Letters:
Dear Sir:
MADLY
I was recently given a copy of your ONE by a friend of mine, and I was most interested to read it.
I am a homosexual, and am 32. Out here in Australia the position of the homosexual is a most difficult one, due to the extreme narrowness on the part of most individuals in the matter of sex. Even those discussing "normal" sex are sometimes regarded as filthy-minded or dominated by sex.
As a matter of fact, the part of sex in most people's minds is represented only by the sex act itself. Anything apart from this apparently has no meaning, or else is regarded as quite impossible..
Anyway, could you please tell me how to obtain copies of your publication ONE, and/ or any other. publication dealing with homosexuality (male)?
South Australia
Gentlemen: Inclosed a dollar bill pinned to my address label so that you will continue to send my copy of ONE via first class mail. The statement that the business department of the magazine was facing the realities is a step in the right direction it seems to me. Now if the editorial department will only face the realities of our life, perhaps . .
one
It is a reality that the activity of hx people (hx is a convenient symbol) is unpalatable to the average heterosexual person. For that reason, the heterosexual group a truly overwhelming majority will not accept overt hx behavior. Consequently any attempt to gain acceptance of the hx minority by the majority is flying in the face of reality.
On the other hand, the laws against sex are aimed at the population as a whole, so any attempt to reduce the laws against sex to a meaningful base is beneficial to all groups. It seems to me, therefore, that the aims of ONE should be to formulate minimal laws against sex crimes, and advocate their passage in the legislatures of the various states. For the rest, well, let it go until objective number one is achieved. Then set up another goal.
ONE suffers from what I can only think of as editorial ineptitude. In the realm of fiction there are two kinds of writing good and bad. On a scale from 0 to 100, the fiction ONE has published has been low indeed. It would be better for the magazine to go without fiction and poetry than to publish bad writing.
The article which the editors so blithely entitled HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE was intended to be a reductio ad absurdum of the aims of the magazine and the Mattachine Foundation; it was badly written in that it wasn't witty or biting, which may be why it was presented as a serious piece of work. (Or so I assumed from the editorial comments which accompanied it.)
While I am not at all in agreement with a psychiatrist friend and his attitude toward the solution of the hx individual's problem, I am quite in agreement with his statement
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