These words, printed in the Mattachine Review in December 1957, express a theory and politics of homosexuality widely shared among Americans involved in the so-called homophile movement. Homosexuality was viewed as a denning aspect of an individual's identity but it was not assumed to mark out a distinctive psychological and moral human terrain. Indeed, it was widely believed – and still is by many who are self described as homosexual – that a politics anchored in a concept of homosexual difference has the effect of perpetuating demeaning and disempowering images of “the homosexual.” For most members of the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, the legitimation of homosexuality pivoted on the claim that homosexuals share a common humanity with heterosexuals. Was this strategy a failure of nerve on the part of these homophile organizations? I do not think so. In the context of the 1950s in America, where homosexuality was framed as a difference that signified a deviant, polluted identity, it was not unreasonable, nor ineffective, for individuals to legitimate homosexuality by asserting a common, universal humanity.