American Experience

MAN (archival)

Richard Enman, president of the Mattachine Society of Florida, whose goal is to legalize homosexuality between consenting adults, was a reluctant participant in tonight's program. Present laws give the adult homosexual only the choice of being, to simplify the matter, heterosexual and legal or homosexual and illegal. This, to a homosexual, is no choice at all.

INTERVIEWER

What type of laws are you after? Well, let me say first of all what type of laws we are not after, because there has been much to-do that the society was in favor of the legalization of marriage between homosexuals and the adoption of children and such as that, and that is not at all factual at all. Homosexuals do not want that. You might find some fringe character someplace who says that that's what he wants. Are you a homosexual? Ye... well, that's yes and no. I was a homosexual. I first engaged in such acts when I was 14 years old. I was never seduced by an older person or anything like that. But I gave it up about, oh, I forget, some years ago, over four years ago. It's not my cup of tea.