scene if the person importing it has a genuine scientific purpose.

His decision that the institute was entitled to have the impounded material was stayed while the government pondered whether to appeal.

The final decision not to ap peal was made by Solicitor General J. Lee Rankin after the criminal division of the jus tice department had indorsed a treasury recommendation against appeal.

The imports in the Kinsey case include photographs, Chinese paintings, statuettes, books and what were identified as "lavatory wall inscriptions." The government's decision to accept and apply generally the new obscenity standard does not bind the post office. However, it may influence the attitude of postal officials in decid ing whether matter is "Obscene" and therefore non-mailable.

Many leading newspapers commented editorially on the above action. Here is what appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Customs' 7-Year Itch Is Finally Scratched

A SEVEN YEARS' ITCH of the U. S. Customs Bureau to destroy some books, photographs, paintings and statuettes collected by the late Dr. Alfred Kinsey, authority on sex, has been mercifully cured by a sensible judgment of a United States District Court. We congratulate the Court. It ordered the material released from customs to the University of Indiana's Institute for Sex Research, Inc., because in scholars' hands it would not be of "prurient interest" and so need not be confiscated as legally obscene.

As for the Customs men suffering all these years from their itch, that could have been avoided if Undersecretaries of the Treasury, and Collectors of Customs and United States Attorneys had been less sanctimonious and bigotedly virtuous about a matter that had no bearing whatever on the public morals. Dr. Kinsey, back in 1950 and 1951, collected the materials in Europe and the Orient for study of mattachine REVIEW

the various cultural expressions of human sexuality. When the objects began arriving in New York, Customs men seized them. No Government report is ever likely to reveal how many hours of "scientific study" have since been given this material by the Federal officialdom of New York. If it has not undergone frequent re-examination, then Customs men are different from ordinary cops. A cop who confiscates a particularly gamey burlesque-house film is flooded for weeks with demands for private bookings.

In taking the Kinsey materials out of the hands of the Customs Bureau, the District Court has not merely helped serious scholarship but it also has stepped on a particularly repugnant form of the Federal propensity to tell university scholars what they are entitled to read and study-and therefore think. The whole episode is especially sordid because It was so unnecessary.

THE SOCIETY FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF SEX

PURPOSE

The Society for the Scientific Study of Sex (SSSS) has been organized to foster interdisciplinary exchange in the field of sexual knowledge. The aim of the Society is to bring together scientists working in the boological, medical, anthropological, psychological. sociological, and albed fields who are conducting significant serual research or whose profession confronts them with sexual problems.

ACTIVITIES

The SSSS will hold periodic scientific meetings for the presentation of research papers. It will organize symposie, seminars, workshops, conferences, etc. to consider theo. retical and practical problems in the serual area. It will sho publish a scientific journal devoted to relevant original studies and reports.

MEMBERSHIP REQUIREMENTS

Minimum requirements for Felow: A doctor's degree or its equivalent in one of the biological or social sciences plus outstanding contributions to serual knowledge.

Minimum requirements for Member. A graduate degree or its equivalent in one of the biological or social sciences pas contributions to sexual science; or significant com tributions to serual science.

Further information concerning the Society

and its activities may be obtained from:

Robert Veit Sherwin

1 East Forty-Second Street New York 17, New York