SAN FRANCISCO
AND ITS HOMOPHILE COMMUNITY --A MERGING SOCIAL CONSCIENCE
the DOB Convention Saturday, August 20, at the Jack Tar Hotel, San Francisco
Entire day's program (including lunch & banquet) Morning & Afternoon Sessions (each)............ Luncheon only........
8:30-9 a.m. 9-9:30 a.m. 9:30-10 a.m.
...
..$6.00 Banquet only..
:
Registration
Addresses of Welcome
History of the Homophile Organizations in San Francisco
..
$15.00 $ 2.00
..$ 8.00
10 a.m.-Noon The Homophile Community and Civic Organizations--How They Relate The Rev. Lewis Durham, director, Glide Foundation
Dr. Clarence A. Colwell, president, The Council on Religion and the Homosexual
A. Cecil Williams, chairman, Citizens Alert
Bernard Mayes, head of San Francisco Suicide Prevention, Inc. Robert Gonzales, president, Mexican-American Political Association
12:30-2 p.m. Luncheon. Speaker--Judge Joseph G. Kennedy, municipal court; president, San Francisco Council of Churches
2:30-4:30 p.m.The Homophile Community and Governmental Agencies--an They Relate?
4:30-6 p.m.
6-7:30 p.m.
7:30 p.m.
Miss Janet Aitken, assistant district attorney
ions
Officer Elliott Blackstone, Police-Community Relations Unit Douglas Corbin, senior attorney, Public Defender's office
Dr. Joel Fort, director, Center for Special Problems, S.F. Health Department
Dr. Ellis D. Sox, director, S.F. Health Department and personal representative of Mayor John F. Shelley to this Convention
Round-table discussion by all speakers moderated by Dr. Evelyn Hooker, psychologist, sociologist and researcher from UCLA No-Host Cocktail Hour
Banquet. Speaker--Hrs. Dorothy von Beroldingen, member, Board of Supervisors, City of San Francisco
DAUGHTERS of BILITIS
INCORPORATED
3470 MISSION STREET, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
pressed, and reported no difference except that he had no desire for anything or anybody. On the sixth visit he told the nurse: "A sim-1 ́ ́ ply fantastic thing happened. I've been going to a local bookstore for years and never noticed before a very pretty girl who works as a clerk there." By the seventh visit he reported making a date with the girl and at the end of treatment he claimed satisfactory sexual relations with her. This case figured in a published report of success" ful treatment. Meantime this patient and his companions who had also been treated went on with their homosexual activities, except that some of them suffered from an increased drive-the result of the injections of androgens. How much of the exacerbation was biochemical and how much psychological, no one knows. Nor does anyone know to what extent similar ruses may have distorted medical results reported in the literature.
In the etiology of homosexuality, constitutional and hereditary factors cannot be ruled out as possible factors. From a pragmatic view, a large amount of evidence points to developmental factors, chiefly those connected with masculine or feminine identifications, as probably the most important ones. There are multiple reasons why a young boy might fear to identify himself with what he considered masculine trends and so be forced to adopt feminine attitudes, habits and wishes. In our society a happy male child evidently goes through various stages of identifications and choices of the object of his affections. At first he prefers himself, then he is greatly attached to his mother. In later childhood, under the molding influence of environment, the boy for a period, prefers his father and spurns as "sissy" any show of affection toward women. With adolescence his interests begin to shift once more toward girls. The things that may block this normal development or stop it at any stage because of one trauma or anotherthreats as to sexual activity, rejection by one or the other parent-are too many to list and even more difficult to evaluate. Even in clear-cut histories of early seductions, their role in the causation of homosexuality is hard to determine. However obscure the etiologic trails, we know more about the
*
*
*
*
**
*
*
*
*
*
*
IN OUR NEXT ISSUE:
*
*
*
Comment on the UCLA Law Review project dealing with police practices in Los Angeles County as they are applied to homosexuals.
17
·