Amy Vanderbuilt seems to think. they already are. Amy is reigning queen of "other-directed" etiquette, and dispenses daily communiques on how to behave as "the best people are behaving." She notes that 'most male fashions begin with the homosexuals," and grow to general acceptance. I should think that this applies to a great deal more than fashions in clothing and etiquette. In the arts, even in religion, philosophy and the sciences it seems most often to be the homophile who bursts the fetter of outmoded forms, who brushes away conservative blindness, who takes the risk of trying something new. To the degree that there is any sort of secret fraternity of homosexuals exerting a decisive influence on the world, it is in the arts, the world of fashion and in the intellectual world, rather than in the State Dept., as McCarthy suspected. But this is no conspiracy. Even Amy Vanderbuilt, who makes her living out of recording changing manners, feels that "the most conformity on this score, the better." Only homophiles and a few of the other social mavericks Amy decries dare to institute the innovations that will become tomorrow's fads. Homosexuals (not all of them, of course, since many foolishly hope that their one basic non-conforming taste can be hidden by the most slavish conformity in all other matters) are among those few who, disregarding Pope's advice, are brave enough to be either the first by whom the new is tried, or at least the last to lay the old aside.

Is this claiming too much? Maybe. But notice the sort of suspicions that are aroused about any man, even married and with a litter of kids, who wears Bermudas before they have become accepted in his neighborhood.

THE ROUGH SIDE

Two NYC sneak-police arrested on charge of lawyer steering. The two plainclothesmen, staked out in Central Park, had nabbed five "morals suspects" and then, in violation of Penal Code, solicited their victims as clients for a woman lawyer. That could be a pretty profitable business all round....

B'way chorus boy, who'd danced once in NY show, Lil Abner, found dead in apartment. Elevator man, who'd seen him enter with slim young man, who ran out later after a loud argument, found body, and a knife . . . . As a result, NY cops reverting to their indiscriminate "cleanup-roundups of undesirables" in Times Square, Greenwich Village, etc. I suppose the chief question in this matter is whether the cops ao for the obvious hustlers and troublemakers, or whether they go after anyone on the streets who looks different."

Frank Ahern, San Francisco's topcop, who'd campaigned to clean up the city's night life, and wrote lurid magazine articles protesting the Bay City's "gay" repute, died recently of a heart attack while watching a Dodger-Giants game.

John ("Bunny") Breckenridge, millionaire San Franciscan grandson of an early American VicePresident, made news sometime ago by announcing he was going to undergo surgery for sex-change. Recently he was arrested with three young Los Angeles men for "conspiring to commit sex crimes" against two brothers, aged 11 and 13. The boys had been put in Breckenridge's care by their mother, and the cops seemed to have a pretty flimsy case . . . .

Charleston, W. Va., cops nabbed 25 hi-school boys running nude on grounds of statehouse-part of an illicit fraternity initiation ...

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