San Francisco are busy, fulltime. One cannot fail to observe, however, their recent tendency to focus attention within their own Bay Area, letting national interests take second place. Whether by intention or otherwise there is the distinct danger that national status may slip through their fingers if such an emphasis continues.

At ONE during 1965 there has been rather noisily what has variously been termed a power struggle, a bitch fight, or a bold stroke for freedom. Reports are that some of those who engineered the so-called "move of ONE'S offices" call it a mutiny. In any case, ONE has chosen to fight it out in the courts. Some think this shows courageous determination to prove publicly that homophiles, like anyone else, must obey the laws. Others find this public disturbance offensive, evidence of bad judgment in how such matters should be handled.

Whether ONE's stance in this matter gains for the Homophile Movement another legal landmark, as did their U. S. Supreme Court case, or whether it merely antagonizes many homophiles and confirms the public in its prejudices about homosexuals remains to be seen. Still another possibility is that a Pyrrhic victory for ONE'S Members might give them a moral victory but leave the victors limply exhausted.

If reports coming to us from the "loyalists" on Venice Boulevard are true they have so far been winning the points in Court, and the mutineers have been losing. One thing we all can verify is that the rebels no longer use the name of ONE and that might seem to pretty well hint at "the shape of things to come."

UNPLEASANT TRUTHS

In conclusion, what has this article tried to do? Merely to be unpleasant?

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To upgrade some organizations and downgrade others? Hardly! Its purpose has been to present a realistic appraisal based upon such evidence as it has been possible to acquire, hoping that all of us may give this American Homophile Movement some serious second-thoughts.

Are we afraid of facts? If so, could it have been we were previously believing in fables? Have we on the East Coast enough social maturity to digest the unpleasant truth that the Western organizations are years ahead of us in their accomplishments? If we take such a discovery rightly, we just might settle down to doing some better work and waste less time on big talk.

The only thing that will really impress anyone, homophile or other, is what we do and how well we do it. The Homophile Movement still is a very awkward, clumsy social effort, struggling to find its way, but the time those in Los Angeles had back in 1947 to search out answers has by now been used up. Radio, TV and the public press now take note of some phase of the Homophile Movement nearly every week. It falls upon us to have some answers these days and they better be good. To find these answers is the task lying before the Homophile Movement today or else!

It is my considered judgment that we shall get on with the job in the best way by cutting out petty bickerings, by giving honor where honor rightly is due and, if necessary, by working each in our own ways should working together be found overly wasteful of time and emotion. The Homophile Movement is here to stay; that is for sure. But how fast it moves and how well it does is something which the eye of history will coldly record without fear or favor, and then set down in the pages of books we none of us will write or be here to read. The verdict depends upon us.