tangents

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by dal mcintire

Most of the citizens of Victoria, Va., crowded into Philadelphia city hall court to see "that justice was done for their boy"-Pvt. Charles Kernaghan, 20, Marine chief sentry at a naval base brig, who told of meeting 19-yr-old Charles Ferro, who invited Kernaghan and a buddy home, then allegedly "made immoral advances." When Kernaghan "told Ferro off," he said, the youth pulled a knife, whereupon Victoria's boy smashed Ferro's head with a rolling pin, and also smacked his own buddy with it when Belamorich tried to stop him. After hearing glowing character references from Victoria notables, Judge Curtis Bok ruled Kernaghan not guilty of manslaughter, but guilty of assault and battery on his fellow Marine, then suspended sentence and dismissed Kernaghan. The good citizens of Victoria, Va., trouped home, proudly feeling that justice had been done to their boy, and that they could sleep safely in their beds now that one more alleged queer was safely dead. . . .

ENGLAND AND THE LAW

Shortly before the Parliamentary debate that scuttled the Wolfenden proposal to repeal the law against homosexual acts in private between

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consenting adults, A. J. Ayer, leading British philosopher, wrote a succinct article for the NEW STATESMAN, logically pulling apart most of the arguments against changing the law, and advancing one major point that few others had dared or wished to suggest. Logical positivist Ayer said, "The premise of this argument, that homosexual behaviour is wrong in itself, is accepted by many of those who reject its conclusion. I think it fair to say that I do not share this view. The reason which is most often given for it is that homosexuality is unnatural. But if 'unnatural' means 'uninstinctive', this is biologically false, apart from the fact that that which is uninstinctive need not be wrong. If 'unnatural' means 'uncommon', it is again false, and again what is uncommon need not be wrong. If 'unnatural', in this context just means 'wrong', there is no argument.

"I do not deny that under present social conditions the practice of homosexuality has many attendant evils; the moral isolation of homosexuals which they try to overcome by establishing a kind of sexual freemasonry; the furtiveness which goes with their fear of being ridiculed or disgraced; the difficulty which they have in forming stable and emotionally satisfying relation-

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