Dr. Wand, Bishop of London, on "the vice wave that is supposed to be surging over the country," says this sort of thing is not new and the Church has been giving consideration to it. "While we must protect society, we must not permit ourselves to be driven into panic legislation.”
American airman in court-martial at Ruislip, Middlesex, for murder of another airman, who he claimed was homosexual:
Corpse of U.S. airman Milton Martinez found by roadside, strangled, head battered. Airman Donald Colerick taken in custody after telling friends, "I'm in trouble; I killed a queer."
Colerick had picked up Martinez, a stranger, in a borrowed car, alleged that Martinez made improper advances, and being ordered out of the car, had "swung at me with a jug. I grabbed him. He grabbed me around the neck. I do not know what happened after that... When I was 13, a homosexual molested me. I have hated them ever since."
Prosecution charged Colerick himself had made the sexual advances, had attacked and killed Martinez, leaving his body by the road. Defense entered plea of momentary insanity due to childhood trauma, Colerick found guilty, unpremeditated murder: 20 years hard labor.
ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, Dr. Geoffrey Fisher: "There is now a mounting dismay at the realization that the 'vices of Sodom and Gomorrah' appear to be rife among us . . . These people . . . cannot be helped until Homosexual they accept . . . rules of conduct based on the moral law. . . indulgence is a shameful vice and a grievous sin from which deliverance is to be sought by every means. A great number of those now entangled in this net of corruption could, by frank recognition of this fact and by the grace of God, be delivered at once and could thus help to deliver others."
In STATESMAN & NATION, Sherwin Bailey, Central Lecturer for the Church of England Moral Welfare Council, wrote: "Hand in hand with legal reform must go a change in attitude on the part of the community towards a minority which is peculiarly handicapped . . . The Moral Welfare Council has for some time been much concerned with all the problems legal, theological, social, personal to which homosexuality gives rise, and that a group has been at work on various kinds of research in this connection."
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In the same issue, a "Headmaster" wrote regarding police decoys and agents provocateur. "Do adult males need the protection of the law when smiled on in lavatories? As a schoolmaster, I have noticed what an excellent teacher the man of homosexual or bi-sexual nature may be. Of course, he must have ethical standards parallel to his heterosexual colleague, and perhaps stricter. But his problem of self-control, and his search for suitable companionship and affection, are rendered much more difficult by the sense of belonging to a persecuted minority . . . Fear of social disgrace, coupled with a sense of bitter injustice, may lead to a rebellion against reasonable conventions, which is a social protest as much as a sexual outlet.
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