WAEEHP's activities are presently more or less standing still while Andrews learns whether energies directed along the lines of the Birch Society are not really more worth while. The efforts of WAEEHP could be extremely dangerous and less amusing if it were not for the self interest of its instigators. Andrews appears to have little honest dedication.

MATTACHINE MENOPAUSE

Last month news filtered down to us from a past-president of the Mattachine Society that the Society's head office in San Francisco had abolished the charters of its Area councils Boston, Chicago, Denver, Detroit and New York (Los Angeles being already defunct) each a lesser replica of the National office, with discussion groups, counselling, social activities and publication of Area Newsletters. A hasty phone call to San Francisco confirmed that Mattachine had indeed orbited into a third phase, blast-off date March 15th.

Reaction from the affected Areas was almost immediate and various. Denver with its usual aplomb and resourcefulness, was more than philosophical: "We of the newly established Neighbors, Denver area, have welcomed this new development with considerable relief.

"The problems of the Mattachine Society under its previous machinery, were, as we in Denver see them, due largely to a kind of builtin national ambivalence. On the one hand, the organization's very existence depended largely, if not entirely, on the somewhat autocratic character of its San Francisco

.. leadership . . . On the other hand and at the same time, the organization attempted, through its Area Councils and voting membership, to be democratic. The two are simply not compatible.

"Now there is one Mattachine

one

Society, a California Corporation, which can do precisely the things it has always done, but without the opposition of small groups scattered across the country."

Chicago was less sure of the benefits and not at all certain about some of the legal points involved: "By eliminating all of the Area Councils the Board has also apparently done away with the Annual Convention. But the Convention is the supreme governing body of the Society and the Board is responsible to the Convention . . . Somehow it doesn't seem reasonable that the Board can dissolve that governing body to which it is responsible."

"In a situation such as this we cannot help but feel that the best procedure would be to 'make haste slowly.

Boston's reaction was similar to Chicago's. The Area Council had just rented office space, and felt that in view of this, they had better attempt to move ahead in some fashion with or without the National Office.

Strangely quiet were the leaders of the New York Area Council who were probably more responsible than anyone or anything else for the dissolution. For years in many important and unimportant ways they have thrown monkey-wrenches into Mattachine machinery. A self-interest rather than a Mattachine interest seems to have sustained them in their perpetual opposition. The leaders in New York are now effectively squelched as far as the Mattachine Society goes, a healthy separation of the sheep from the goats.

WHAT MATTACHINE WAS

The Mattachine idea was conceived in Los Angeles in 1950. It began as a Society with discussion groups and guilds sponsored by The Mattachine Foundation. In three short years it had a meteoric