Anonymous: Letter from Boston, 1907

"Here . . . we really need this kind of activity"

Reedited by Jonathan Ned Katz from Gay American History (1976).

In 1907, the German Monthly Reports of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee prints a letter from Boston, Massachusetts, supporting the committee's efforts to combat bigotry against homosexuals and discussing the situation in the United States. The American correspondent writes:

I'm always delighted to bear about even the smallest success you have in vanquishing deep-rooted prejudices. And here in the United States we really need this kind of activity. In the face of Anglo-American hypocrisy, however, there is at present no chance that any man of science would have enough wisdom and courage to remove the veil which covers homosexuality in this country. And how many homosexuals I've come to know! Boston, this good old Puritan city, has them by the hundreds. The largest percentage, in my experience, comes from the Yankees of Massachusetts and Maine, or from New Hampshire. French Canadians are also well represented.

Here, as in Germany, homosexuality extends throughout all classes, from the slums of the North End to the highly fashionable Back Bay. Reliable homosexuals have told me names that reach into the highest circles of Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C., names which have left me speechless with astonishment. I have also noticed 'that bisexuality must be rather widespread. But I'll admit that I'm rather skeptical when homosexua1 friends say that they're far more attracted by the female sex. I'm often amused by someone assuring me of his bisexuality and later meeting him where there are no women.

There is astonishing ignorance among the Uranians I've become to know about their own true nature. This is probably a result of absolute silence and intolerance, which have never advanced real morality at any time or place. But with the growth of the population and increase of intellectuals, the time is coming when America will finally be forced to confront the riddle of homosexuality.

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