Gay-Rights Rioters Speak Only for the Loud Few : Homosexuality: AB 101 was incipient registration--perilous because bigotry has not been fatally stricken, only set back.

I was one of the founders of the first homosexual organization in U.S. history, the Matachine, in the 1950s. We worked for no special privileges but for understanding and cooperation. Our basic argument was that changes in sex laws would not benefit us alone but everyone. Because of the Matachine’s adult, informed and restrained appeal to reason, it eventually brought about momentous changes in California sex laws which have been followed by much of the United States.

Another of our concepts was that sexual laws favoring any particular behavior over others were parochial, repressive and a sectarian trespass on the rights of everyone. No particular morality should be granted special privileges and immunities.

It was our original conviction that, once these changes were made and we were allowed the invisibility that is the right of every citizen, we should fold our tents, disband and vanish from the scene having accomplished our purpose.

The heirs of our long, hard and literally dangerous pioneering have opted to go in the opposite direction. High on a liberty they had no part in winning, they demand special privileges on no discernable basis. Sharing a preference for certain forms of sexual intercourse does not prove that they have a special culture. They are different from the rest of society only in wanting to advertise those preferences that are private matters to everyone else.

It should be noted that no organization speaks for all homosexuals. The overwhelming majority of what we call “homosexuals” more often than not are unknown to the community, their own families and often their spouses. Harming no one, they simply want privacy and the freedom from prying into their personal lives which are no one’s personal business but their own. It is literally true that all professional homosexual organizations that thrive on private and public grants speak only for the extremely few who have the compulsion to flaunt their sexual preference.

AB 101, the so-called gay-rights bill, offered no more protection for sexual deviants than existing and less invidious laws. Its most serious defect lay in placing the sexual preferences of non-offenders on public record in the course of a lawsuit. This is incipient registration. Vocal homosexuals may not fear this because they are sure that societal progress is onward and upward and not cyclic. Bigotry has not been fatally stricken, only set back. When the time is ripe, it will return, and all the homosexuals who insisted on going public will be the first on the lists of vice squads.

The hysterical few who riot speak only for themselves. The overwhelming majority of self-respecting citizens who want privacy in these matters live exemplary lives. It’s the only way of winning respect and acceptance.