BY CURTIS DEWEES

(CONCLUDED FROM AUGUST ISSUE)

6

NO

DONT

5

16

No

42

mattachine REVIEW

On the Suppression of

Homosexual Literature

The NODL refuses to make public its criteria for declaring a book obscene,

nor does it make public the names of the persons who make the decisions about which books will be placed on the list.

Some books on homosexual subjects that are currently being suppressed

are:

The Conformist, by Alberto Moravia; Finistere, by Fritz Peters, The Heart in Exile, by Rodney Garland; Look Down In Mercy, by Walter Baxter; The Sling and the Arrow, by Stuart Engstrand, The Well of Loneliness, by Radclyffe Hall. This by no means exhausts the list of banned homosexual books. This merely represents some of the better known novels on this suby ject.

With respect to libraries, librarians claim that since they operate on a lim ited budget, they must exercise a certain amount of selecuon and must there fore "buy only those books which are the most wholesome." (Quoted from To The Pure, by Ernst & Seagle; in The Censorship of Books, edited by Walter M. Daniels, p. 186.

This almost immediately eliminates most books which would come under a questionable and controversial category like homosexuality. But many umes it is not just "selection" which keeps books on homosexuality out of the libraries. The personal tastes and views of the librarian come into play. And cach public library has its board, and many of the boards, representing some of the most conservative elements of society, maintain a tight control on what types of books are bought by a library.

Most censors would agree that books at least novelstreating of homosexuality automatically fall into the category of the obscene. However, to define "obscene" in a meaningful way has been a notoriously difficult task. Judge Curtis Bok, of Philadelphia has said that, "to come to grips with the question of obscenity is like comng to grips with a greased pig." Quoted from The Right to Read by Paul Blanshard, published by Beacon Press, Boston, p. 148

In the Roth decision (June 1956), the Supreme Court set up a new legal definition of obscerity, ruling that the standard is "whether to the average indi-