the office of priesthood nor any other power or agency gives a man the right to make valid judgment on subjects about which he is ignorant. I personally have a deep belief in God but I think the Holy Spirit tells me a few things too, and they are sometimes quite at variance with what the Holy Spirit reputedly has told Paul.

Freudian psychiatry has worked with the thesis that homosexuality is not a part of nature, but is rather a preversion of the natural instinct. But Freudian theory has not stood up well under the test of the last several decades. Homosexuality seems to be ingrained much deeper as an instinct than to be said to be generated from an inability resolve drives centered around the Oedipus situation. Most patients who come to analysis as homosexuals leave as homosexuals.

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Most churches and religious bodies look upon homosexuality with disfavor, due I think to the unfortunately strong influence of St. Paul upon early Christian literature and theology. His feelings of guilt were so strong as to be almost morbid. The same could be said for St. Augustine. This type of morbid guilt seems to permeate so much of western religious literature that we certainly cannot accept it as an adequate rule of life, nor even an adequate philosophy for most humans.

I cannot agree with Mr. G. that a homosexual is in the same class with the alcoholic. Nor do I think that the future of ONE Magazine is doomed because it represents an attempt to question what has long been held to be God's opinion-that homosexuality is wrong. Nor do I think that a homosexual should pray to be rid of his desires of the flesh simply because a religious organization has told him that he should. If anything, the homosexual should seek to learn, as best he can, the nature. of the universe and his place in it.

Dear Mr. Legg:

Mr. K. Miami, Florida

I appreciate hearing from you about my earlier letter. I am not a theologian and I doubt if you are, but the Bible, as we all know, can be translated and jerked around to suit people's lives. I believe I know as you must that most of Us are unhappy people on earth. If you face life as it was intended men were made to be atttracted by women, basically to produce children. If you tell me that sodomy is a natural act, or other ways of having sex, then YOU must give up blasphemy.

If you do not believe God destroyed the two cities of sin then do you know why He destroyed them? They were certainly living

against the natural laws of Nature. If scientists do not know what causes homosexuality then don't you think we should leave the answer up to God?

I have known nasty queens and nice ones and believe me sexually there isn't much difference whether being done in an old rooming house or behind velvet curtains. It is wrong to live "that way" and deep in almost every homosexual heart they know it. Otherwise they wouldn't escape through the bottle and go running to psychiatrists.

I think I will buy every issue of ONE up where they are sold here and replace them with the Catholic Digest.

Dear Mr. Legg:

Mr. G.

New Orleans, Louisiana

I have already found solace in "religious escapism as you choose to call it. Remember that "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." This is now confirmed in my life of mystical experience-union with Christ and the daily reception of his body in sacramental form. Perhaps I am especially favored by such signal expression of His love. Nothing you may say will have the least influence in causing me to think otherwise.

Dear Editors:

Mr. W. Enid, Oklahoma

Several afternoons ago I was browsing in a used-book shop and found the June, 1954, issue of ONE Magazine which was devoted to religion and the homosexual. I doubt whether the intervening years have made any change in the interesting and illuminating research there into the religious situation concerning homosexuality.

It is my good fortune, as a relatively religious person and a homosexual, to possess a possibly rare degree of so-called. religious sureness and tranquility. I firmly believe that, standing apart from accepted norms I was forced to rely on my own inner resources as far as religion was concerned. And I have been the victor.

As a child of a Catholic-Protestant marriage, contrary to normal procedure I was raised a Protestant, always amidst the clash and din of religious warfare. The experience has taught me that if there is one thing the homosexual must learn to excel in it is sincere introspection and reliance on that introspection which transcends a good deal of the spiritual and social traditions so zealously kept in the fore by prevailing society.

Mr. R. New York, N. Y.