Preamble to the Constitution
of the Gay Activists Alliance
of New York


WE AS LIBERATED HOMOSEXUAL ACTIVISTS demand the freedom for expression of our dignity and value as human beings through confrontation with and disarmament of all mechanisms which unjustly inhibit us: economic, social, and political. Before the public conscience, we demand an immediate end to all oppression of homosexuals and the immediate unconditional recognition of these basic rights.

THE RIGHT TO OUR OWN FEELINGS. This is the right to feel attracted to the beauty of members of our own sex and to embrace those feelings as truly our own, free from any question or challenge whatsoever by any other person, institution, or “moral authority.”

THE RIGHT TO LOVE. This is the right to express our feelings in action, the right to make love with anyone, anyway, anytime, provided only that such action be freely chosen by individuals concerned.

THE RIGHT TO OUR OWN BODIES. This is the right to treat and express our bodies as we will, to nurture, display and embellish them solely in the manner we ourselves determine independent of any external control whatsoever.

THE RIGHT TO BE PERSONS. This is the right freely to express our own individuality under the governance of laws justly made and executed, and to be the bearers of social and political rights which are guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights, enjoined upon all legislative bodies and courts, and grounded in the fact of our common humanity.

To secure these rights, we hereby institute the Gay Activists Alliance, which shall be completely and solely dedicated to their implementation and maintenance, repudiating, at the same time, violence (except for the right of self-defense) as unworthy of social protest, disdaining all ideologies, whether political or social, and forbearing alliance with any group except for those whose concrete actions are likewise so specifically dedicated.

It is finally to the imagination of oppressed homosexuals themselves that we commend the consideration of these rights, upon whose actions alone depends all hope for the prospect of their lasting procurement.

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WE of the Gay Activists Alliance
demand the repeal of all antihomosexual
laws, and we demand the passage of
new laws to protect our civil rights. It is
in the interests of such legislation that
we offer answers to the most frequently
asked questions on homosexuality.


    It is important for our heterosexual brothers and sisters to understand that most of the questions themselves offend and oppress us, for they are not asked of other groups of our society, and they have little or nothing to do with our lives since they are based entirely on misinformation and myth. But these myths have often been used as excuses for the denial of our Constitutional and human rights. So — despite the fact that our lives need no justification — we are compelled to provide answers.
    One major source for our answers is our own experience. We know that we are neither criminal, immoral nor sick. But we have also used the bulk of the most recent literature on homosexuality, objective information which proves our point. Take a look at the extensive bibliography on the last page, and read as much of it as you can. If you have questions we haven't answered, write to us at Gay Activists Alliance, P.O. Box 2, Village Station, New York City.

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1  Who Is a Homosexual ?

    There is no neat way of compartmentalizing people as heterosexuals or homosexuals. Human sexuality, it has become evident from the pioneering studies of Dr. Alfred Kinsey and others, is a continuum between exclusive heterosexuality and exclusive homosexuality on which every intermediate combination may be found. Furthermore, people are not limited to a set of sexual habits that hem them in and assign them to a particular sexual category. Each individual on the continuum is capable, at one point or another in his or her life, of responding to a particular and perhaps unaccustomed stimulus. Thus, most contemporary authorities believe that in reality there is no such thing as “a homosexual” or, for that matter, “a heterosexual.”
    To discuss the subject, it nonetheless seems necessary to use the word “homosexual.” Isn't it possible to arrive at some working definition?
    One way is to say that the term describes anyone who engages in homosexual acts. But this excludes those of us whose desires and preferences are for members of our own sex, but repress these desires or lack the opportunity to fulfill them. Are we not homosexuals? Conversely, it is possible to use preference as the only criterion. But this excludes those of us whose preferences are primarily heterosexual, yet engage frequently in homosexual acts (sometimes exclusively, as in prison settings). Are we not homosexuals?
    Kinsey and his associates avoided the problem of definition by setting up a sliding scale from 0 (exclusively heterosexual experience) through 6 (exclusively homosexual experience), with 3 (as much of one as of the other) in the middle.
    For our purposes, it would be possible to use the term “homosexual” to mean a person with more homosexual than heterosexual experience in adult life (4-6 on the Kinsey scale). But this makes behavior the sole standard. It eliminates those with unfulfilled desires in either direction, includes those with little sexual experience of any kind, and excludes many with extensive homosexual experience.
    So, a psychologically oriented rule of thumb will also be employed: psychiatrist Judd Marmor's definition of a homosexual as “one who is motivated in adult life by a definite preferential erotic attraction to the same sex, and who usually (but not necessarily) engages in overt relations with them.”
    And finally, acknowledging the fact that both behavior and preference can change during the course of a person's life, we will keep in mind psychologist George Weinberg's point that “for most purposes in everyday life, it makes sense to use the word ‘homosexual’ to talk about people's present outlook.”
    Whichever definition of homosexual you prefer, it is important to realize that it is used in the context of a society which largely condemns the men and women the word describes. Thus there are those who might fit any definition of the term but cannot bear to apply it to themselves. And, increasingly, there are those of us who might escape inclusion, but are motivated by “gay pride” to identify ourselves as homosexuals. Just as black ancestry may be only a part of certain people's racial heritage, yet they know that the way to their personal freedom in our culture is to describe themselves as “black,” homosexual relationships may be only a part of some of our lives, yet we know that the way to our individual liberation is to describe ourselves as “gay.”



