Editorial

At the last of April, 1957, Columnist Drew Pearson reported certain facts. concerning the U. S. State Department's Security Officer, Scott McLeod, who was appointed by our current Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. The report hinged on the possibility of a new appointment for McLeod, that of Am bassador to Ireland.

Apparently, in the course of his fervent career as Security Officer, McLeod (a friend of the late Senator McCarthy) ordered a former writer for TIME "to prepare a special report on homosexuality and what it had done to bring about the collapse of other civilizations."

According to Columnist Pearson, this report "found there were fewer perverts in the State Department than in the Army, Navy and Air Force; that this had had no effect on the fall of Greece or Rome. McLeod was annoyed by the report, buried it."

This was no doubt newsworthy material for the readers of Pearson's column for April 30, but hardly news for the Staff and Readers of ONE. Newsworthy by implication, however, is the continuing official effort to pin on homosexuals the label of "pervert" and " degenerate," and to hold them responsible for the ruin of national and other cultural groups. Homosexual-baiters who bother to get the facts are invariably disappointed, as was McLeod, to find that there is no historical support for such a superstition.

History does, however, show a definite tendency for totalitarian thinkers those who try to regiment society by "thought control" or by other and cruder measures to make scapegoats out of homosexuals. This is equally true whether we are considering religious or political totalitarianism. During the Medieval Inquisitions, homosexuality and heresy (religious non-conformism) were almost invariably identified. Now, homosexuality and political "heresy" are similarly linked, especially in governments which show a totalitarian trend. It seems that the homosexual, being a sexual non-conformist, is automatically suspected of non-conformity in all other respects.

ONE Institute, devoted to discovering and teaching the facts about homosexuality, is especially interested in history, and alert to any interpretation which can shed some light on the changing status of homosexuals in history. The Classic, Early Christian, Medieval, Renaissance and Modern periods each show rather distinct socio-sexual attitudes on this subject. Some modern interpreters venture to explain these distinctions on psychological grounds. Doubtless other explanations can also be attempted on different grounds.

The fact remains that homosexuality has been neither persecuted nor encouraged in any truly democratic and liberal social group. Such groups regard sexual behavior, which does not injure others or create public disorder, as a matter of personal and private concern,

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ROBERT GREGORY