tangents

news & views

by dal mcintire

The wave of innuendo, oafish punditry and crude lies about the alleged homosexuality of those mathematicians who skedaddled to Russia may be just the start of a long, vicious airing of the homosexual question. There's scant evidence that either Bernon Mitchell or William Martin really is homosexual. But everyone's saying soand they're in no position to sue for slander. They were brilliant mathematician-codemen working for the oh so secret National Security Agency. They may have had access to, and stolen, top-secret materials. On this, as on other points, Pentagonians have snarled themselves in a mass of lies and counterlies. They were bachelors, long-time close friends, and not the get-along-finewith-everybody sort. They left the U. S. in mid-summer and turned up in Moscow in Sept. In a press conference, they said they were sick of American duplicity in the cold war. They had left behind a letter explaining their plans and motiveswhich the Pentagon tried to cover up.

Public response, furious at their treason, and further irked by official switches in the account, has been wildly irrational over the accusation that at least one of them was homosexual. Eisenhower made pale insinuations, and said security regulations had to be tightened. Max Lerner and David Lawrence, and

many others yet, emitted pompous analyses. The Sta. Monica OUTLOOK bleated for a new McCarthy -and Rep. Francis Walter (Dem., Pa.) tried hard to fill the bill, but had competition from other congressmen anxious to get into the act. The Hearst papers, old lovers of the blatherings of Rep. Walter and his Un-Americans, repeatedly featured his charges about 1,000 homosexuals in State and Defense Depts.

Ironic if homosexuality had prompted Martin and Mitchell to go Russiaward, where laws on that subject are even more vicious than in most of these United States. Nor does the charge that the Russ discovered their deviation and blackmailed them fit with their actual behavior. Walter, Sokolsky, Lerner, Lawrence and company keep repeating this old slander: that the homosexual is a security risk because he is subject to blackmail. There is no single case on record. where this is known to have happened. Of literally thousands of defectors from the West since the War, only these two and England's pair have ever been accused of being homosexual!

Hard to say what effect this will have on American homosexuals. If it gives the subject a full and ultimately fair airing-good for the long run. The liberal English discussion of recent years started with hysterical press coverage of the Burgess-MacLean affair and several nasty morals trials . . .

A MONUMENTAL DECISION

There are two approaches to law reform: thru legislative bodies, or thru the courts. Appeal to the courts to test the legitimacy of an unfair law may be the faster and sounder way, tho less used by reform groups. What Wolfenden and the Homosexual Law Reform Society have

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