2  How Is a Person's Sexual Orientation Determined ?

    It is a good deal easier to say what does not determine sexual orientation. For instance, behavioral scientists reject the idea that it is a matter of individual choice. The vast majority also rule out constitutional, genetic, glandular or hormonal factors, believing that human sexuality is unfocused at birth and that the development of either homosexual or heterosexual preferences is a matter of learning and experience.
    In this light, the proper question to be asked is “What causes human sexuality, over the whole range of the homosexual-heterosexual continuum?” But, influenced by society's prejudices, most researchers in the past asked only “What causes homosexuality?” They ignored the parallel question of “What causes heterosexuality?” and most often limited themselves to the even more narrow area of “What causes male homosexuality?” Since they were asking the wrong question, it is not surprising that the “experts” who came up with hypothetical answers came to absolutely no agreement.
    One writer, for example, lists 77 possible causes of male homosexuality. He used the psychiatric literature alone, and he concedes not only that he failed to list any of the many possible cultural and environmental factors, but that his list was based on a very untypical group of male homosexuals, those in psychiatric treatment.
    Though some of these alleged “causes” have been adopted as fact by the public at large, most of them have been virtually abandoned by the scientific community. The idea that homosexuality is a stage in sexual development at which some people are “fixated,” for example, has been discounted in most scientific quarters by evidence indicating that there are no such specific sequential “stages”; that homosexual and heterosexual trends coexist among children at all ages; and that in many cases heterosexual interests and experience precede homosexual ones.
    Other popular hypotheses may explain certain specific homosexual patterns, but they cannot account for all the available data. For example, the proposition that male homosexuals come from families with “a close-binding mother and a detached-hostile father” fails to account for homosexual behavior in societies where it is nearly universal, not to speak of the great number of us in this society who don't come from such a background. The currently most popular hypothesis, that male homosexuality is caused by a fear of female genitals, does not cover the enormous number of us who have had satisfactory sexual relationships with both women and men during the same period in our lives — nor does it allow for the fact that homosexuality has a positive attractiveness of its own.
    Even some generally accepted ideas, that youthful experience is an important factor, or that patterns of sexual behavior are firmly established by early adulthood, seem open to question, since the youthful homosexual experience of many adult heterosexuals has often been extensive; many of us who are adult homosexuals had no such experience until well past puberty; and changes in sexual orientation have occurred quite late in life to a substantial number of individuals.
    The partisans of a particular hypothesis often insist that it applies to all cases, but their reasoning is invariably circular. For instance, if one points out that a number of exclusively heterosexual males would seem to have had “detached-hostile fathers” and no other opportunities to closely identify with males, their answer is that this could not be the case, since otherwise these individuals would be homosexual. Rather than indulging in such faulty reasoning, most present-day authorities suggest that the best answer to why some people are predominantly heterosexual or homosexual is that many factors are certain to be involved, and that no one set of them applies to all individuals — even those who share the same niche on the sexual continuum.


3  Can a Person Change His or Her Sexual Orientation ?

    The majority of psychiatrists have experienced near total failure in attempting to convert their homosexual patients to heterosexuality. But several who are specialists in the practice have reported a lower failure rate, only 73%. These statistics do not include a large number of patients who dropped out of treatment early; thorough follow-up studies of the 27% who were reportedly changed have not been undertaken; there are serious doubts about the kind of heterosexual adjustments which have been achieved; and some psychologists believe that no real proof of more than temporary change has been offered. Though a majority in the field believe that some percentage of homosexuals can indeed be changed, they do not infer from this — as so many laymen seem to have done — that psychiatry represents “the final solution to the homosexual problem.”
    Perhaps all that is necessary to note is that it is impossible to change the unknown situations that produce new homosexuals; that the vast majority of existing homosexuals have no need for psychiatric treatment; and that even of those who do, only a small percentage have the slightest desire for a “cure.” But it is further noted that those who have reportedly been changed were a very unusual group of people: all of them felt the need for radical adjustment in their life situation; more than three quarters consciously wanted to change their sexual orientation at the start of treatment; all but a few had heterosexual as well as homosexual desires to begin with; and all could afford to spend about $15,000 for an average of 350 hours of psychotherapy.
    The goal of those of us who do go into psychiatric treatment is usually a simple one: to feel and function better and to adjust to the predominantly heterosexual society in which we live. If there are some who feel that they cannot achieve this goal except by changing their sexual orientation, we do not deny them the right to try. But there are some people who would deny us our parallel right to stay the way we are.
    A number of clinicians believe that psychiatrists, using similar techniques, could convert heterosexuals to homosexuality. No one has tried, and if a homosexual therapist should propagandize on behalf of his own sexual preferences, his profession would be properly scandalized. To those heterosexual therapists who do propagandize, and to those homosexuals who have been listening to them, Dr. George Weinberg offers the following warning:

    “From what I have seen the harm to the homosexual man or woman done by the person's trying to convert is multifold. Homosexuals should be warned. First of all, the venture is almost certain to fail, and you will lose time and money. But this is the least of it. In trying to convert, you will deepen your belief that you are one of nature's misfortunes. You will intensify your clinging to conventionality, enlarge your fear and guilt and regret. You will be voting in your own mind for the premise that people should all act and feel the same ways ... Your attempt to convert is an assault on your right to do what you want so long as it harms no one, your right to give and receive love, or sensual pleasure without love, in the, manner you wish to.”


