for homosexuals cannot be held responsible for sex acts which occur off his premises and without his connivance.

The same should hold for a correspondence club. Sexual activity is hardly the sole or expected purpose for which people write letters, so why assume that a homosexual seeking a Pen Pal necessarily wants sex?

I've belonged to many kinds of correspondence clubs. Some of them are rackets-some are "lonely hearts" mush-but most are neither. Many major scientific and learned societies in Europe and America have been correspondence clubs, for example, the "Committees of Correspondence" with which Sam Adams and Jefferson paved the way for the American Revolution. Even if some Pen Pal clubs serve the function of brothels, the clean ones can't be blamed for thatnor can we assume a homosexual club will necessarily be that sort.

Withholding mail, even for good cause, which is addressed to individual readers or writers of ONE, constitutes a denial of their rights and a siezure of their property. I can't argue with a legal opinion that forwarding such mail is not safe at present. Little that homosexuals do is safe today. As long as homosexuals continue to "play it safe," they will never know the true safety of public recognition of their rights peaceably to seek, choose, live with and have sex with persons of their own choice.

Good sense tells us to move one step at a time. Some will say this step would be premature. But we must never, for caution's sake, forfeit our right to equal access to any and all means of communication that are open to others.

ONE is not the only organization that shuns this time-consuming and often thankless task. And few responsible publications forward mail without exercising some control over it,

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for their own and their readers' protection. Yet many magazines and clubs do regularly forward mail and bring correspondents together, sometimes for avowedly romantic purposes (with or without "object: matrimony"), more often simply for the exchange of letters between people who may never expect to meet, but who wish to share interests not readily shared with family or business associates.

In my teens, I joined a Pen Pal club sponsored by the state Synod of my church. I found many warm friends, some of whom I later met at summer camps. Our long, zestful letters ranged over our common religious interest to more personal things, things I'd not discussed with anyone in person. Thus I met Paul, long my best friend. He later married one of the tomboys we shared as a Pen Pal. By finding the sort of friends I had not found in my home town, I was able to mature a lot faster. Perhaps my Pen Pals were not really so different from people closer at hand-but letter writing showed them in a different light. My interests in these friends, while perhaps theoretically motivated by sexual feelings, were certainly not overtly sexual.

Sometime later, having lost interest in religion, I became fascinated by imaginative stories about the future. and life on other planets. This was well before the days of A-bombs, jets, "flying saucers," sputniks, etc., so the science fiction magazines were more esoteric than today. Many of these magazines encouraged "fan" clubs and correspondence between readers. I wrote to and met hundreds of fans during the war years, and picked up valuable ideas along the way. Science fiction fans are seldom committed to the "old order of things." The world is changing, and the faster the better. On morals, as well as social and scientific questions, they are minded.

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