tangents

news & views

by dal mcintire

Terse Riesman essay on political trends in Winter 55 PARTISAN REVIEW theorizes that decline in overt attacks on Negroes and Jews marks. homosexual for role as public scapegoat. Changing socio-economic relations and U. S. world position make racism a public liability, but capacity for hate remains undiminished: "reds, eggheads and queers" as new victims.

THE MIAMI PATTERN

Miami's year and 2 homohunt

may provide blueprint for nation. Homosexuals who are lured into complacency by liberalizing opinions of some few scientists and by their own new found ability to organize and publish openly, may well find (as Germans did in 1932) such freedom transitory. Such small gains might or might not be reliable signs of new trends in public thinking.

Kinsey again calls sex laws useless: other laws cover acts of violence. Notes California tops national average of institutionalized "sex criminals" 3 to 1. Washington DC Judge Edw. Beard lately ruled police need supporting witness to arrest man for indecency with another man. (DC police squirming under brutality investigation.)

J. Edgar Hoover meanwhile deplores lack of controls on Sex Criminals, stemming from "social and family upheavals" during and after World

War II, but also due to lack of public understanding, inadequate laws and enforcement and scarcity of medical facilities for treating abnormal persons.

Sex crime news still spots nation's press, with franker play of homosexual angles though rate of such crimes no higher. Miami press headlines each item and other towns catching on.

OTHER CITIES . .

NYC again reported "cracking down on undesirables roaming city streets." 42 arrests one night in Time Square and Village.

MINNEAPOLISSTAR writer Cedric Adams' bit on subject appears elsewhere in this issue. Judge Nicholson, after two Minneapolis "female impersonation" trials ordered full investigation of impersonator show at Gay Nineties bar. Vice squad head Jake Sullivan said "nothing obscene or immoral in show" but he'd like it stopped anyhow.

Baltimore police raids on private New Year parties (2 college profs and a high school teacher arrested at interracial affair), house-to-house search on John Doe warrants and repeated closing of gay bars indicate rough stuff ahead.

DENVER POST demanded state intervention when officials in neighboring Englewood refused to prosecute man for "indecent" proposition