The information I desired was important. Then I got to thinking maybe the letter was mislaid and the lack of answer was unintentional. Glancing through the Magazine again I thought-how can they be insincere? I am still on the fence on just what to think...
Editor's Reply:
I am somewhat at a loss to know how to answer your letter. Its tone, from one who has visited us here, quite mystifies me. Do I understand that you feel we should answer your letter before we are able to answer letters received much earlier? Evidently it is entirely inconceivable to you that we have thirty-day periods in which NO letters are answered, except those of desperate emergency character involving critical legal or similar needs.
How many hours a day, how many days a week do you as a supporter of ONE's work expect to exact from four meagerly-paid workers, and the handful of those who give up their free hours to work as volunteer helpers? But these limitations seem to you to smack of insincerity and insolence...
Dear Friends:
After reading your letter I find it almost unbelievable that you are so far behind on your correspondence. Perhaps it stems from an ignorance of just what you really have to do, and that is where ONE Confidential is helping to fill the gap. Quite often a person passes judgment before securing all the facts, which can be chalked up as a weakness of human nature.
I regret that more Friends of ONE do not help and only wish that I did not live so far away myself so that I could do more.
Dear. Mr. Slater:
Mr. S.
San Francisco, California
Is it your policy not to reply to letters sent you...
Mr. B. Highland, Indiana
CHRIST AND THE HOMOSEXUAL
Gentlemen:
Re the lively and interesting discussion you presented (Special Lecture Series, May 8, Los Angeles) on Reverend Wood's book, and with so many admittedly Gay people attending of church and religious background, I think it proper to question whether or not you are greatly missing the boat by not setting aside a regular space or column for religion or religious views particularly if any such percentage holds true throughout Gay society in general.
Mr. S.
Huntington Park, California
Sir:
Congratulations to H. S. for "Christian Faith and Sexual Relationships," (April, 1960). I have never run across an article that has impressed me more. It deals with pure common sense. H. S. left nothing out that would deal with any question. It only troubles me that people will not use the statements made in the article, relating them to their own faith and code of morals, whatever they may be.
To ONE:
Mr. W. Turlock, California
For a year now I have enjoyed ONE greatly, but to say the least I was disgusted with the Alison Hunter so-called Editorial (February, 1960) and I hardly know what to think about "Augmented Families" in the same issue. I am a Catholic and you might say "in the inner circle." I wish I could write more.
Gentlemen:
Mr. S. New York, N. Y.
There appears to be a ready-made and almost inexhaustible market for anything that can manage to label itself religious. This market is shamelessly exploited with an endless production of books and films that are almost incredibly tasteless, trivial and tawdry. Hollywood to the contrary, a book or play is not a "religious" work simply because it happens to include a handful of Biblical characters or have a clergyman as its chief figure.
It seems to me there is a certain parallel with ONE's fiction and religious literature. I am aware that the size of the Magazine prohibits practically everything but so-called. vignettes and short-short stories, but surely they need not be so wanting in characterization and motivation as they usually
are.
And if ONE seriously intends to appeal to the open-minded non-homosexual the fiction should not be of a sort which will repel him and undo the goodwill created by the honest and rational approach of the rest of the Magazine. If you must use fiction why don't you reprint "Jingle You Belles; You" (December, 1953)? With a bit of rewriting it would be worthy of the New Yorker.
Rev. G.
San Antonio, Texas
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