But it hardly follows that most or even many homosexuals are members of so complex an organization as the communist party. Too many of our people are involved in their social oppression, their personal love adventures in an atmosphere of legal persecution and their day-to-day problems of making a living and paying their bills to have any energy, let alone inclination, to participate in revolutionary movements. As you read this, ask yourself how many homosexuals you have ever known who were communists or even "left" in their political thinking.

Homosexuals are participants in the dominant culture of contemporary America and have most of the same prejudices, likes and dislikes as the dominant culture. Many of them even accept the heterosexual belief that homosexuals are inferior. Is it reasonable, then, that any sizeable number of homosexuals are now or have ever been communists?

It is unlikely that any of these articles equating the twin evils of communism and homosexuality would have much influence on the thinking of our people, but this of course is not their point. The writers and editors of such propaganda as appears in Mr. have found that by tying in these two unrelated horrors they are in a uniquely satisfying position: They can promote the fashionable anti-red hysteria by claiming left political activity to be a sign of sexual perversion and neurosis. They can present their rotten propaganda with which the public has grown bored in sugar-coated doses by the trick of combining it with the most "wicked" and simultaneously the most titillating of all sexual deviations.

Adlai Stevenson recently commented in Paris that McCarthyism in the U.S. of 1953 might be compared to Hitlerism in the Germany of 1933. This was a profound statement the implications of which touch our minority very directly. Have we so soon forgotten that Hitler, in making the world safe for fascism by pledging to destroy communism, found it expedient to destroy several million Jews, trade unionists, Catholics-and homosexuals?

Harry Johnson

The Editors hope that Mr. Johnson's bold treatment of a controversial subject rouses an equally bold response. Readers are reminded that ONE is particularly unique in its policy of giving space to the widest possible range of views. It aims at being a stimulant rather than a pleasing unguent. And, while ONE has a definite policy of initiating legal reform and fighting reasonless prosecution, it does not necessarily agree with each of all the writers whose work appears on these pages. It offers you ideas for what they're worth and hopes never to attempt telling you what to think.

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