HUMANITY: BEING HOMOSEXUALS

"HUMANITY" becomes important only when contrasted with the nonhuman. Since no nonhuman creature is nearly as intelligent as are we on this planet, and we have yet to contact non-earth cultures, "humanity" is really not an important, even a relevant concept. Accept it: all those creatures that look like people are people — human beings. None of them has to prove that to anyone. Given this common base of human beingness, what matters is not humanity (human beingness) but the nature of the person — that is, not our base similarity, but our particular differences. He who is ashamed of his difference is ashamed of himself. All homosexuals in our culture start out being ashamed of ourselves. Isn't it time we outgrew that? The world tries to hold back the tide of change and as HUMAN BEINGS we need to remind them about what happens when a group of persons are held against their own free will. I know that in keeping homosexuals and lesbians down within constrained universality, in keeping us from developing our own particular cultures, heterosexuals have not gained but lost; that the longer heterosexuals oppress us with a false universality we shall all continue to lose; and that difference need not mean hostility, but repressed difference must. Everyone needs a group to identify with, and mankind is too large and meaningless a group for any adult to identify with satisfactorily. The group is the emotional extension of the self. He who is without a group often cannot know who and what he is. Mankind would be a small-enough group to identify with only if man had to share dominion over this planet with another intelligent race. Since that is not the case, our "humanity" is an irrelevant question, for we all have that. To rest on our "humanity", on our commonness, would deprive us of all motivation to assert ourselves and make our own contributions. Further, if we are all the same, what have we to say to each other? On the other hand, if we are all very different, we cannot communicate with each other, for we mean different things even by the same words, and speak past each other (as do homosexuals with lesbians and either with heterosexuals). Only they who are roughly alike can contribute to each other most meaningfully. The world naturally resolves itself to groups based on rough similarity, and interaction within such groups is the base not only of daily personal satisfaction but also of cultural progress. The most frequent, intensive, and constructive interaction takes place within these cultural entities, and much less among different entities. Homosexuals and lesbians have been denied cultural entities of their own but will have them soon. Only when we do might you be able to understand what there is to be proud of in being homosexual or lesbian. But for the time being, just realize that, as heterosexuals have been writing, talking, painting and drawing about heterosexuality for thousands of years in utter oblivion of homosexuality and lesbianism; continue to work feverishly within heterosexual themes without seeming to wear out all the possibilities; and do not feel any emptiness in their lives on that account, so homosexuals and so lesbians will in time come naturally to be fully wrapped up in living and expressing their lives and feelings, oblivious of heterosexuals and heterosexuality, and not feel any loss thereby.