957 an nual convention, together with the papers read by invited participants at other sessions of that convention which will appear in current issues of the Review, are aimed-in part -to make the magazine a more integrated part of

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