with their most lethal ammunition to use against the only real security risks in government jobs those whose secrets remain undiscovered. For the most powerful weapon in the hands of a blackmailer is the threat of loss of livelihood, or the destruction of a hard-won career. If the homosexual-or the heterosexual, for that matter-knew that he would not lose his job because of his sex practices (a ludicrous reason to begin with), the enemy agent bent on blackmail would have very little power over him, certainly not enough to force him to betray his country.

Conspicuously absent among the "facts" which supposedly render a man unfit to work for his government are the character defects truly dangerous to the national securitygreed, avarice, fanaticism, stupidity, gullibility, bitterness, hatred, spinelessness and cowardice. The government has been so preoccupied with its blackmail fetish that it seems to have forgotten that there are countless other-and simpler-forms of coercion, influence and pressure at the disposal of Communist agents, and that there is hardly a man alive who would not be vulnerable to one of them. And it is just as problematical whether a man would betray his country if subjected to any one of the others as it is whether he would betray his country if subjected to blackmail. Yet only the homosexual has been the victim of a wholesale purge.

It is not difficult to fathom why this is so, for whenever a countryany country begins to beat the "national security" drums in peacetime, some minority group must be found to be the scapegoat. There must be some group, class, race, creed or culture upon which to heap the blame for all the evils which supposedly exist within that country. In this country it was a little more dif-

ficult to find such a group than it was in say, Nazi Germany, for in this era of "social enlightenment," persecution of any of the usual "fallguy" minorities would have raised a storm of reaction such as few politicians would care to face. But the homosexual minority was made to order for the role, for under existing laws its members were classed as "criminals" to begin with, they existed in sufficient numbers to make satisfactory headlines, and social prejudice was such that no one would dream of protesting in their behalf. In the eyes of the voting public, the tag "homosexual" would be enough to condemn them of every crime in the book, Communism included.

Subsequent events have proven this to be the case. For while the socalled "loyalty hearings" have raised howls of righteous indignation from Americans everywhere when a general was treated impolitely and people were held accountable now for Communist activities and affiliations in the past, when citizens were held responsible (and punished) for the sins and nationalities-of relatives and friends over whom they had no conceivable control, I have yet to hear one voice raised in protest against the infamous blanket dismissal of homosexuals from government jobs without a public hearing. In this instance, even Senator McCarthy's severest critics seem to be solidly behind him, for there has been no criticism of "dictator methods," "guilt by association," "trial by accusation" and "infringement on civil liberties" when applied to the homosexual minority.

That the whole "loyalty program" is an appalling infringement on the civil liberties of a supposedly free people is self-evident. It is the first time in history that Americans have been presumed guilty until proven innocent and convicted on the basis