Coming to Terms

Homosexuals--perhaps as many as 12 million American men and women --are one of the nation's most despised and harassed minority groups. A poll taken for CBS-TV not long ago revealed that two out of three Americans look on homosexuals with disgust, discomfort or fear, and one out of ten regards them with outright hatred. A majority considers homosexuality more dangerous to society than abortion, adultery or prostitution. Society's hostility toward the homosexual--particularly the male --leaves him wide open to blackmail and job discrimination. Police, concentrating more on attempting to control homosexuals than those who prey on them, often resort to such quasi-legal and demeaning tactics as entrapment. The stresses of living hidden lives create in homosexuals a high incidence of anxiety and other psychological problems.

Injustice and Suffering. A far-reaching report on homosexuality for the Federal Government's National Institute of Mental Health, released this week, maintains that such hostility is unjustified by any dangers that homosexuality may pose for society. The 14-member task force that prepared the report was headed by U.C.L.A.'s Evelyn Hooker, an erudite, compassionate psychologist who is one of the nation's most distinguished researchers in the field. A majority of the panel, which included psychiatrists, sociologists, anthropologists, lawyers and a theologian, urges states to abolish the laws that make homosexual intercourse a crime for consenting adults in private. More controversially, their report recommends that government and private employers "reassess" their current standards and implies that they should hire homosexuals who can pass normal screening procedures. (A three-man minority of the task force dissents, saying that research is still insufficient for making policy judgments.) The report is the first by any group under U.S. Government auspices to take this stance.

Says the report: "The extreme opprobrium that our society has attached to homosexual behavior has done more social harm than good, and goes beyond what is necessary for the maintenance of public order and human decency. Homosexuality presents a major problem for our society largely because of the amount of injustice and suffering entailed in it, not only for the homosexual but also for those concerned about him."

The report comes at a time when homosexuals are more visible and assertive than ever--in films and plays that explicitly depict their private lives and in public organizations that militate for their civil rights. Still, the report notes, parents who find out that their child is a homosexual or a lesbian almost inevitably suffer, fearing that they are somehow guilty of a tragic failure.

The task force notes that "misinformation abounds." The "homosexual orientation" is not a ground for despair. Endorsing the findings of pioneering research that have accumulated in the past two decades, the group says that "many homosexuals are good citizens, holding regular jobs and leading productive lives." Psychiatric treatment permits about 30% of adults who seek help to enjoy a normal sex life. An even larger percentage of children who are incipient homosexuals can be reached in time to avoid the condition entirely.

To ascertain which current techniques of counseling and prevention are most effective, to develop new ones and delve into the still uncertain patterns and multiple causes of homosexuality, the task force recommends establishment of a major U.S. center for the study of sexuality--from sex patterns in animals to all kinds of normal and abnormal human sexual behavior. Too often in the past, it says, competent researchers have been discouraged from entering the field by the taboos that surround it--and by the difficulties of obtaining research funds. Other key points: teachers and youth-group counselors should be better informed about homosexuality so that they can help rather than hector the young; law officers should be given facts to set against their irrational feelings. "Disgust and anxiety interfere with an objective understanding of the problem, and could be prevented or alleviated if valid information about homosexuality were disseminated," the report says. Among the homosexuals, "it is important to counteract the prevalent sense of hopelessness and inevitability."

Puritanical Proscriptions. Distinctions between types of homosexuals should be at the heart of the nation's legal policies, the report argues. Penalties should remain stringent for homosexuals who commit forcible rape, seduce children or commit sex acts in public. But "discreet homosexuality is the private business of the individual rather than a subject for public regulation"; prohibition of "the crime against nature," as many statute books coyly phrase it, merely raises the homosexual's vulnerability to blackmail and "exacerbates" his mental-health problems. The commission recommends that the U.S. follow the example of England, which two years ago legalized homosexual acts between consenting adults in private --as recommended by the celebrated Wolfenden report--and has suffered no discernible ill effects. The U.S., along with the Soviet Union, is one of the few countries in the world that have such strict proscriptions against homosexual practices. Since 1952, the sobersided American Law Institute has recommended that the individual states repeal such statutes. So far, only two have enacted a Wolfenden-type law--Illinois in 1961 and Connecticut last summer, to take effect in 1971.

The Hooker report's sobering implication that society has been grossly unfair to the homosexual is sure to stir controversy, and its recommendations are bound to be adopted only slowly. Still, the research makes clear that Americans can now recognize the diversity of homosexual life and understand that an undesirable handicap does not necessarily make everyone afflicted with it undesirable.

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