COMMENT FROM THE PRESS

Anglican Church Editor Praises Wolfenden Report; Sees No Chaos if All Sex Laws Abolished

While many newspapers greeted the Wolfenden Report with a holy outrage, many did not, as previousl articles in the REVIEW have stated (see December 1957 issue). From England's Rev. C. O. Rhodes, editor of the Church of England Newspaper, how ever, comes comment favoring the recommendations to relax sex laws applying to consenting adults in private. He wrote that the proposal to make homosexual acts' in such cases was the "most sane, sober and scientific treatment of 'vice"" he has ever seen. He also made the following astonishing speculation on the laws relating to marriage and sexual morality:

'I sometimes wonder what would hap pen if all legislation relating to marriage and sexual morality were abolished with one stroke of the pen and human nature were left to find its own way, without the attentions of the police and the courts. I warrant that, after a brief period of confusion, society would settle down into an ordered way of life which would be an improvement in many respects on our present system.'

HENNINGS CALLS FOR QUICK REVIEW OF G.I. DISCHARGES

WASHINGTON, March 10 (AP)-Senator Thomas C. Hennings Jr. (Dem.), Missouri, has called for a speedy review by the Army of all less-than-honorable discharges based on preinduction activties.

In a letter yesterday to Secretary of Defense Neil H. McElroy, Hennings noted that the Supreme Court ruled last Monday that "it was unlawful for the Army to consider pre-in-

duction activities in determining the nature of a discharge."

As chairman of the Senate Constitutional Rights subcommittee, which previously had inquired into the military personnel security program, Hennings said he thought the court's decision made a prompt review of these cases "more imperative than ever."

"Certainly all injustices visfted upon the persons affected by the Army's prior discharge practice now declared illegal by the Supreme Court should be corrected without further delay," Hennings wrote.

mattachine REVIEW

are working hard to prevent legislative proposals by Rep. Francis E. Walter from being tacked onto otherwise inoffensive legislation passed by the Senate. These proposals DO affect homophiles. In reality they do less to protect the security of this nation as was originally intended than to harm individuals by exposing some as pect of their private lives which has nothing to do with subversion.

THE DANGER OF LOOKING BACKWARD

(Continued from page 2)

The editorial printed alongside is reproduced exactly as it appeared in the Congressional Rec· ord under the heading, "Looking Backward."

The House of Representatives is likely to have before it in the next week or so a slick and slightly underhanded attempt to reimpose the security program indiscriminately on all Federal employees. In 1956 the Supreme Court ruled in Cole v. Young that Congress, when it enacted Public Law 733 (on which the Eisenhower security program is based) intended the term national security "to comprehend only those activities of the Government that are directly concerned with the protection of the Nation from internal subversion or foreign aggresalon, and not those which contribute to the strength of the Nation only through the impact on general welfare." The summary procedures of the Eisenhower security program could be applied, therefore, only to so-called sensitive positions-that is, to positions genuinely affecting national security.

Representative FRANCIS B. WALTER decided at once the Supreme Court should be overruled by Congress. There is no doubt, of course, that Congress has authority to correct the Court in defining the intent of one of its own statutes. But if Congress is to do this it ought to know what it is doing: and it ought to have some good reason for doing it. What the House Post Once and Civil Service Committee did was to take an Inofensive bill passed by the Senate-a bill which merely empowered agency heads to keep accused employees on the job pending a determination of their case-and amend It to extend the security program to cover all positions in the Government, sensitive and nonsensitive alike. The Senate has never considered or held hearings on the bill in this form.

It is worth remembering that the security program, with its reliance on unknown accusers, was instituted a decade ago as an emergency device to meet charges that the Civil Service had been infiltrated by untrustworthy persons. The program violated baslo American concept of fairness. It put employees at the mercy of irresponsible or mallclous persons who might make charges against them anonymously. Is this a program which the people want to institutionalize as a permanent part of American life? Is it a program which Americans want to impose on civil servants whether their jobs affect security or not? Reextension of the program would be, this newspaper believes, a dangerous and unnecessary step backward. The way forward lles in bringing the program into conformity with traditional standards of justice.