3. Now the powerful members of the majority, observing homosexualism, condemn it, forbid and punish its expression. Art and literature concerning it are largely tabooed. The cooks, feeling that steam should always escape from the spout and never from the lid, call in the welders and order them to weld the lid down tight.

4. Sex itself has become largely taboo. Heterosexual or homosexual or any other kind, it is removed from public conversation and public art. Children grow up thinking of themselves as abnormal because they do not have a fig-leaf in their crotch like everyone else must surely have. Sex is thought of, not as bodily function, but merely as the morbid interest those "bad" people have in fig-leaves, seeking them in "pornography" and "unacceptable" novels. An increasing number find their way at least partially back to nature through homosexuality or prostitution or unhappy marriages. Those who do not may turn to alcohol, enter mental institutions, or commit suicide. The teakettle explodes.

The cooks have brought steam to the teakettle. The cooks have sealed the spout. The cooks have sealed the lid, too. And the cooks have been scalded by steam and hot water, lacerated by the blooming metal, and must clean up the damage. Further, they must suffer the loss of the kettle and its contents.

But we're talking now about just one such kettle which has found a substitute outlet for its steam when we mention, for instance, someone caught with a pornographic item in his possession. Such an offense, if brought properly to the attention of authorities in most localities will result in a court trial. This happens often when the party charged merely owns such an item and has it in his home. Sentences for the "guilty" can vary. In one city recently, a man was sentenced to 60 days in jail and fined $100 by virtue of a city ordinance prohibiting possession of "pornographic" materials. By imposing laws such as this, what are the cooks gambling with?

They are gambling with illness, resentment, dissolution, crime. (Their acts are persecutory.) They are gambling with the loss of their own freedom. (When will the police enter their homes and arrest them because some prized work of art lacks the required fig-leaf or brassiere and is classified as "pornography" by the Women's Clubs?) They are gambling with the decline of Western civilization. Man is vitally interested in and will risk dying for only the kind of world which is worth living for. He defends those ways which mean life to him. And you will remember we decided that sex is basic.

Achilles was the greatest warrior among the Greeks, but he did not wish to fight. He tried to avoid the mission to Troy, even disguising himself as a woman to dodge the "draft." When he finally did pitch his tent with the Greeks before Troy, he still refused to fight. Not the glory that was Greece, nor the defense of his fellow-Greeks, nor the exhortations to demonstrate his manliness could persuade Achilles to fight.

Only when the Trojan, Hector, killed Patroklos did Achilles join the battle, to fight "like ten men," for Patroklos was Achilles' lover.

mattachine REVIEW

Similarly the offender above who was penalized for possessing pornographic materials reacted to his arrest with a depressing sense of defeat and bitterness. His possessions were important to him, else he would not have them. The Mattachine Society cannot and does not condone or encourage an interest in pornography, and my remarks here are those of a writer and do not represent Mattachine policy. But by the good Lord, the Society is interested in freedom and the rights of human beings! And the current censorship practices constitute a gross invasion of privacy and a turn in the direction of every tyranny in history. I wrote to Khrushchev during his visit here-through the invitation of Parade magazine for the public to do so-and I rather harped on the point one of the primary differences between his form of government and a really free democracy is that, in the latter, the individual is guaranteed a status of dignity and conviction of personal worth and the right to choose. In the case of the matter at hand, the distinction I drew is faint indeed.

Now I somewhat unchivalrously mentioned, a moment ago, the women's clubs. Allow me to clarify a bit, still unchivalrously.

A few days ago the Denver Post published a set of photographs of various members of the American Federation of Women's Clubs curling their noses and looking properly disgusted as they viewed some of the local postmaster's fine collec tion of pornography.

It happens to be a deep conviction of mine that such strongly anti-sex attitudes as are exhibited by such frustrated old biddies (most of whom must be sexually "unemployed" widows, divorcees or spinsters) are precisely what have made many homosexuals what they are, and may be the direct cause of much of the delinquency and crime in this country.

If you think I am too pointed in this criticism, let me point out that these same clubs, only a few short years ago, were pressing for new laws here in Denver which would provide for the castration of sex offenders. This is about as close as these sweet old ladies could come to making lampshades out of human skin. Needless to say, my Freudian castration complex rose right into my throat and I wrote a letter to the editor of the Post in which I cautioned that, with such a law in force, any kindly man who loved children enough to pause to speak to them on the street would be in danger of having swoop down on him from around the corner the local ladies' club to whack something off him. The Post published it. Others wrote in to agree with this view. The law was not enacted. Freedom must forever be guarded and, when necessary, fought for again. There is always someone eager to take it away from those who have it.

I do not believe the charge that children are getting unsolicited pornography in the mails. If they are, how come the adults are not getting it? I have been even on a couple of those "interesting mails" mail-order lists where people peddle everything from lessons in hypnotism to money-making schemes through the mail, and never once was there included even a shady joke. I dare say the press may really mean teenagers when it says children, and some of our innocent parents