Letters

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES DO THE EDITORS FORWARD LETTERS FROM READERS TO OTHER PERSONS NOR DO THEY ANSWER CORRESPONDENCE MAKING SUCH REQUESTS.

COUNTERING THE SLANDERS Gentlemen:

I wonder if you will agree that a most important part of the battle for sexual freedom is the countering of the many slanders and misstatements in the popular press that have the effect of perpetuating all the time honored prejudices against homosexuals.

It is well and good to talk to each other in the pages of ONE and the Mattachine Review, and so bolster collective morale, but a really significant breakthrough will not come until we begin talking to the general public. In what better way can this be done than in the reader's letter columns to be found in pracfically every publication?

The enclosed letters are examples, however inadequate of the type of rejoinder needed to force the issue of homosexual rights unrelentingly into public view and so force as well an eventual reexamination of the premises upon which discriminatory treatment of homosexuals is based.

Dear ONE:

Mr. S. Washington, D. C.

On reading Alison Hunter's Editorial (May, 1960), she pointed out that trashy novels on the lesbian theme were harmful. The same case may be made for some of the literature about the male homosexual.

The play "Tea and Sympathy," for example, although purporting to be a sensitive play on a sensitive subject has done much harm. I saw the play on Broadway five years ago. The audience laughed in all the wrong places and it seemed to me that much of the laughter came from taught nerves and was hysterical.

The issue of the play was not that the homosexual deserved our sympathy, but that a boy who was suspected of being one was not one and ought not to be one. The boy had mannerisms which some people assume belong to the homosexual. These characteristics

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were emphasized again and again, and each time, even on so-called sophisticated Broadway, they drew snickers and guffaws. Homosexuals were portrayed as weak, effeminate, indirectly as impotent, deceitful and cowardly. The play, while purporting to make us more sympathetic and understanding, was an attack on homosexuality, but it was successful and the author made money.

Such an oblique attack-behind a facade of tolerance and sympathy-does more harm in the long run than the barroom drunk who loudly proclaims he hates fairies, for his audience is small. In supporting such literature homosexuals defeat themselves. My Gay friends found the play "charming." It seemed to me that they were titillated because the subject of homosexuality made a big splash on Broadway, not seeing, or choosing to overlook the fact that homosexuals were stereotyped. I think we have a right to resist this, at least to the extent of writing a letter about it. Mr. W. New York, N. Y.

Hello Fellows:

I have recently been reading your 1955 copies, so five years late, I say Dr. Albert Ellis is a jerk. Why should any Gay person have to have sexual relations with the opposite sex if it is against his nature? I have only one question I would like to ask this Ellis character, and that is, "How many shades of gray are there betwixt white and black?"

By the way, who does he have for a head doctor?

Gentlemen:

Mr. P.

Los Angeles, Calif.

The idea about political education for homosexuals in Lyn Pedersen's Editorial (July, 1960) isn't too premature at all, in fact it's late. At present there are those political representatives who are laughing at us because they don't even consider us human. With several million using the ballot, homosexuals could suddenly acquire new stature and be a tremendous force for good in the world. Their sense of justice is deep and emotional, while commitments to the degrading superficialities of society do not hold them strongly.

Lawmakers recognize the vote as power. Maybe this is why they do not recognize us in the first place. We cannot expect justice by the mere posing of an abstract truth, scientific as it may be.

Isn't someone going to do something positive and definite about it all soon, or must we wait another hundred years?

Dear Sirs:

Mr. T. Cheyenne, Wyo.

Replying to Mr. F's letter (September, 1960) I fear there is little chance that England and especially the United States will

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