the exchange between yourself and Mr. Kameny over the word "homophile." It has always seemed to me that the word "homosexual" connotes a sexual content period to the love relationship between two men women. This I would consider a gross misrepresentation of the actual complexity and nature of the feelings of love two gay persons may share. The word "homophile" escapes this narrow and misleading connotation and implies, for me at least, a love of the type existing between my lover and myself.
The October ONE proved especially delightful. Would it be too imaginative to interpret the cover design as an interlocking "69?" My compliments to Bob Waltrip whose stories seem almost snatched from my own thoughts and with whom my affinity and empathy are enormous.
Being a political scientist, my interest was aroused by A. E. Smith's "The Myth of the Homosexual Vote." While I have no criticism of the specifics in the article, I would suggest that the absence of organization and/or of conscious wooing of homosexual voters by politicians need not in itself discount the possibility that homosexuals might find the outlook and programs of one party more appealing, from a homosexual viewpoint, than the other's. I harbor some hypotheses on homosexual voting myself but they would require interview research prior to being worth presentation. In effect, however, I am suggesting that Mr. Smith may have been asking the wrong questions in his presentation and that his conclusions may, therefore, be both irrelevant and premature.
"Race
Andrew Bradbury's comments and Sex" were were disturbing, particularly if they indicate a general phenomenon and not one confined just to NYC. Contra his observations, I have noted a distinct animosity toward Negroes, gay or otherwise, among most of the homosexuals whom I know. This is probably attributable to up-bringing and to the failure to generalize one's own predicament in a hostile and/or indifferent society to another oppressed segment of the citizenry.
His observations that white southern boys are submitting themselves to Negro advances, recalls to mind a gay friend who arrived from Mississippi an arch-conservative and segregationist but who, after submitting himself to a Negro, underwent two connected reactions: 1) a severe psychic trauma necessitating psychiatric consultation and physically expressed in the inability to urinate, and 2) upon adjustment, an ideological commitment to liberalism and integration. Since then, he has actively worked for the NAACP and as a tutor of Negro children. The pattern of
guilt, submission, trauma, adjustment and change has intrigued me and seems tangentially related to Bradbury's concern with race and sex.
I read in the New York Times, Sunday November 29, that the N.Y. Catholic Welfare Society has objected to the proposed alteration of NY penal code designed. to place adultery and homosexual conduct between consenting adults in private outside the purview of the law. An Episcopal spokesman, on the other hand, praised the alterations. It would appear that theological ignorance still clouds the thinking of some segments of the Catholic Church. Tis a pity considering the several intelligent and comprehending priests whom I have spoken with about this matter. Let us hope that ignorance and medievalism do not prevail in the Empire State.
Mr. P.
New York, N.Y.
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