only to those actions in "any public place or in any place open to the public or exposed to public view." The bill was also aimed at making it a crime simply to loiter in or near a public toilet dropping the provision that it is unlawful only when done "for the purpose of engaging in or soliciting any lewd or lascivious or unlawful act."
The amendment was absurd. It made it illegal for any person, even a husband and wife, to solicit or commit a sexual act in the privacy of their home. Only zanies like Parker would press for such a rash piece of legislation.
The defeat of the bill came swiftly and dramatically. Parker and his henchmen had gone to Sacramento the latter part of May to speak in behalf of the bill. Those persons like this reporter who had previously heard him speak knew that this would be a good omen for the opposition. Sure enough. As he testified before the committee, Parker flourished a copy of ONE Magazine threatening, "We are flooded with homosexuals." He added, "Now they are organized." He further enlivened the proceedings by distributing two large glossy pictures of nude men he said he had taken from homosexuals. Parker insisted that his proposed changes. were not aimed "at pushing anybody around." At this point Chairman of the Committee, Gordon Winton, Jr. of Merced, who had tried vainly to keep Parker under control, told the LA Police Chief, "You engage in histrionics. One more remark like that and I'll ask the sergeant at arms to remove you from the room." He added, "It apme that although you pears to claim you don't want to push any homosexuals around, you certainly want to push the members of this committee around."
The bill never got out of committee. Beverly Hills attorney Mrs. Phyllis Deutsch was the only witness against the bill.
OF MANY THINGS, OF CABBAGES & QUEENS:
In Chicago, a hairdresser is up for swindling $200 out of a NJ man who had run an ad asking on info to change his sex. The hairdresser posed as "Dr. O'Brien' and slapped him in a hospital where, at the last minute, he happened to discover he was slated for a kidney stone operation . . . The PTA in Vancouver, Canada, is fiercely pushing for a board to censor newsstand material and establish a clinic for sexual deviates . . . That new biography of Sir Hector Macdonald, war hero and a 1903 suicide after getting accused of homosexuality, says the homosexuality of an even more famous military man, Kitchener, "in spite of his fierce appearance and his reputation as a martinet," was much more well known . . . A 77-year-old retired accountant was flabbergasted to get arrested in Memphis for drag said he had come to the Cotton Carnival and assumed it was like the Mardi Gras where men dressed as women . . . Columnist Dorothy Kilgallen reports a wonderful "gaudy performance" in the Waldorf Astoria's elegant Empire Room when a six-foot-two "glamorously attired creature" in white. satin swept in with an exotic "maidservant' carrying her train after the "contessa" had sent management detailed instructions, including if "the contessa has her gloves off, her hand is to be kissed by the maitre d'hotel." The "creature" is "reliably reported" to be a man from the Middle West who gets his kicks making such dramatic entrances. . .
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