Letters

The views expressed here are those of the writers. ONE's readers cover a wide range of geographical, economic, age, and educational status. This department aims to express this diversity.

MARRIAGE ! ! ! ?

Dear Editor:

Randy Lloyd's article "Let's Push Homophile Marriage" (June, 1963) just stinks! What does this so-called writer Randy Lloyd want? To copy heterosexual life? His humdrum thinking is more than narrowminded and makes me feel sick. It is very bad that you accepted an article like this, Mr. Slater. R. H. Stuart

Dear Editor:

Los Angeles, California

Randy Lloyd should be given credit for outright, open-minded thought. I feel he is really a genius. God bless him. Also I am very happy for George Francis' "As for Me' (June, 1963). I support him 100%. He is a wonderful writer, right to the point. Mr. C.

Dear ONE:

Wheeling, West Virginia

Your June issue is the best yet. Mark Haldane's cover is a masterpiece.

Gentlemen:

Mr. F.

Atlanta, Georgia

I agree with Randy Lloyd's article, but he states that there are a lot of homosexuals wanting to get married. If this be true I would like to inquire where? Especially here in San Francisco. I went to a certain Gay Bar this week and there were between two and three hundred packed inside. Most seem to just want to be seen, or to drink. Here so many are stand-offish." You send over a drink to someone and nine times out of ten he won't even acknowledge it. At another bar most of the customers are out for money and that can't be a basis for a good relationship.

I've put a lot of hard work into my busiIness and made a success of it, but it is rather meaningless without someone to share it or to do for. My main question is just how and where do you meet married couples or someone that doesn't want to "have his

cake and eat it too", so to speak? I get so discouraged with these one-night stands, am thirty-four, average looks, with a lot of bottled-up loving to give someone. Mr. A.

Dear sir:

San Francisco, California

I have been reading the Magazine regularly and have found the articles, poems and stories to be of an excellent quality, matching the art work, which I think is both lively and appropriate and in no way below the artistic standards of the best work in other journals.

I mention these things not so much to flatter you but because these qualities of excellence have been of utmost value to me in another sense. The world of homosexuality is fairly terrifying to the outsider; and by outsider I very much mean to include those homosexuals like myself who for many years were quite isolated, until at last we discovered that there actually are places for the homophile groups, and that a magazine, a real magazine with editorials, articles, and all the rest, is published by homophiles for the enjoyment and guidance of homophiles. Somehow the Magazine makes the whole thing seem real in a way that bars, coffee houses, baths, parties and the rest never do seem real.

I know of no other publication that gives. the homosexual credit for being fully human, a person with his own qualities and a right to be treated with respect. It seemed to me that you were terribly daring, almost indecent to do so; and I found my hair rising at times, particularly when you tore into one of those smug heterosexual assumptions about "queers" that I, with the humility of the undefended, had long ago absorbed into my own estimate of myself.

When my sense of reality was threatening to go under again, I would cling to the fact that here it was in actual print-with every quality present that we depend upon to reassure ourselves as to the solidity and

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