EDITORIAL

Once again the words homosexuality and treason have been linked together by politicians and journalists in such a way as to suggest that the two words are almost synonymous.

Since John Vassall, a British Admiralty clerk, was recently convicted of selling state secrets to the Russians and sentenced to eighteen years in prison for doing so, the fact that he was guilty of treason is established. That he is a homosexual is not so conclusively demonstrated but we can only accept this to be a fact also. The connection between these two facts is more tenuous and is considerably obscured by the fact that Vassall is known to have had a taste for high-living and to have lived considerably beyond his income for a number of years. A lust for high-living and a weakness to the attractions of money are not limited to homosexuals. One can scarcely avoid wondering why, if Vassall had yielded to blackmail because of his sexuality, the Russians had found it necessary or advisable to give him the money which, in the end, was the conclusive proof of his guilt.

This case serves very effectively to illustrate what has long appeared to us to be the real weakness in our security systems, that is, the substitution of a consideration of individual and even superficial characteristics for a real appraisal of a man's basic loyalty to his country and his fundamental integrity. A person who is not basically loyal can, of course, be induced to yield to even the slightest pressure or inducement, and a person who has not the strength of character to resist pressures growing out of his sexual nature will more than likely yield to pressures of other kinds.

Homosexuals have exactly the same strength of character and the same weaknesses as do heterosexuals and in the same proportion to their numbers, but homosexuality is an easy scapegoat. Whenever a serious or despicable crime is committed it is human nature for society at large to seek eagerly, if sometimes unconsciously, for some characteristic which will tend to set the perpetrator apart from the majority who sit in judgment of his crime. Not uncommonly the distinguishing characteristic, if there is one, becomes the real crime. Negroes, Mexicans, Jews in fact all minority groups have suffered from this aspect

of man's nature.

It is, to be sure, much easier to blame a man's sexuality, or race, or color, after the fact, than it is to admit that we failed to recognize a weak sister in the first place, or that in different circumstances and for a different price we might have done the same thing.

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Marcel Martin.