perverts. For this one must up the ante considerably. But though the News has run countless features on the prevalence of perverts, they've never bothered with any thing so routine as a nose-count, or any real investigation of homosexual life. Probably no other large paper in the country has published as many lines of uninformed and malicious nonsense on this subject.
Not that the News has been alone in the Miami witchhunt: the Herald keeps right in there pitching. Both play the flashy approach, appealing to and aggravating dangerous public passions, pretending to serve community wel fare by go ading ambitious or foolish politicians on to a fullscale pogrom.
A democratic society needs a public press which will report the news with minimum bias, and not incite its readers to irrational, chauvinistic, mob-type actions. That the press can so incite has been too often demonstrated. Yet a society, though. it deplores the smut-andslander tactics, cannot democratically curb the rabblerousing or guttersnipe segments of the press, nor demand intelligence, responsibility or tolerance of them.
Miami is mostly a pretty town, not well planned, miserably equipped culturally, but nonetheless quite attractive to persons hoping to transplant. Homosexuals are prone to leave their small hometowns for big cities. No doubt some go to Miami. The town, with ten times its 1920 population, has advertized widely. Though smaller and sleazier than New York, L.A. and such, Miami has some advantages, particularly sun.
This writer would gladly urge homosexuals not to move to Miami but they won't listen. I wouldn't recommend L.A. either, yet I live here. We don't decide where to live merely on erratic local attitudes toward homosexuality, but must count other considerations, climatic, cultural and economic.
Miami Police Chief Walter Headley has been the scapego at in a long hypocritical howl by the papers and exMayor Aronovitz to 'drive the homosexual out of Miami." Denying wild claims of a homo sexual crime wave, Headley said crimes involving homosexuals can best be controlled if homosexuals aren't driven underground. Police lack authority, he added, to wage the sort of war on homo sexuals that his critics demand. Besides, if he tried to run all the homosexuals out of town, 'members of some of the best families would lead the parade.'
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