MIAMI'S

NEW TYPE WITCHHUNT

by Lyn Pedersen

Fashions in witches come and go. Cotton Mather's famed hunt victimized heretics and odd women. More primitive tribes were prone to hunt the witch to offset sudden disease or ill luck. The Old Testament prescribes the ordeal by stones but doesn't define the witch. Negroes, Jews and others have had their turn at the stake. Today, fashion favors political definitions, but the big hunt for red witches has turned a bit stale. The Miami News, expert in that field, has tried a new version, known as 'queer baiting."

Feature of their technique, guaranteed to prejudice, is the overused term pervert, a catchall word painting all homosexuals as rapists, child molesters and sex murderers, alarming the public with a specter of hordes of predatory men bent on perverting schoolboys. This may be dishonest, but it sells papers.

If Miamians are 'normal,' that is if they resemble Americans in general, roughly 30,000 resident male Miami adults have engaged in overt homosexual acts; half that number: frequently. About 4,000 Miamians are homosexual for life. These conservative estimates, based on Kinsey's figures, do not take into account the News' hysterical claim that the tourist town is overrun by the nation's

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