Dear Dr. Menninger:

I read your article about child molesters, and I am furious about your classification of homosexuals. as sex offenders.

The idea of an educated doctor making homosexuals comparable

Dr.

Walt

Menninger

with rapists, exhibitionists and child molesters makes my stomach turn. L. J., San Diego, Calif.

This was just one of several letters which I received in response to a column on child molesters. I quoted Dr. Joseph Peters' study at the Philadelphia Sex Offender and Rape Victim Center of more than 200 sex offenders "rapists, exhibitionists, homosexuals and child molesters."

Although the laws in most states still technically classify homosexual activity as illegal, I regret passing along the implication that persons with a homosexual orientation are criminals to be considered in the same category as rapists, exhibitionists and child molesters.

In his famous "Letter to an American Mother," Sigmund Freud observed, "Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness.

*

"We consider it to be a variation of sexual functions produced by a arrest of sexual

certain

development.'

Dr. Judd Marmor, past president of the American Psychiatric Association, put it this way:

"We must conclude that there is nothing inherently sick or unnatural about individuals who prefer a homosexual sex object, except that this preference is a socially condemned behavior in our culture."