A SERIOUS LOOK

AT DR. RAY EVANS

by Donald Webster Cory and John P. LeRoy

When pot shots are taken wildly and aimlessly, they strike in curious places. Thus, in the January 1964 issue of One, Dr. Ray Evans, clinical psychologist, reviews our book, The Homosexual and His Society, and accuses us of not achieving what we never set out to do: namely, to offer a work meeting the rigors of scientific discipline. Ours is a view of various aspects of homosexual life in America, as we have observed it, as we report it, interpret it, and analyze it. Evans may not like our way of doing it, and for reasons that are quite evident, but to speak of the work, in any part, as not being substantiated by evidence, is to miss its essence. In an introductory note, one of the authors. stated:

This work . . . is a subjective study not only of the homosexual in America, but of his changed situation in the changing American society, as seen by one who helped . . . to bring about such changes and by one who was caught up in the sweep of them. (Our emphasis). After having read Evan's review, one can only conclude that he missed this crucial point entirely.

Evans proceeds to take isolated quotations out of context, misinterpret them completely, and then use this to justify his thesis that the book is not an objective, unbiased treatment of homosexuality, which it was never intended to be, any more than that was the intent with The Homosexual in America. The subjective nature of both works was stated so explicitly that it would have seemed impossible to miss this, but Dr. Evans accomplished the impossible!

Evans finds the book out of sociological focus because we berate homosexuals for copying heterosexual patterns, and says that we do not recognize "that homosexuals who aspire to a monogamous life of faithfulness. integrity, and fidelity have incorporated values of their own larger society, not merely copied them from the heterosexual members of that society." We do not berate the homosexuals who do this; we point out the frustating effects of their actions. Because they are not heterosexuals, the homosexuals must develop values of their own, if they are to build their own meaningful relationships, and if they are to reduce the guilt, shame, and self-abnegation which many feel

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