tangents

news & views

by dal mcintire

Salt Lake topcop W. Cleon Skousen recently said that an alarming. increase of sex deviates threatens "national catastrophe." "These offenses are growing in leaps and bounds," he said. "Our present procedures for the protection of society are inadequate." He attacked "the loose and irresponsible attitudes of a number of important professional people, who have advocated that homosexuality and other deviate practices should be tolerated as an acceptable pattern of conduct." He complained of legislators and judges who seem to expect that sex deviation can be cured by psychiatric treatment, and "noted" that many leading psychiatrists admit this is a false hope-they can help a person "suffering from a mental or psychotic disturbance" but this is not the case with most sex deviates-"they know what their problem is and they like it."

He painted the deviate as a highly contagious degenerate who derives 'supreme satisfaction through the conquest and indoctrination of some other person in deviate practices-frequently a child." Scientific studies such as that by England's Portman Clinic flatly contradict this view, which could hardly be based on anything more than bias and rumor, and constitutes a dangerous state of misinformation

for someone in such a position to swing his authority.

We understand Cleon came to Salt Lake City about 2 years ago, after some years with the F.B.I. He stiffened police methods, raided homes and business places to arrest persons guilty of playing bingo, and last summer began a sharp drive against "perverts," with cops reportedly regularly harrassing customers at the local "gay" bar, asking if they were "queer," threatening to run them out of town (this drew an editorial protest from one paper). The vice squad has been super active nosing around toilets and baths, making propositions and arresting those who accept.

CLEON'S CURE

Skousen felt sex offenders can be cured, not by psychiatry, but by "embarrassment resulting from publicity when an offense is detected; and dislike for prison life... We are learning that the sex deviate is usually a normal person who has been conditioned by some other deviate..."

Astonishing logic! His unexpected assertion that sex deviates are normal is too much to ask (we agree that the "homosexuals-are-sick" argument is unproven, and is rejected by the best medical authorities), though poor Cleon probably