CRITIQUE FROM A READER...

LUTHER ALLEN ASKS, "WHAT PRICE FREE EXPRESSION?"

There is always the possibility that in providing free expression for homosexuals in the Wattachine Review and other such publications the homosexuals will, out of their own mouths, prove that Dr. Bergler was right when he said that homosexuals are not only abnormal in the sexual sphere but that they flout the accepted standards of society in general. In a reprinted article in the August issue, for example, a writer who signs himself S.C.J. says blandly, "The invert is a compulsive being, governed by the laws of Nature-(God) ..." and farther on he writes of man-made laws (fears and preju dices)..." Most of civilized mankind has progressed beyond nature worship the Jews, the Christians, the Moslems, the Buddhists and modern science conspicuously in psychiatry, seeks to free man from his compulsions rather than to make a religion of his enslavement to them. S.C.J. also, obviously, equates law with fear and prejudice and in doing so he most clearly provides evidence for Dr. Bergler's assertion. A man who sees nothing in the law but the expression of fears and prejudices must indeed hold the law in contempt. I wonder how Mr. S.C.J. would make out in the jungle where there is no law but Nature's "survival of the fittest?" If he lived through a few months in the jungle I think he might emerge with a different estimate of both nature and "man-made law."

not

This brings me again to my good friend and sparring partner, Manfred Wise, may his orgasms be frequent and copious! If there is something godlike or divine in the orgasm, per se, then the rapist is performing an act of worship I suppose; the rapist at the moment of orgasm is godlike or divine. I cannot buy that, yet Mr. Wise's views lead inevitably to that conclusion. Mr. Wise goes on to say, ''..... there are individuals and in fact entire religions who see only the 'godlike' but the Divine in everything, everywhere.” If that is true then everything from deodorant commercials on TV to murder is divine. I cannot buy that either. Mr. Wise seems to think it dreadful that my morality requires labor and learning, and attempts to be reasonable. To him it is a cold morality. Does he then want a hot morality, a morality in which passion is the fountainhead of the law? Perhaps Mr. Wise's emotions and impulses are indeed as innocuous and benign as he seems to believe, but he would do well to consider, that the morality of the homosexual-beater-uppers also comes from deep within; is the expression of an inner revulsion, that the morality of the lynch mob is an emotion-based morality too.

mattachine REVIEW

In a recent article by Richard Wollheim reprinted from the London Spectator. the basic issue between Mr. Wise and myself is pointed up. Mr. Wollheim writes, There is one argument (advanced to me once by a philosophical colleague) that is both valid and plausable: namely, homosexuality arouses instinctive revulsion, and what arouses insunctive revulsion is in its nature wrong. The difficulty with this argument, however, is that it has consequences that many of its adherents would not accept. For while, at first sight, it seems to place disapproval of homosexuality on as firm a basis as any other moral belief, it does so only at the expense of making all moral beliefs untimately subjective. And subjectivism in ethics I, for one, find deeply repugnantwhereas homosexuality I don't." Why is subjectivism in ethics deeply repugnant? The answer is suggested in Mr. Wollheim's criticism of the recommendations of the Wolfenden Report, or part of the answer:

it seems to me

very arguable that, if the law on homosexuality were reformed but the general moral opinion of the community remained unchanged, the position of homosexuals would not be noticeably improved. The fear of legal sanctions would have been removed but the shadow of public opprobrium would remain. ... such a prospect is alarming. There is little point in liberalizing the law, if this merely means that the weapon of persecution is to be taken out of the hands of the magistrates and placed in those of the mob." The morality of the mob is an emotional morality, a subjective morality. What homosexuals ask of the world is rational and just treatment. But a rational and just mor ality must be a disinterested, dispassionate unemotional morality, and this means that a belief in reason and justice must be strong enough to subdue the public's anti-homosexual passions. But has the homosexual any right to demand this kind of morality from the world, while, at die same ume, advocating a subjective morality for himself and his kind. It is laborous to be reasonable and just, or to try to be, but it is an honorable labor. A dispassionate and disinterested approach may be cold although I do not believe it is but unrestrained emotionalism is no way to the good life or the good society. Piene Louys is undoubtedly an expert guide to the erotic life but nowhere in his works does he show the slightest insight into the realm of the sacred. However, in response to that quotation from Louys, I'd like to reply with that gutter idiom which goes something like, "a passionate erection. knows no conscience."