BOOKS

Notices and reviews of books, articles, plays and poetry dealing with homosexuality and the sex variant. Readers are invited to send in reviews or printed matter for review.

A Step Forward

THE REJECTED (A Transcript) A National Educational Television network presentation. Written by John W. Reavis, Jr. Pan-Graphic Press, pp. 26, $1.00.

The present small booklet, whose small size quite fails to indicate adequately its importance, is a transcript of a telecast given on September 11, 1961, by KQED, Channel 9, San Francisco. The panel discussion was introduced by James Day, General Manager of KQED in San Francisco who suffered no illusions concerning the subject or the attitude of the public toward the subject to be discussed, that of homosexuality. He likewise had clearly in mind the technical aspects of the transition from an attitude of emotion, bias, and even morbidity to that of rationality in the consideration and discussion of a social problem which hitherto has been largely avoided by serious thinkers. A letter fom the Attorney General of California, Stanley Mosk, with most refreshing and unusual insight sweeps aside the usual objections to discussion of the topic and recognizes its scope and impor-

tance.

The discussion is opened by a narrator who notes the importance of the subject when some fifteen million men in this country have "prolonged homosexual histories" and poses the questions of possible causes, cure, attitudes of both individuals involved and soci-

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ety in general, etc. Dr. Margaret Mead, the world-famous anthropologist, is then introduced and comments on the subject. She stresses the universality of the occurrence of homosexuality and states that attitudes toward it are a social product which can and presumably should be rational.

The second speaker, Dr. Karl Bowman, Professor of Psychiatry (Emeritus), University of California, head California Sexual Deviation Research, and past president of the American Psychiatric Association, was asked concerning prevalence, definition, and causes of homosexuality. He emphasized the wide prevalance, one man in six being predominately homosexual, the difficulty in definition in view of the great diversity of manifestation, and doubt as to cure. He says (quoting Freud) it is "no vice; no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness." A homosexual may be neurotic as may be a heterosexual, but homosexuality is not itself a neurosis.

The next discussion on the panel featured the Mattachine Society. The three representatives of this society present were asked how homosexuals feel about themselves and their relation to society. Harold Call, editor, Mattachine Review, stated that the stereotyped "swish," the male with exaggerated female characteristics, represents but a small minority of the group and is not approved generally

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