Letters:

Gentlemen:

Effective immediately, please discontinue my subscription to your publication.

We are of a bit different opinions in regards to the editorial content of your magazine and I do not find it of any particular interest to me, therefore...

Actually, I wish you luck in your efforts though frankly, I think you have quite a task on your hands trying to convince those who just "can't see it your way." A. O. Philadelphia

Dear Sir:

Please accept the enclosed two dollars and forty cents ($2.40) for renewal of my subscription to ONE magazine.

I wish to take this opportunity to commend the organizers of ONE magazine and the Mattachine Foundation for their brave efforts in this ticklish cause. You have my sincerest blessings and best of luck. R. H. San Diego

Gentlemen:

Hurray for Mr. Ferrar! It is most heartening to read an article by a heterosexual which displays such an intelligent interest in the problem at hand. I realize that there are others who are interested and who think clearly, seeing our faults as well as our virtues, but few will do what he has done.

I was particularly delighted with his quotation of himself: "If the only way you can tell one is by peeking through a key-hole, then what's so important about it socially? Swishes are the exceptions, not the rule." I sincerely hope that he will continue to believe and to say this. I wholeheartedly

agree.

While I can understand his attitude about our wanting to be honored, I feel that he did not entirely understand our motive for mentioning the accomplishments of homosexuals known to the world for their con-

tributions to mankind. It is not for the encouragement of those among us who, because of much repetition, are prone, consciously or unconsciously, to believe and accept the onus put upon us by the jokes, slurs and direct accusations?

It was a bitter experience for me, passing through the usual tempestuous adjustment period of adolescence, to find that I was a homosexual. I felt that the burden was mine alone, that I was a pariah and must cry "unclean, unclean" in leprous isolation-I didn't; I just cried. Columbus couldn't have been more elated than I when I discovered that others had traveled the same road and were not "unclean," but on the contrary, were fine, acceptable members of the human race and honored for their contributions. I found that I could hold my head high and contribute in my own capacity.

You are right, Mr. Ferrar, I do want to be accepted-and honored too, but only as I deserve it and just as a regular guy, not as a homosexual-except as that is necessary to counteract the mistakenly accepted prototype.

Mention of the prototype recalls another of Mr. Ferrar's points which I feel is very well taken. "... people are usually judged by petty, little things... All in all, how responsible they feel to the world." I'm glad that Mr. and Mrs. Ferrar are cognizant of the fact that they may know the wrong gay people-or possibly not enough-not great enough a cross section. I should like to paraphrase one of Mr. F.'s own sentences. "For every socially irresponsible homo there are ten who are not..." I imagine the percentages are about the same for heteros and homos in this respect. This, however, does not in any way detract from the truth, force, or importance of the original statement.

As far as concerns the name ONE and the meaning behind it which so disturbs Mr. F., I think it (the name) not inapropos. We are a minority in that we are bound together, not by any "very special 'mystic' tie" but by such common one as bind any

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