4    How Many Homosexuals Are There ?

    Using the Kinsey Institute statistics, the only broad-based studies available, 13% of the adult male population and 7% of the female population is predominantly homosexual, rated 4 to 6 on the sliding scale. Thus, on the basis of these figures it may be seen that an average of 10% of the adult population, or as many as 20,000,000 people in the United State, are predominantly homosexual throughout their adult lives.
    The Kinsey figures for males have been criticized by various statisticians, principally for including too high a percentage of men with prison experience in the sample. But no source estimates the incidence of predominantly homosexual men in the U.S. as below 4% or the incidence of predominantly homosexual women as below 2%, so even here it may be seen that an average of 3% or at least 6,000,000 adult Americans can be categorized as predominantly homosexual,
    Before opting for the lower of these figures, it might be well to examine the rest of the Kinsey statistics, which tell us that 50% of American males and 28% of females have been involved with homosexuality either emotionally or physically during their adult lives, and that 37% of males and 20% of females have had some overt homosexual experience after adolescence. Some of this experience was extremely limited, but Kinsey reports that 25% of the males and 10% of the females have as much or more homosexual as heterosexual experience. Kinsey reports that only 4% of males and 2% of females are exclusively homosexual throughout their lives, but if the number of “homosexuals” is limited to these individuals alone, then logic demands that the number of “heterosexuals” be computed only on the basis of that 50% of the male population and 72% of the female population which has been exclusively heterosexual.
    The rights of a minority, under our Constitutional system, may not be abridged no matter how small that minority is. But the Kinsey statistics set to rest forever the notion that laws against homosexual behavior affect only an insignificant number of people. Even those who fail to be impressed by the 10% of us who are predominantly homosexual, call hardly fail to take note of the fact that under the antihomosexual laws on most of our statute books, some 25% of our population has at one time or another in the course of their adult lives been subject to arrest as homosexual “sex offenders.” It is also worth noting that our sodomy laws, though selectively enforced against homosexual acts, most often apply to heterosexual acts as well — a fact which, the Kinsey statistics indicate, make sexual “criminals” of over 90% of our population.


5  Are Homosexuals Easy to Identify ?
            By Appearance ?  Behavior ?
            Choice of Profession ?

    The common heterosexual notion that homosexuals are all alike is without foundation, and so is the old homosexual saw that “it takes one to know one.” No one can tell who is or isn't homosexual by appearance or outward behavior alone. There are Hollywood sex goddesses who are lesbians. There are professional football players who are homosexuals. There are weak, limp-wristed heterosexual men and tough, swaggering heterosexual women. There are children who seem to fit the homosexual stereotypes and may develop a homosexual orientation because they're “expected to.” And there are homosexuals who adopted the stereotypes in adolescence, either as a symbol of revolt or because we were brainwashed into believing that that's the way we were “supposed” to act.
    A lot of this confusion comes from the false notion that homosexuals are “inverts,” or people who assume the behavior and attitudes of the opposite sex. But inversion and homosexuality are not at all the same thing. “Reversal of roles” (including transvestism) is practiced by many heterosexuals, and the great majority of gay people are “typical” males and females in the pattern of our erotic responses. Most of us have no desire to be otherwise, and clinicians believe that some of us who do are driven to the notion that we “really are” members of the opposite sex by a dread of being homosexual. As the society abandons this dread, and continues its challenge to the traditional “roles” of the sexes, the concept of inversion may soon be out of date.
    The fact that most of us don't conform to the stereotypes offers no excuse whatsoever for socially condemning or otherwise violating the rights of those of us who do. It is just as important, for example, to repeal the laws against cross-dressing — another victimless crime — as it is to repeal the sodomy laws. And it is just as important to protect the rights of “effeminate” males and “butch” females against discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations as it is to offer such protection to those who can “pass.”
    Society also expects homosexuals to go into certain professions. In Ancient Greece, for example, male homosexuality was associated with athletics and the arts of war. Just how certain professions came to be identified with homosexuality in our culture is a question yet to be examined by historians, but there is no doubt that some, more than others, have been hospitable to gay men and women — just as some fields have been more hospitable to Italians or Jews.
    In the arts there has sometimes been a climate in which it was possible to be more open about sexual orientation. Thus — while it is no more true that all homosexuals are “artistic” than it is that all Jews are “clever” or all blacks “have rhythm” — the public is more likely to know the names of artists who were gay, like Michelangelo or Leonardo Da Vinci, or of poets and playwrights like Christopher Marlowe or Gertrude Stein, than it is to know the names of the gay generals and educators, statesmen and financiers who have more often been forced to hide their sexual preferences.


6  Are There Two Types of Homosexual,
         Active and Passive ?

    The idea that women are naturally passive and men naturally active in heterosexual intercourse has been thoroughly disproved by the research of Masters and Johnson, and it would appear that the traditionally prescribed roles are played by only a minority of heterosexual couples. An even smaller minority of homosexuals is bound by such roleplaying — for just as most gay women and men do not imagine that we are members of the opposite sex, we don't imagine that our partners are either. Mutuality, physically possible to a greater degree in homosexuality, is the rule in our relationships, and preference for a single form of sexual activity is the exception.
    Those of us who display such a preference — and there's no way of telling who prefers what from the degree of “masculinity” or “femininity” shown in outward behavior — do so for a variety of reasons. But some of us at least were conditioned by the vast storehouse of cultural misconceptions. Without questioning the belief that certain acts are inherently “passive” or “active,” some of us deluded ourselves with the idea that we were “not really homosexual” if we restricted our behavior. Others were sold the “two kinds of homosexual” theory and assumed, incorrectly, that we had to be one or the other.



