that the Supreme Court abandon its 8-yr.-old test of obscenity (established in the case of Roth vs. U.S.) in which obscene literary material must be proven as "utterly without redeeming social importance," and declare that all published material has the protection of the First Amendment unless it creates a "clear and present danger" of antisocial conduct. Yet this change will scarcely be a final solution, since it still fails to establish objective tests for illegality in publications, particularly in the area presently under discussion. Of course antisocial conduct, AS ACCOMPLISHED FACT, can be defined quite readily in terms of specific actions; but to define circumstances "creating a danger of" and conductive to such conduct is something else again and something not nearly as simple as defining, for example, a fire hazard. It entails a prediction of what persons might or might not do in response to certain subjective stimuli, yet at the same time a prediction which asserts all the certainties of a fait accompli. But the moment we require that justice be based on predictions of human behavior, rather than facts, we raise enormous problems, especially in a field where every judge, jury, lawyer, and psychiatrist can hold differing opinions.

It is quite interesting to compare this "danger" test in the area of antisocial sexual conduct, with the same. test in the area of antisocial political conduct. In fact, such a comparison is very helpful in bringing to light the uncertainties involved; for sanctions now used by postal and other censoring agencies are directed as much against politically subversive literary materials as they are against "morally subversive" or "obscene" materials, and similar sanctions could naturally be brought to bear under the ACLU formula, if adopted.

Obviously, a writing which deliberately sets out to inflame the public against existing government, advocates

armed insurrection, and tells readers where they can get free guns and ammunition, could be considered as establishing a "clear and present danger" of antisocial conduct. So could a writing which deliberately recommends mass rape, and tells men when and where they can engage in such activity. But what of an historical writing which describes armed insurrection of the most bloody sort, as, for example, in the Dominican Republic, or Cuba; or some other writing describing with full detail and the utmost relish a mass sex orgy in Ancient Rome? In neither of the latter cases are readers being invited or incited, much less assisted, to behave similarly; so that the creation of a "clear and present danger" of antisocial conduct would be impossible to prove from the writings themselves; and a judgment reached in this regard, if any, would necessarily have to rest upon mere speculation as to the subjective reactions of readers.

Plainly, the only permanent solution is the positive development of sound ethical practices and sound literary or artistic tastes in the public at large, by examples set in families and schools, so that our future citizenry will be merely uninterested in disorderly conduct and/or literary trash. ONE has always taken the position that it has the constitutional right to at least the same liberties of expression in a homophile publication as are legally tolerated in a heterophile publication. But ONE does not construe this liberty as license to publish a lot of meaningless rubbish. For example, certain editors (such as former Editors of ONE Magazine) apparently consider the four-letter words now in literary vogue as so cute and tantalizing and literarily mature that readers are likely to (and have) found them scattered about like salt and pepper. ONE's present Editors regard this practice as merely a literary fad which they are by no means constrained to adopt-especially since it has already been worked to death in

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