Harry Benjamin, M.D.

In Time

we must accept

The following is the first part of a paper delivered by Dr. Benjamin at the 4th annual convention of the Mattachine Society, as a part of a panel discussion on the question, "Must the Individual Homosexual Be Accepted in Our Time?" Previous issues of the Review have presented other papers in this series.

It was the late Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey who first called my attention to the Mattachine Society. He praised its work and aims highly. I welcome the opportunity to address your annual conference today.

In order to ease my conscience as a physician and scientist, and to clarify our terms, let me ask this question: If a man had in his past life an equal number of homosexual and heterosexual contacts, what is he? Is he heterosexual, so-called "normal,' or is he homosexual? The impossibility to answer this question one way or the other shows the difficulty of a scientifically cor rect terminology.

And think of this: If a man has had only one single homosexual contact in his otherwise heterosexual love life, but if this one contact had become known, he is forever stamped as a homosexual.

Therefore, when I speak of homosexuality, homosexuals or homophiles, I shall be referring to those individuals only who are exclusively or predominantly aroused sexually by a member of their own sex. We may call those who are equally or almost equally attracted by both sexes "bisexuals" (or better "psych-

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ological bisexuals"), provided we realize that the term is conditional, is a compromise, because actually it describes a physical state, that is to say, an hermaphrodite.

Quite naturally, most of my remarks apply to homosexuals of both sexes. However, signs of affection between two women are socially accepted and are not suspect. For all practical purposes, therefore, homosexuality refers to male homosexuality. Furthermore, many state laws in this country punish the one, but not the other.

That such a question, "Must the individual homosexual be rejected in our time," be asked even makes me feel a bit ashamed. At least that was my first reaction. With similar justification we could ask whether a left-handed or a color-blind person should be rejected. All of these people simply exist, and they exist by no fault of their own. Quite naturally they should not be "rejected," but treated if they want to be, otherwise left alone.

The fact, however, remains that we have not only widespread rejection and discrimination against homophiles in our time, but even harsh punitive laws. I am optimistic enough to believe that these laws in a hundred years from now may be looked upon as we look today upon laws against witchcraft.

Yet even if a future penal code will no longer concern itself with the private sex life of adults (as long as nobody is being Occasionally injured), it hardly helps the homophile of today.

their persecution amounts to what Rene Guyon, the pioneer sexologist from France, once termed "puritanical terror. When, for instance, as it happened recently, a private gathering of men, suspected of homosexual inclinations, is raided by the police, the participants carried off to jail, and if then their names are published the next day, with addresses and occupations, that is, it seems to me, a form of terror. (In consequence of this publicity in newspapers several of the men, I am told, lost their jobs, and the wife of one of them is said to have committed suicide. In fairness it may be said that not all newspapers in that particular city were equally cruel.)

The original question refers to "individual homosexuals." It is unfortunately true that some of them contribute greatly to the rejection and antagonism against all of them. I am thinking of those who love to make themselves conspicuous in public, giving in to their narcissistic and exhibitionistic tendencies. Naturally they provoke criticism, if not reprisals. Their personal rejection is justified, not because they are homosexuals, but because they