7  Is Homosexuality “Against Nature” ?

    Man alters nature in many ways: he cuts his hair, transplants kidneys, dams rivers. But homosexuality involves no such alteration. Any animal, including man, is capable of responding to homosexual stimuli, and homosexual acts are possible for anyone to perform, with only the equipment he or she was born with. Biological researchers agree that homosexuality is almost universal among animals, and that it becomes a frequent form of activity among highly developed species. Similarly, anthropologists and historians report that there is no human culture from which homosexuality has been absent.
    People tend to think that the patterns of behavior in their own society apply to humankind in general. But anthropological studies have often disproved such generalizations. So it is with homosexuality.
    Because homosexual acts are practiced by a minority in our culture, even those who recognize how substantial a minority this is, tend to think that the same situation prevails everywhere. But anthropologists C.S. Ford and F.A. Beach surveyed 76 contemporary societies outside the West and found that in 64% of their sample, “homosexual activities of one sort or another are considered normal and socially acceptable for certain members of the community.” They also discovered that in a significant number of cultures, such as Africa's Siwan tribe, homosexual acts and love affairs are expected or “required” of 100% of the adult male population (among both animals and humans, homosexual responses seem to be less common among females).
    This does not mean that homosexual acts outnumber heterosexual acts in any culture, but simply that in a majority of cultures heterosexuality and homosexuality coexist in the same individuals, and it is only in cultures like our own, with strong antihomosexual taboos, that either exclusive heterosexuality or exclusive homosexuality is common. So, judging by the majority of the world's cultures, it would seem that bisexuality, not heterosexuality, could be described as the “biologic norm.”
    Of course, this does not mean that either exclusive heterosexuality or exclusive homosexuality is “against nature.” For, as we homosexuals point out in the context of our own society, what a minority does sexually is no more “unnatural” than such minority traits as blondness, left-handedness or being over six feet tall.
    What some people mean when they say that homosexuality (or contraception, or any of the sexual acts outside coitus that are,practiced by 95% of the American population) is against nature, is that the purpose of sexuality is procreation.
    Science has long ago abandoned the notion of “purpose” to explain the world, and the “natural law” theory is not a scientific but a theological one, based on the unprovable belief that God added pleasure to the sexual act to get people to engage in it. Many modern theologians suggest that it is just as logical to assume that God made sexuality for our pleasure and, because He knew that we would indulge in it frequently, added the effect of procreation. They note that sex, not simply procreation, is “natural” for all women and men, that it reaches into the total texture of life, is valued as a road to interpersonal love and, in some cultures, to religious ecstasy. They question whether there are specific “laws of nature,” and they believe that the natural-law idea of sexuality is arbitrary and influenced by an anti-sex bias. Antihomosexuality, they add, is just one aspect of this pervasive antisexuality.



8  Does Religion Tell Us That It's Immoral ?

    Most religions don't concern themselves with sexual morality, and the taboos enforced in our society are the product of a single religious tradition, based on the Judeo-Christian scriptures. People outside this tradition are able to state quite simply that proscriptions against homosexuality reflect philosophical convictions that are entirely subjective.
    Those within the Judeo-Christian tradition, however, have also begun to challenge the taboos. And they begin with two of this tradition's most cherished principles: that morality is more a matter of individual conscience than of rules or legalistic distinctions, and that there is more than one path to a moral life.
    Biblical injunctions, say these modern churchmen, must be seen as the words of ancient wise men who interpreted their faith in terms of their own age and their own understanding of the world. Contemporary morality, they say, must be based on all the knowledge that has become available since then. They are quite ready to ignore such scriptural injunctions as St. Paul's exhortation to slaves to stay with their masters, to defy such Old Testament prohibitions as those against wearing a scarlet dress or eating shrimp, and to reassess passages in the Bible which suggest that women are inferior to men. Today's moral decisions, they say, cannot be made on the basis of ancient rules as interpreted by medieval scholars. Rather, they must be based on a present-day understanding of “the gospel of God as love in action in the world.”
    If God is love, they say, then God is present wherever love occurs — and we are just people who happen to love members of our own sex. They believe that physical fulfillment deepens and cements love, and they do not ask homosexual women and men to commit sexual suicide. They say that no form of sexuality is either moral or immoral apart from its “inner spirit,” and they believe that casual sexual acts which involve no force or cruelty are simply meaningless, not sins. They ask for a religious rejection of guilt where there should be no guilt.
    Homosexuals are perfectly capable of making ethical judgments, and these judgments apply to our sexual relationships as well as to the rest of our lives. Many of us seek the ethical guidance of religion, and modern churchmen no longer drive us from this guidance. Rather they choose to guide their heterosexual parishioners toward the belief that sexual virtue begins with joyful acceptance of one's own sexuality and the sexuality of others. They urge them to abandon a notion of sexual morality based on personal revulsion, inherited prejudice and erroneous information.
    The point has often been made that “the Black problem” in America is really a “white problem.” Moralistic antihomosexuality, say many modern theologians, is yet another example of man's inhumanity to himself. They believe that the moral problem is that of the heterosexual majority, who fail to recognize and accept those of us in the homosexual minority as their sisters and brothers.
    There may be sincere Christians and Jews who do not share these moral views, but few churchmen challenge the Constitutional bar to laws “respecting the establishment of religion” or the principle that sexual morality is a matter to be settled within the confines of the individual conscience. Religious leaders of all denominations believe that sexual relations between consenting adults in private are not matters for regulation by government, and they have been in the forefront of the fight to repeal sodomy laws and all other laws which subject personal morality to criminal sanctions.



