Der Weg

zu freundschaft und Toleranz

The editors of ONE have turned over to me three recent issues of the West German monthly magazine, The Way to Friendship and Tolerance, with the request that I use my knowledge of German to give ONE's readers some idea of homosexual publications in Europe. The Way is a new name for what was formerly called The Island of Friendship and Tolerance, an article from which appeared in the January edition of ONE.

The Way is the official organ of the Federation for the Rights of Man, affiliate of the International Order of Friendship. The change of name would suggest differences in policy, but unfortunately the content is as unaltered as the format. The Way is very hard to describe: simultaneously pedantic and frivolous, militant and degenerate, its overall impression is a kind of elegant lecherousness. In short, it's in poor taste and hardly the sort of magazine anyone would care to be caught with, in America at any rate. There is no intent of superciliousness in that remark or what follows. Indeed it is too bad that we cannot say the flattering things we wish we could about our brother publication, but unfortunate though it may be, we are reporting the truth as it appears to us.

The magazine is a nice size (about six by eight) and is printed on good quality paper (by European standards) with cover and all photographs on slick but thin stock. I have the January, March and April editions of this year, and the cover of each bears a photograph of a very young, very German-looking boy. January's selection is wearing a sweater, can and pipe; March's sports a fuzzy turtle neck minus cap and pipe, while April's offering (it being spring and all) is revealed from the waist up and wears nothing at all.

The photographs inside (there are always four or five, depending on how many advertisers use the slick pages) are frankly sexy, lugubriously soulful or both. They are nicely done and usually more interesting than the cover.

Each edition contains a rather superficial but somewhat informative article on the situation among homosexuals in other countries. The three magazines I have deal with the situations in Great Britain. Austria and the U. S. Army. The last registers Continental disapprobation with the contradictions between the known prevalence of homosexuality in America (as revealed in the Kinsey report) and the pig-headed puritanical concepts of military authorities on the subject.

page 13