see no reason why such argument should be presented in such a mannerfear psychosis propaganda, glib insult, specious reasoning, condescension, and paternalistic patronizing. Really, sirs! Fie upon it! And appearing under the Carlyle of your masthead to boot! For shame!

And I certainly do not think that this by any means presented the real argument against such an activity. Why not be honest, Mr. Lambert, it might not be 'politic' or good business! And that is your primary interest, is it not? All claims to a 'social consciousness' to the contrary!

But let's to 'specifics'-is a 'Pen Pal' club less desirable socially-more reprehensible. dangerous-than our present 'social centres', the bar-the park-the public latrine?

Sick, indeed!-but who?

I write many letters to many people. I'm even writing this one now to you and your magazine. So, I'm sick. Thank you very much, dear doctor. But I'm a lot sicker for having read that article-that anyone could be so completely lacking in even the smallest content of common charity!

But once again, thank you Mr. Pedersen, for reasonableness; and, more important, for being humane.

Gentlemen, I do not give a damn whether you start a 'Pen Pal' club or not or anything else for that matter-but in future please show a little decency and resist slandering others who are not as fortunate as yourselves. Keep such personal arrogance to yourselves. In print you are responsible to the public you serve, 'sick' or well.

"It is about time that the whole Pen Pal question be faced honestly and bluntly." Lambert.

Messrs. H. H. and J. K. of California write: We're sure all the charter readers of ONE, like ourselves, have wept and bled and/or shuddered over the "pen-pal" dilemma as its multi-colored gamut has unfolded in the correspondence columns over the years. Ever since the beginnings of the original Mattachine ferment, it has been the opinion of many of us that the Homophile Minority is responsible not only to, but for, its own. We suggest that Lyn Pedersen and Wm. Lambert are both right-in those areas of each which don't controvert one another; areas which-precisely because they don't controvert one another-significantly appear not to have been basically evaluated or developed by either correspondent. If Messrs. Pedersen and Lambert would scratch their heads in concert, they would both recall that the backbone members of the quoted Committees of Correspondence were illiterates who were primarily men of action and derring-do . . without whose efforts in the ensuing Committees of Public Safety neither the Declaration of Independence, nor the Constitution itself, would have been possible.

•

The issues, as we see it, are neither so simple as Lyn Pedersen's encouraging idylls and pastorales, nor so melancholy as Bill Lambert's woeful winnowings of witches/or baleful bounty of bogeys. To be sure, the bagful of PEN-PAL ads displayed in the Sept. '59 CONFI makes for a salacious first reading-revealing themselves as disturbingly (almost frighteningly) prurient only upon second thought. But, by and large, we feel the Pen-Pal pleas received by ONE are somewhat of a cut above the come-ons to lure leatherbritched trade, complete with whips and chains. Bill Lambert's impatient slur -a la "if the town is too small, or the family too nosey, so get-the-hell out,"

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