9   Is Homosexuality Socially Destructive?
        Has It Always Accompanied
        Decadent Societies?

    The Persian empire declined quite nicely along with strong antihomosexual taboos. Homosexuality flourished freely at the zenith of the Roman Empire, but the decline was accompanied by an increase in antihomosexual restrictions. Homosexuality thrived during the heights of Periclean Greece, Renaissance Italy and Medieval Japan. And some cultures in which homosexuality has been accepted, like those of certain African and American Indian tribes, neither rose to nor fell from world-dominating heights. The acceptance or non-acceptance of homosexuality had nothing whatever to do with the rise or decline of any culture, and no reputable historian since the 18th Century has taken this theory seriously.
    The real argument against homosexuality as socially destructive is that if everyone were exclusively homosexual, the human race would die out. This argument is nonsensical, not only because it is based on the premise that if homosexuality were socially approved, everyone would immediately prefer it, but also because anthropologists tell us that a relaxation of antihomosexual taboos decreases rather than increases the number of exclusive homosexuals.
    In our culture, whole classes of people in religious orders, plus a good many others solely of their own choice, choose to be celibate, but few suggest that such individuals are antisocial or propose laws against them. And a considerable number of married people choose not to have children, because they feel that the survival of the human species today does not depend on the procreative performance of every man and woman but, on the contrary, that our biological survival is threatened by promiscuous and irresponsible procreation.
    Our notions of homosexuality as socially destructive derive from the ancient Hebrews, who put a premium on increasing the tribal population. These notions survive today as legalized punishments for “deviation” which, because they cannot be fairly enforced, lead to such socially destructive phenomena as blackmail and official corruption. And they survive in the form of hostility and discrimination which are socially destructive because they decrease the social and economic value of homosexuals to the community as a whole. Because we are denied jobs, the society is burdened with talented, hardworking men and women on welfare rolls. Instead of accepting our social contributions (and taxes) the state pays for the prison upkeep of those of us charged with “crimes” in which no harm has come to anyone. Beds in state-supported mental hospitals are occupied by those of us who've been unable to withstand the hostile pressures. And decreased social productivity has also been the lot of our parents, burdened by unnecessary fear and guilt. It is antihomosexuality, not homosexuality, which is socially destructive.



10    Is Homosexuality a Mental Illness ?

    In his famous Letter to an American Mother, Freud stated categorically that homosexuality “cannot be categorized as an illness.” Later, some of his followers challenged that view, and their works have become the most “popular” material on the subject. The trend is again reversing, and a great number of present-day psychiatrists side with Freud.
    The illness theorists say that homosexuality is the symptom of a larger disease, and the essence of their assertion is that all of their homosexual patients are disturbed. No doubt this is true, say their opponents, but all of their heterosexual patients are disturbed as well. To assume that the “typical homosexual” is a psychiatric patient is to conclude that all women have tuberculosis from studies made in a sanitorium.
    No real cross-section of the homosexual population has ever been studied, but all of the existing research done out of clinical settings indicates that the majority of homosexuals are psychiatrically distinguishable from heterosexuals in only one way, our choice of sexual partners. Kinsey reported that of those in his sample with homosexual experience, “few could be described as pathologic.” Dr. Evelyn Hooker, head of the National Institute of Mental Health Task Force on Homosexuality, showed psychiatric tests of homosexuals to a panel of clinicians, who could not distinguish them from those of heterosexuals and found no greater incidence of mental illness. A British team headed by Michael Schofield gave a battery of tests to groups of homosexual and heterosexual prisoners, psychiatric patients and “others,” discovering that “the difference between the pairs of matched groups (prisoners, etc.) were surprisingly small and the differences between the (three) homosexual groups were surprisingly large.”
    Even supposing that all these researchers chose poor statistical samples, or conducted faulty tests, it is pointed out that the existence of even one healthy individual rebuts the contention that homosexuality is the symptom of an illness.
    But the disease theorists have another string to their bow. They say that homosexuality is in itself an illness. Their opponents reply that this is simply a matter of definition, based on the reported unhappiness of some of their patients or on a culturally determined consensus of their colleagues. Were all the Greeks mentally ill? they ask, or all the members of the Siwan tribe? Their answer is no, and they suggest that what many psychiatrists do is to recommend treatment for all those who violate sexual conventions and then proceed to diagnose their new patients as mentally ill. If one indication of mental illness is an inability to grasp reality, it is suggested that the illness theorists take another look at themselves.
    Why is the disease concept so popular if it's so full of holes? One explanation is that “sin” has become unfashionable and those who still find themselves revolted by homosexuals must find some reason for refusing to see us just as people who, for various reasons, have never learned to obey certain sexual taboos.
    It is recalled that in some countries political nonconformity is presently defined as mental illness, and that not too long ago in the U.S., the “illness” of masturbation was “treated” by such methods as castration. As psychiatrist Thomas Szasz puts it:

    “We must be careful lest, by defining homosexuality as an illness we merely shift the methods by which we control homosexual conduct. The sanctions of the criminal law are ‘punitive’ whereas the sanctions of psychiatry are ‘therapeutic.’ When psychiatrists diagnose homosexuality in a setting in which the diagnosis becomes public property — for instance in the military, in government service, in prisons — their work is psychiatric in name only. These psychiatrists act as judges, condemning people for being homosexuals.”



