ARE HOMOSEXUALS

security risks?

by marlin prentiss

The answer is yes-to exactly the same extent that any individual with a secret that he does not wish to be made public is a security risk. It is the fact that, by this criterion, very nearly the entire population could legitimately be classed as "security risks," that makes the recent wholesale dismissal of homosexuals from government jobs such a travesty.

According to the executive order of 1953, "any facts which furnish reason to believe that the individual may be subjected to coercion, influence or pressure which may cause him to act contrary to the best interests of the national security" constitutes legitimate grounds for designating an individual a "security risk" and denying him federal employment or admission into the armed forces. If this criterion were followed to the letter, government offices the country over would be as deserted as a graveyard at midnight and we would be fortunate indeed if our armed forces consisted of two platoons.

For where among us breathes there a man or woman-who does not have his own personal Achilles heel -his own private skeleton in the closet? Is there a human being alive who might not be "subjected to coercion, influence or pressure which may cause him to act contrary to the best interests of the national security" if said pressure (of which there are a thousand kinds besides blackmail) were applied in the right spot? Anyone "may be subjected to" coercion, influence or pressure, but who can possibly predict which individuals would betray their country because of it and which would not? Certainly not all of them would!

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Yet this is exactly what the government is implying with its arbitrary dismissal of all homosexuals. If this policy were followed to its logical conclusion, all persons who secretly indulge in unorthodox, unconventional and illegal heterosexual relationships (certainly a thousand times more numerous than homosexuals) would likewise be discharged in wholesale lots. But as yet I have seen no reports that this is being done, although, under the terms of the executive order, it could, and should be done. The inference of the government's action in this respect. is that the homosexual would be more likely to sell out his country to protect his "reputation" than would the heterosexual. This assumption is sheer nonsense. In fact, it is more likely to be quite the reverse, for the average heterosexual has far more to lose than the average homosexual, and it is a well known fact that an individual's vulnerability to blackmail rises in direct proportion to what he stands to lose under the blackmailer's terms.

Still further evidence of the muddled thinking behind the homosexual "purge" is the fact that, even under the terms of the executive order, the homosexual is a security risk only so long as his homosexuality is unknown. As soon as it is known-as it must be before he can be dismissed because of it-the blackmailer no longer has a weapon to use against him. So, at the time a homosexual is discharged, the reason for doing so no longer exists. But, by carrying out in fact the penalties which an enemy agent could only threaten, the government itself is supplying the Communist agents

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