Letters

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES DO THE EDITORS FORWARD LETTERS FROM READERS TO OTHER PERSONS NOR DO THEY ANSWER CORRESPONDENCE MAKING SUCH REQUESTS. THAT PICTURE: A FINAL WORD

To the Editors:

ONE Magazine was instituted to promote understanding of the homosexual by society and by himself. (Refer back to stated principles on the inside cover of your Magazine.) Just, how the picture of the sailor evacuating promotes this understanding, I fail to see. I feel you alienate the decent thinking homosexual by displaying this so-called art, and you defeat the aims and purposes of ONE altogether.

I have never seen a woman on the john in PLAYBOY, nor anyone pictured likewise in THE NEW YORKER. But of course I refer here to two high ranking magazines. (They are adept in being sexy without violating good taste.) One of low rank might be expected to print anything and everything the law will allow, lacking the sound judgment of good editors.

I have always supported ONE even though not always, actively; now it saddens me to say I have had to change my will because of principles I cannot change. Perhaps in the future you'll find it in your best interests to return to the high ideals we all had when ONE started.

Dear Mr. Gregory:

Ann Carll Reid

Van Nuys, California Editor, ONE Magazine 1954-1957

I doubt that you will print the enclosed story. I am getting a little fed up with this Utopian sentimentality that I have been writing. Of course your readers like a little fantasy and are not likely to welcome realistic writing. Any time you try to present anything that vaguely approaches the truth you are condemned for it.

This is evidenced by the indignant storm of letters over the famous picture in the August issue. Our little virgin friends like to

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imagine that people don't really go to the bathroom, or have sexual organs either; or brains, or guts, or toenails. However, I am a wild-eyed fanatic who is decadent enough to admit going to the toilet once in a while. I am always ashamed of it afterwards, but I can't help myself when I get the urge. I am also so perverted and evil that I enjoy looking at a naked man. I also appreciate Mr. Bronstein's excellent drawing, but this is so disgusting and hideous I should never admit it. However, I would say to our friends that art may represent whatever it goddam well pleases and still be art. A man going to to the the bathroom, dear friends, is merely a man going to the bathroom. Period.

MATTACHINE SOCIETY WASHINGTON, D. C. (Copy to ONE)

Gentlemen:

Mr. W.

Parker, Arizona

Your irresponsible letter published in ONE (October, 1963) could be written better by an enemy than by a fighter for what you wish us to believe in.

The drawing does not show a sailor doing what you believe. It is a tender boy sitting on a drumlike seat on a cushion, meditating -maybe wishing compay for a part of his body which I do not want to call by name before you.

Do you know of a toilet which would yield to the pressure of the right leg as does the cushion shown? Do you know of toilets with small curved legs, as in this drawing, where you can distinguish two of them? What your evil thoughts imagine he is doing cannot be done with the genitals in the position shown. Try it yourself and see.

The drawing is nicely done, free from the artificiality of posing, a being entirely occupied by himself, the quality we like in the paintings of really great artists like Chardin, etc.

On your second paragraph: How about printing the etching "Si quebró el cántaro," by Goya, but leave off the artist's name? That would give off Homeric laughter! Or "Thinker," by Rodin in which a mind like yours might see the same act as you see in the much discussed drawing

I have to apologize for my still unperfect English, being of German birth.

POTPOURRI

Dear sir:

Mr. H. (Artist) New York, N. Y.

I cannot say that I took very kindly to the acid and terse review of The World, the

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