11  Are Homosexuals All Neurotic ?

    All researchers who interview homosexuals away from the psychiatrist's couch agree that a high percentage of us are entirely free of neurotic symptoms. There is a proportionately high number of homosexual neurotics nonetheless, and the explanation for this is simple: we're made neurotic by a hostile society. Homosexual neurotics, Dr. Hooker points out, most often display such symptoms as self-hatred, dependence and protective clowning — “traits of victimization found regularly among other rejected minority groups.”
    Unlike most other minorities, must of us can “hide in a closet,” but the need to play a false role is itself a cause of neurosis. Abstinence is no solution either, since repression of sexual thoughts and impulses is at the root of many people's troubles. All non-patient studies show that those of us who feel the least “guilt” and most completely accept our own homosexuality are the least likely to be neurotic.
    There is no need to search beyond the social pressures for the roots of neurosis among homosexuals. Rather, it is suggested that three other questions are in need of an answer: 1) Why don't all of us crack up under such extreme pressure? 2) How can we arrive at the causes and cure of “homophobia,” that obsessive and irrational fear of homosexuality which Dr. George Weinberg identifies as the real psychiatric problem? and 3) To what extent is this homophobia implicated in the neuroses of those heterosexuals who for one reason or another fail to live up to the stereotypes of the “he-man” or “the ideal woman”?



12  Are Homosexuals More “Promiscuous”
            Than Heterosexuals ?

    The Kinsey Institute surveys, again the principal statistical studies available, state that of those individuals categorized as being predominantly homosexual, 71% of the females, and 51% of the males had limited their sexual experience to no more than one or two partners — figures which correspond almost exactly to those for heterosexuals.
    Also, the idea that we will have sexual relationships with absolutely any member of our own sex is simply untrue. Exactly as with heterosexuals, we choose our partners for a variety of physical and personal characteristics, not the least of which is a willingness to participate.
    It is probably true, however, that a greater proportion of gay people, especially men, tend to view “promiscuity” in a not unfavorable light (to judge by the boasting of heterosexual men heard on any commuter train, even straight society frowns on promiscuity only officially). There is no rational reason to deny the validity of having more than one sexual partner for those — homosexual or heterosexual — who desire it. And there is no justification for the state to be concerned with the private sexual relations of any consenting individual.



13  Are Homosexual Relationships as Stable
            as Heterosexual Ones ?

    Homosexual couples are barred from showing affection in public. We are usually unable to join our partners at work-connected social functions. We're often prevented from going together to family affairs. Under the circumstances, the number of long-lasting homosexual relations is surprisingly high.
    In American society, one out of every three marriages ends in divorce, and perhaps even more would do so if children were not involved. It is odd then that we should be condemned for a supposed failure to establish long-term relationships. In fact, such relationships are very common among lesbians, and are more frequent than is generally believed among homosexual men. This large and important segment of our community has received the least attention from social scientists.
    There is nothing inherent in human nature which demands that sexual unions last a lifetime, and anthropologists tell us that societies which prize such unions, and the institution of the “nuclear family,” are only a small proportion of those that exist. In our society, a large proportion of homosexuals do desire permanence. But love often dies in a climate of oppression.



14   Is Homosexual Love Different
            from Heterosexual Love ?

    All one needs to do is to compare the homosexual love poems of such Greek masters as Anacreon, Sappho and Theocritus with heterosexual love poems of the same period to see that the content and quality of feeling expressed is identical. And all one needs to do is spend an evening with a homosexual couple to find the same qualities of commitment and tenderness, and the same problems of adjustment that are met by heterosexual couples.
    How is it that such homosexual novelists as E.M. Forster and André Gide were able to write so well and accurately about heterosexual love? — that heterosexual readers have been able to understand and identify, when these and other authors have written about homosexual love? How is it that homosexual and heterosexual friends have been able to advise and counsel each other in matters of the heart? The answer to these questions is that lovers, whether of the same or opposite sexes, share the same basic pleasures and difficulties. Recognition of this common humanity by both heterosexuals and homosexuals can go a long way toward solving the “homosexual problem” in America.


15   Does Our Society Discriminate
            Against Homosexuals ?

    “In the United States,” says psychiatrist Wainwright Churchill, “a person of known homosexual persuasion — or even suspected of such — is likely to suffer common abuse as well as abridgement of his human rights more often and in many more ways than a member of any other minority.” The very existence of the sodomy laws in most of our United States is evidence that it is official government policy to discriminate against us by denying us our basic human right to consensual sexual activity in private. Even where such laws also apply to heterosexual acts, enforcement is almost exclusively against homosexuals, often accompanied by acts of police brutality and harassment, illegal entrapment and fanatical penalties that could, in some states, send two 15-year-old boys convicted of sodomy to jail until the age of 65.
    Because these laws do not serve the proper purpose of protecting the public from any tangible danger, they are violative of our Constitution's due-process clause, and subject their victims to unreasonable seizure. Because they derive solely from theologically based taboos, they violate the prohibition against the establishment of religion. They violate the right to privacy and free association. They all too often are exploited by police officers, bailbondsmen, lawyers and magistrates. They make fearful “criminals” of millions of law-abiding citizens.
    For all these reasons, organizations including the American Law Institute, the International Congress of Criminal Law, the American Law Committee, the National Commission on Reform of the Federal Criminal Laws, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Institute for Mental Health and the American Mental Health Foundation have unanimously urged sodomy-law repeal. A number of states, including Connecticut, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois and Oregon, have responded by repealing their sodomy laws, and other states are in the process of doing so. These lawmakers are answering with reason rather than bigotry and refusing to confess themselves “scandalized” by a proposal that in England was passed with the support of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
    The sodomy laws have the added effect of inhibiting us from calling the police when robbed or attacked, for fear of being accused of a crime ourselves. But even when the police are present, a denial of equal protection under the law is often official policy. Officers have stood by while gay women and men were beaten and robbed by gangs of “queer-baiters.” Assault, theft and even murder have been condoned by police, prosecutors and judges when the criminals have been the supposed “victims” of homosexual seduction. Gay men and women are subjected to forced “treatment” under court orders. Gay bars are harassed on trumped-up charges, underworld exploitation of the gay community is condoned, and groups of us demanding our rights are brutally beaten by the police themselves.
    The catalogue of official discrimination also includes denial of employment to known homosexuals by virtue of state and federal civil service regulations. Gay women and men are denied the right to serve voluntarily in the armed forces, and if we are in the services we are subject to discharge — without veterans rights or benefits — on mere suspicion of being homosexual. However stable or hardworking, we are denied the right to keep our own children or adopt others. We have been barred from holding public office, denied the right to public housing, expelled from or denied admittance to state-supported schools, which often systematically deny their students the right to learn the facts about homosexuality.
    Private institutions are no better, and often worse. Employers and employment agencies use draft and civil-service records — or simply their own “impressions” — to deny jobs to qualified gay people. Landlords refuse us housing; bonding and insurance companies deny us coverage; hotels, restaurants and bars refuse us admittance to places of public accommodation. Sometimes the sodomy laws are used as an excuse by such bigots, but even without these laws they are presently within their rights to impose their own personal prejudices. The only way they can be prevented from doing so is by the passage of laws which will protect the rights of sexual minorities, just as they protect the rights of racial and religious minorities.
    Repeal of sodomy laws and passage of civil-rights protection will not immediately change the prevalent attitudes toward us — pity, disgust, discomfort, fear and humorous disrespect — but they will help to recast these attitudes by serving notice that a government supposedly built on the principles of freedom, justice and equality will no longer allow a tenth of its population to be used as scapegoats, to be ostracized, dehumanized, persecuted vindictively and subjected, as Kinsey and his fellow researchers put it, “to cruelties not often matched.”



