tangents

news & views

by dal mcintire

Houston, Tex.: When nude body of 12-yr-old Merrill Bodenheimer was found last summer in an abandoned icebox, Houston was whipped to a fury by "the city's greatest sexfiend hunt." A 25-yr-old man who'd reportedly twice tried to lure girls into his auto, near where the boy's abused body was found, was the first prime suspect, til cops announced that 7 Negro boys, ages 13 to 17, had confessed to sexually abusing and killing the white boy. Tempers flared wildly, in the dry tinder of racial hate and sex guilt, until the dead boy's mother wrote to a Houston paper:

"Since my son's death I have been largely sustained by the sincere sympathy of the whole community, but the attitude on the part of some of them has alarmed me. I have felt from the beginning that some abstract evil. force had killed my son. The person or persons responsible is ill, and to find a scapegoat will not absolve society from its share of guilt.

"People who are oppressed and deprived by society hit back. Finding my son's murderer will not keep alive some child who now lives-more murderers will be bred by the conditions which bred his murderer.

"As long as we foster the sickness of slums and segregation, we shall all be inflicted by it.

"This is not to say that I am convinced of the guilt of current suspects, but merely that the anger directed against them would be put to better use if turned toward those conditions which breed crime."

Mrs. Bodenheimer's calm sanity at first only infuriated those using her bereavement to stir race hatred, but in time it began to seem that the confessions were a bit fishy. Witnesses said 4 of the boys were boxing at the supposed time of the assault. Two of the boys claimed cops had beaten them for several days to get 'confessions."

Oklahoma City: Rev. Don Miller of St. Paul's Methodist, elected head of newly incorporated Citizens for Decent Literature, says anti-smut campaign will proceed along "constructive and friendly lines"-a "dignified approach." Further press. releases revealed merely the old vigilante approach, and it was repeatedly emphasized the CDL was not after "borderline junk that is merely in miserable taste," but rather, "material touting sex deviation as normal or acceptable." V.A. Dr. Vernon Sisney said, "We can accept people with deviate sexual