View the Positive Aspects

A STEP

TOWARD ACCEPTANCE

By WILLIAM A. BAKER, M. S. W.

When we consider the question, "Must the homosexual be rejected in our time?", we are really asking "Must he continue to be rejected in our time?" For in general, he is rejected in our society. The question is clear-cut enough. The answer is so complex that it becomes an exceedingly ambitious undertaking.

To answer it, one must first ask the question, "Why is the homosexual rejected in the first place?" The attempt to answer this question has become a subject for research. The findings fill volumes already written, and no doubt will be the theme of endless theses in the future. The answers are there just as they are between the covers of the specialized novel. They are sometimes subtle but always multi-causal and historically as old as time itself. This fact alone must contribute to the complacency of society and to the inertia against changing the status quo of any issue of controversy and the status of any minority group.

The fact remains, however, that great civilizations have existed in the past and certain contemporary societies exist in the present in which the homosexual is accepted. Without taking the time to consider here why this is possible, this fact at least suggests that eventually such acceptance may develop in our culture. To over-emphasize this point, however, would seem to me to result again in stalemate-a period of useless waiting in which society waits for the homosexual to disappear or become acceptable, and the homosexual waits for society to change its attitudes.

If something other than waiting is to be done, who is going to do it? Who is going to begin to break this neurotic relationship that exists between society and the homosexual? For centuries, society has tried to do something about it. Like a totally rejecting parent, society has tried to rid itself of its "problem child", the homosexual, by extremely imaginative means, all of which are barbaric and punitive. But this child of society appears particularly hardy, and it is only in the relative present that society has made some serious attempt to do something other than rid itself of the child of which it is ashamed. As yet this is probably only the result of society's ac ceptance of the fact that homosexual behavior exists wherever human beings exist and the methods which might effectively "stamp i! mattachine REVIEW

out" would be far more destructive to total human existence. So while the original motive may be questionable, yet the door to further understanding and a more genuine acceptance may thereby be opened.

Doing something, however, is as yet pretty well confined to that small minority of professionals who study and treat the emotionally ill. This is progress but it is a far cry from society's accepting the homosexual, for this gigantic parent is really saying to the psychiatrist, the social worker, and the psychologist, "Treat this sick child, make him well, and then I will accept him. In the meantime, don't bother me until it is all over. And, above all, keep him quiet and out of sight." And so the_therapists and a relatively few homosexuals retreat to an ivory treatment tower and form a new minority in many ways as isolated as the entire homosexual minority was ir the first place.

Out of this ivory tower come articles for other therapists to read and novels to be read mostly? by other homosexuals and those heterosexuals who are for the most part already accepting. While this literary and technical effort is invaluable, it can at best contribute only to acceptance by society on an intellectual level. But the acceptance that the homosexual craves, like any rejected person, is a feeling of love, warmth, understanding, and equality. He can never feel this from someone who has mere intellectual understanding This can only occur through the experience that is shared in interpersonal relationships between the minority and the majority group. members.

It is in this area of interpersonal relationships between the homosexual and the rest of society that I think the individual homosexual can effect some change in the attitude of others toward him. Admitting to over-simplification for our purposes here, but in the interest of clarifying at least one approach to the problem, let us start with the fact that for whatever reason, society rejects the homosexual first and above all simply because he is homosexual. He is seen first and foremost as a homosexual and only secondarily, if at all, as anything else. The homosexual then becomes a victim of this same kind of thinking and thinks of himself primarily as a homosexual and then secondarily as something else. He presents himself to society as if that were the most important thing about himself. He does not usually do this by any overt pronouncement or behavior but perhaps even more effectively by whatever else he does not say, in one way or another, about himself. In other words, he does this directly by minimizing whatever else he has to contribute to the world about him, or he does this indirectly by overcompensating and overrating his talents and thinking of himself as if he were superior to those about him. Either of these presentations does little to enable him to feel wanted and needed.

Before change can be effected in others who know him, the homo-