16   Is There Reason to Bar Homosexuals
            from Certain Kinds of Employment?
            Are Homosexuals Security Risks ?

    Few suggest that we are less suited to high responsibility in science or government, or that our sexual orientation makes us more likely to indulge in loose talk. Indeed, the necessity for keeping their private lives secret has made gay government employees more than ordinarily discreet. Rather, the major argument for barring homosexuals from sensitive employment is that we are more subject to blackmail. But we are subject to blackmail because we can be fired for being gay — and the obvious solution is to change the regulations. A U.S. court has ruled, in fact, that open homosexuals may not be removed from employment on “security” grounds, since there are no secrets for a blackmailer to uncover.
    Despite the efforts to bar us from maximum-security jobs, it is clear that many of us have been so employed. And of the hundreds of cases in recent years in which sexual matters have led to treasonable acts, only a handful have involved homosexuals, while the vast majority have involved male heterosexuals, often under the spell of later-day Mata Haris. The fact that homosexuality is often associated with “communism” by American fanatics, and with “decadent capitalism” by fanatics in Cuba is sufficient to prove that the “security risk” fear has nothing whatever to do with reality, or with national security, but derives solely from the pervasive and irrational prejudices common to Western culture.



17   Should Homosexuals Be Allowed to Work
            with Children in Schools and Camps?
            Are Homosexuals Child Molesters ?

    All researchers on the subject agree that child molestation is primarily the work of neither homosexuals nor heterosexuals but of a distinct category of men (child molestation by women, either of males or females, is either extremely rare or, for various reasons, unreported) who are known as “pedophiles.” These men are exclusively attracted to children, often without regard to their sex, and it is noted in all studies that the majority of those apprehended for molesting young boys also have a history of molesting young girls.
    Though some cases of child molestation are not committed by pedophiles, the myth that homosexuals are more likely to have such lapses of judgment and control is disproved by the statistics. These indicate that a greater proportion of heterosexuals is likely to attempt child-molestation, and that the percentage of males among children molested is considerably lower than the percentage of predominantly homosexual males in the population. It is also noted that the use of force, while fairly common among the molesters of female children, is statistically insignificant among the molesters of males.
    Most molestation, incidentally , takes place away from a school or camp setting, and no greater percentage of males is molested in these sensitive settings. In fact, in the entire history of the New York City school system, there have been many reported cases of molestation of females, but only one case of molestation of a male. Homosexuals join heterosexuals in agreeing that young people as well as adults must be protected from unwanted sexual advances, and the idea that a homosexual teacher or counselor is less trustworthy is just another example of the society's refusal to see gay women and men as responsible human beings.



18   Must There Be Any Laws Relating
            to Homosexuals ?   What About
                  Prostitution?   Public Sex ?

    Lesbians hardly ever patronize prostitutes, and homosexual men do so much less frequently than heterosexual men. (This may come as a surprise to those whose reading about homosexuality is limited to books about male hustlers). But our experience as the real victims of laws against victimless crimes leads us to the view that all such laws should be repealed — whether applied to homosexuals or heterosexuals.
    Laws against sex in public places are somewhat more complicated since they are partially designed to protect non-participants from unwanted annoyance. Also, only a small proportion of gay people prefer to indulge in sexual activity in such places as public men's rooms. But those who have studied the subject extensively, like sociologist Laud Humphreys, point out that the “action” in such settings is structured so that no individual need fear being an unwilling witness or participant, and that if such action were truly “public,” it would hardly be necessary for the police to use such techniques of discovery as peepholes, trick mirrors and closed-circuit TV. They add that the socially destructive side-effects of such “tearoom” activity — blackmail, corruption, destruction of families and reputations — are largely the result of police activity, and they urge that law-enforcement manpower be used where there is the greatest need: to protect people against genuine crimes.



19   If There Weren't Any Antihomosexual Laws,
            Would Homosexuals Be Encouraged to
            Proselytize ?   Would There Be More
            Homosexuals as a Result ?

