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.

MORE ON MARRIAGE

Dear sir:

"Let's Push Homophile Marriage" was a fine article which I am definitely in accord with. I have tried to preach this all my life to little avail. Since I have lost my great love to the "Grim Reaper" I have been a lonesome person, but twelve years was marvelous in its entirety. For this I am grateful.

Dear Randy Lloyd:

Mr. L.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Bully for you! Your article was excellently written and I agree wholeheartedly with you. You might enjoy hearing of my venture into marriage for laughs, if nothing else.

In '44 while I was in the Army I was introduced to another soldier. He was, I still think, about the handsomest man you could hope to meet. He had been going with the friend who introduced him to me but they broke off and our marriage was consummated.

After Army we teamed up and being identical in build passed ourselves off as brothers. He took my family name and it was, for a while, an idyll. But I was the naive one. I thought it was for real, but he had a roving eye. Due to my work hours he had plenty of time for extra-curricular activity without my even suspecting!

Finally, the bubble burst and he moved to New York where he finally married a society physician with lots of money. They live lavishly on the East Side. I visited them there several years ago. So the sad end. I'm still moving around. The beaches here are full of tempting morsels . . .

Dear ONE:

Mr. J. Sarasota, Florida

When someone begins to stress Homophile Marriage I sort of shudder because it is simply removing one type of regulation that fits a certain percentage and replacing it by another.

I feel that ONE's basic purpose should be to develop better understanding of the homophile's problems. To simply furnish a "club'' that could provide contacts and encourage further clannishness seems to me to defeat the basic purpose. We must realize, as the Negroes are beginning to see, that our world is so complex that no one phase can reach its ultimate or dominate the whole without being checked by other factors. Mr. W.

Dear sir:

Alhambra, California

As a brother homophile organization, we feel we must protest the June cover, both the illustration and the "Let's Push Homophile Marriage. What are you trying to do to the homophile movement? Though intended, no doubt, to be satire, the cover illustration of the prancing, nelly faggots is beyond the pale.

If Dave Heyler had published such an illustration to illustrate his perverted idea of a homophile it might be understandable, but to have one of the oldest and most respected homophile organizations do so is beyond our understanding. Your Magazine is sold on newsstands throughout the country and such a cover can only make us seem ridiculous.

Can't you hear our enemies saying, as they read it, "For God's sake, the queers want to marry each other"? We did not find fault with the article itself; in fact there were many good points in it, but marriage to most people is a sacred rite performed by a clergyman or authorized civil authority and not something that we could be accused of making a mockery of by the heterosexual world.

Dear ONE:

DIONYSUS

Tony Foster, Secretary Fullerton, California

Speaking as a reader I must tell that the cover of the June issue is more than I think admissible in bad taste. The appalling caricatures of homosexuals (which the chances