BOOKS

Notices and reviews of books, articles, plays and poetry dealing with homosexuality and the sex variant. Readers are invited to send in reviews or printed matter for review.

BOO

DOES PORNOGRAPHY MATTER? ed. C. H. Rolph, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1961, 18s net, 112 pp.

This delightfully sophisticated symposium minimizes the tiresome excur sions to the dictionary, as each contributor sharpens his intellect provocatively on the basic, and probably intractable, issues. Their seriousness far transcends the shallow dicta and hackneyed legalese of, for example, the L. A. Daily Journal's 1958 Report on Pornography (mailed to Friends of ONE for their amusement).

Barrister, Lord Birkett, who defended The Well of Loneliness in the 1928 prosecution, recounts the history of English obscenity laws, which laws he assumes to reflect universal attitudes. He praises the reformed Obscene Publication Act of 1959, for safeguarding literary freedom while clarifying the obscenity question generally.

The eminent critic, Sir Herbert Read, argues that pornography is a mere symptom of deeper social ailments to try to suppress the symtom is to aggravate the disease. He underpins his thesis with a display of obscure post-Freudianism and an account of how censorship provoked D. H. Lawrence to attack conventional morality. Sir Herbert concludes that censorship is unjustifiable, artistic freedom a therapeutic necessity, and

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that pornography addicts need group therapy. Stronger medicine than that seems called for, if the ailment lies at the social root.

After noting the distinction between pornography (originally, depiction of prostitutes) and obscenity, Sociologist Geoffrey Gorer reports the censorious fear that porn-users will achieve satisfaction therefrom, and be diverted from "healthier" outlets, while at the same time fearing that they will not be satisfied, but will be stimulated to act out their disgusting or dangerous fantasies. Gorer thinks the latter rather unlikely, though it is the bugaboo of most journalistic exploitation of the "Pornography Danger." Though pornography's use is chiefly masturbatory and neurotic, Gorer denies the state any right to interfere yet, for the protection of children, porn ought to be "hard to to get." After excusing it as an innocent symptom of immaturity, he then suggests that it become in effect a badge of manhood-something you can't get your hands on till you're old enough!

Methodist leader, leader, Dr. Dr. Donald Soper, calls pornography an offense against God and a chief cause of delinquency, violence, pathological selfishness and the breakdown of marriage.

Psychoanalyst Dr. Robert Gosling suggests that carefully validated research be undertaken to determine

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