    Most of us haven't the slightest desire to make converts, and chances are that if we tried we'd have very little success. It is curious that the same people who argue that homosexuality is “unnatural” and the result of deep-seated pathology also seem to think that heterosexuals will be easily won over unless protected by the law.
    No, homosexuals don't proselytize. But we do tell those young people who are beginning to discover themselves as homosexuals that they're neither criminals nor freaks. We do let them know just how many mature, responsible. happy gay people there actually are in our society. And we do fight the repressive forces that prevent people from knowing and expressing their real sexual feelings.
    If one accepts homosexuality as within the usual range of human experience, it hardly matters whether such open advocacy increases the number of homosexuals. It is nonetheless unlikely to do so. There is no more homosexuality today than there was when the subject could never be discussed openly. There is no higher incidence in countries which have never had repressive laws, and no more homosexuals in Illinois than there were before that state repealed its sodomy law in 1961. Rather, it is likely that there will be fewer exclusive homosexuals and a smaller number of us who conform to society's stereotypes or restrict our social lives to the underground gay world. It is certain that there will be fewer “disturbed” homosexuals and, for that matter, fewer of those “homophobic” heterosexuals who are so afraid of discovering homosexual impulses in themselves that they withdraw from any loving relationships with members of their own sex, including their children, or frustrate and destroy their individual personalities in a distorted notion of what it means to be a man or a woman.


20   Is it Better, In This Society,
                to Be Heterosexual ?

    Is it better to be white? Or gentile? Or descended from the settlers on the Mayflower? These are questions that should never be asked seriously by anyone who believes in our Constitutional principles. But they are asked nonetheless, and members of our oppressed ethnic minorities once wondered whether it wouldn't be better to “pass” if possible, or at least try as hard as they could to fit into the prescribed patterns. Now these minorities have come to understand that the only answer is to be exactly what you are and proud of it — that avoidance of insanity does not consist in conformity but in protest against injustice.
    Homosexuals too now realize that our first duty toward ourselves is to accept nothing less than the same rights and dignities accorded others. We are no longer willing to accept the tyranny of the majority, and we see the efforts to describe us as “criminal” or “immoral” or “sick” for what these efforts always have been, political maneuvers aimed at stripping us of our personal values, at constricting the human personality and at substituting conformity for social diversity. We are serving notice that we'll tolerate no more brainwashing or brutalization.
    If, in the process of fighting for our rights, we receive even greater rebuffs or are subjected to even more savage persecution, it may not matter. For we are free of the fears and guilts which have allowed us to be deprived of our human rights. We are free!



BIBLIOGRAPHY

GENERAL REFERENCES

Churchill, W.: Homosexual Behavior Among Males (1967)
Hoffman, M.: The Gay World (1968)
Kinsey, A., Pomeroy, W. & Martin. C.: Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948)
Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin & Gebhard, P.: Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)
Marmor, J., ed: Sexual Inversion (1965)
Schofield, M.: Sociological Aspects of Homosexuality (1965)
Weinberg, G.: Society and the Healthy Homosexual (1972)
West, D.: Homosexuality (1955)


REFERENCES TO SPECIFIC QUESTIONS

2. Money, J., Hampson, J.G. & Hampson, J.S.: An Examination of Some Basic Sexual Concepts (Bulletin of Johns Hopkins Hospital: 1955)
Ovesey, L.: Pseudohomosexuality and Homosexuality in Man (in Marmor)
Perloff, W.: Hormones and Homosexuality (in Marmor)

3. Cory, D. & Leroy, J.: The Homosexual and His Society (1963) (Also questions 15, 16,17)
Freud, S.: The Psychogenesis of Homosexuality in a Woman

4. Gebhard, P.: Incidence of Overt Homosexuality in the United States and Western Europe (National Institute of Mental Health Working Paper)

5. Hooker, E.: Male Homosexuals and their “Worlds” (in Marmor) (Also 6, 10. 11, 12, 13)

6. Masters & Johnson: The Human Female; Anatomy of Sexual Response (1960)

7. Beach, F.: Sexual Behavior in Animals and Men (1950)
Denniston: Ambisexuality in Animals (in Marmor)
Ford. C. & Beach. F.: Patterns of Sexual Behavior (1951)
Taylor, G.: Historical and Methodological Aspects of Homosexuality (in Marmor)
Valente, M_: Sex: The Radical View of a Catholic Theologian (1970) (Also 1, 8, 11, 20)

8. Pittenger, N.: Time for Consent: A Christian's Approach to Homosexuality (1970) (Also 7, 12, 13, 19)
Szasz, T.: Legal and Moral Aspects of Homosexuality (in Marmor) (Also 9, 10, 20)

9. Licht, M.: Sexual Life in Ancient Greece (1932) (Also 14)
Kiefer, O.: Sexual Life in Ancient Rome (1934)
Magee, Bryan: One in Twenty (1966)

10. Freud, S.: Letter to an American Mother (American Journal of Psychiatry; 1951)

14. Baldwin, J.: Giovanni's Room
Forster, E. M.: Maurice
Gide, A.: The Counterfeiters
Isherwood, C.: A Single Man

15. Hooker, E. and others: Final Report of the Task Force on Homosexuality (National Institute of Mental Health: 1969) (Also 5, 19)
Parker: Homosexuals and Employment (1970) (Also 16)
    
17. De Francis, V.: Protecting the Child Victim of Sex Crimes by Adults (American Humane Society: 1969)
Gebhard, P., Gagnon, J., Pomeroy, W. & Christenson, C.: Sex Offenders (1965)

18. Humphreys, L.: Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places (1970)

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