arguments on homosexuality. In fact, it got so out of hand that not much of the embarrassed press said anything about it. But, as once in a while happens, at least one reporter and publication did Ralph Condee in The Reporter.

It all began at a discussion on contemporary Scottish writing when a writer (never identified except he wasn't a Scot) began his address by stating he was a homosexual. This delightfully irrelevant remark took everybody so by surprise that nothing happened. But the next day Khushwant Singh, novelist from India, began his address at a discussion on "Committment" by stating he was committed to heterosexual love and thought homosexual love between males was something like eunuch love. This time the audience sure reacted booing and hissing and cries of "Shame!" and some applause. Then a continental writer jumped up and grabbed the mike and shouted that though he was heterosexual, he certainly would defend homosexual love, and as he returned to his seat amid wild cheering, the homosexual writer who had started it all by declaring himself the day before rushed to him with congratulations and thanks.

At a later meeting, Norman Mailer was pushing his unique notion that government censor sexual matters to keep their people frustrated and warlike. Angus Wilson presided over a meeting featuring the speech of William Burroughs, whose Naked Lunch Mary McCarthy praised to the skies. Hugh McDiarmid, dean of Scottish poets and a Marxist and pro-Russian, showed up in kilts and denounced England, and the many other kilt-clad members of the audience rose and cheered. Nobody, it seems, commented on the inadvisability of wearing kilts and milling around in a gathering where there are out-

and-out homosexuals. Especially with a good-looking pair of legs, it could contribute to some people's delinquency. Not to speak of that sexy whiskbroomish thing they wear you-know-where.

At the close of it all, fabulous Dame Rebecca West (whose works bristle with anti-homosexual barbs) said disgustedly that there should have been two conferences

—

one

on writing and another "for people who could thrash out whether they were homosexual, heterosexual, or anything else." Whether under her "or anything else" category she placed herself for her own deviation from society's moral code namely, bearing an illegitimate child to H. G. Wells she didn't say.

OF MANY THINGS, OF CABBAGES & QUEENS:

In Virginia, cops got a call complaining of "prostitutes" at a highway truckdriver rest area. Stakeouts revealed no females and in no time at all they arrested 65 males for homosexual acts, including 4 schoolteachers, a doctor, a lawyer, and a minister. One schoolteacher admitted he had heard of the place and driven up clear from his home in Alabama. . . After the world premiere of Samuel Barber's Piano Concerto, both critics and audience were delighted and called it a classic. . . . In London, Georgina Turtle, 39, announced her engagement to a 35 year old electronics engineer. Before a sex-change operation and being officially declared a female, Georgina had been George, a pipesmoking Royal Naval surgeon lieutenant. . . . One of the two roles in William Hanley's off Broadway one-acter, Whisper Into My Good Ear, is that of a male homosexual. NY Times critic called Hanley an "Uncommonly Gifted Writer". . . . An Anglican bishop at Canterbury, England, called Britain's treatment