to my home. If the purpose was to bring these things to light, I certainly don't believe this was the way to do it." (Thomas Spencer) "I doubt that it's the function of the State Legislative Committee to publish a directory of dirty words. The Report serves no purpose at all and I can't agree with the recommendations. I thought that after the battle over the Committee's extension it would concern itself with other matters-but it certainly got off base in the wrong direction." THE NEWSPAPERS

The Florida newspapers spoke thusly:

(The Tampa Tribune) "If a private citizen had put out this publication, he probably could be arrested for circulating obscene liter-

ature.

"Why is the State of Florida engaged in printing and circulating so revolting and pointless a publication?

"It is another product of the strange mental processes which have dominated the State Legislative Investigation Committee, known as the Johns Committee after its former chairman, Senator Charley Johns of Starke.

"Why the citizenry of Florida needs to be exposed to clinical studies on sex practices which, by the Committee's own estimate, involve only slightly more than one per cent of the state's population is not clear. We know of no evidence that perversion has become any more of a problem in the state or nation than other acts of immorality.

"The fact is that the Committee, or whoever has been running it in the last three years, has shown an obsessive interest in homosexuality. Its staff has spent thousands of dollars snooping after perverts, although this is a police function

entirely outside the proper realm of legislative investigation. The Committee even went so far as to use a woman on "good conduct" probation from criminal court in Pensacola, in the sordid tactic of luring suspects into a motel room trap where they could be photographed . . .

"The Committee's Report has a purple cover. The color is appropriate. It suggests the contents. And it ought to suggest the color of the faces of legislators who voted that new $155,000 for the Johns-Mitchell Committee and the faces of the citizens who'll pay it."

(The St. Petersburg Times) "There long has been a feeling in this state that the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, if given enough money and leeway, eventually would hang itself . .

Now

it has happened. . . . The booklet has brought forth such a strong reaction from the citizens of Florida that this incident appears likely to cause the 1965 Legislature to reconsider both the propriety and the necessity for continuing the Investigation Committee.

"Certainly the members of the Committee cannot escape their own responsibility for this afront to the people of Florida. The Committee's bad taste has tended to obscure the recogniton that homosexuality is a grave medical and psychological problem in American society that will not be solved by clumsy policing.

"There also are grave doubts about the Committee's authority to act as broadly as it has. The legislative act authorizing investigations of this problem merely permitted a probe into 'the extent of infiltration into agencies supported by state funds by practicing homosexuals, the effect thereof on such agencies and the public, and the

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