or incident-such as an attack on a "contact centers." But this result

child-triggered it. The police themselves admit no organized ring exists. Since the state law against indecent conduct between males has been on the books for many years, the suddenly renewed enforcement for no specific reason seems curious. It leaves one to guess that an irrational force in Ann Arbor is overly interested in keeping the city "a decent place to live" and that the police are hypersensitive with regard to the public image.

City prosecutors claim that each arrest was properly made and will hold in court, which remains to be seen. Since the officers involved have apparently undergone special training in the apprehension of homosexuals, they are aware of the conditions of "entrap ment", which invalidates an arrest if the officer lures an individual into a crime. Whether the police were successful in apprehending the individuals without "entrapping" them, which seems unlikely, is a question to be answered in the courts. Certainly some of the individuals arrested will argue that the police violated the rules of arrest.

hardly overrides the most disastrous effects.

What must be questioned most basically is the state statute itself. It simply is not consistent with advances in modern psychiatry. It is based on an absurd conception of homosexuality as the immoral behavior of stable rational individuals. It makes little attempt to understand such individuals as anything other than criminals, and most frightening of all, it sentences them to state prisons where their environment is hardly conducive for cure.

In relation to this problem, the police methods and motives are dwarfed. They are only the obnoxious repercussions of a problem which must ultimately be faced by the states and the citizenry.

CAMPUS WAG STRIKES HUMORUS NOTE

Tragic as the results of such actions as reported here are to the individuals involved, the situation at the University of Michigan was not without a touch of humor.

On January 5, this advertisement apThe moral implications involved are peared in the classified ads under most far reaching. "Personal:" "PERCY: Stay out of the johns in A. H. They're on to us."

The situation once more illustrates the cultural lag which puts the homosexual under the heading of "criminal" when he is most often an individual with serious psychological difficulties. In one sense, the police are right: they are bound to uphold the laws of the state. And in doing so, they have rendered at least one service, that of being the break-up of certain well-known

mattachine REVIEW

BOOKS

A Couple of POCHOS

By Dick Tyner

I read two books over the weekend about Mexican-CalifornianAmericans; but there the similarity ended. One was the "autobiography" of Pancho Gonzales, the tennis champion; the other was a novel, POCHO, by Jose Villarreal. Though Gonzales concludes he is "not composed of the stuff good husbands are made of," there is nothing of homophile interest in the book; nor is there any literary distinction. We are glad the Mexican boy made good; but we couldn't care less how he did it.

Gonzales has made his "autobiography" a work of considerable merit. Like so many first novels based on personal experiences, Villarreal must surely have written himself out. One wonders what he has left to be said in another book. Richard Wright, of course, has done quite well re-writing the same book year after year. Villarreal is not so impassioned a writer but is in many ways a better one than Wright. Both are of the contemporary realistic school, though perhaps Villarreal is (with no pun intended) more real, a true primitive. The reality of Villarreal is enhanced by the familiz rity to me of the locale of the story: the Santa Clara Valley. There will be objections to the earthiness of the language and of many of the incidents. Some of these add nothing to the story or to the picture of the author's people; but the combination of talent and conviction make them acceptable if not always in good taste.

The Pocho of the story is a precocious boy in any culture and something of a sissy. The latter quality may account for his desire to learn but it certainly does not interfer with his sexual exploits. More important, however, are his relationships with his boy friends, both the pachucos and the more Americanized boys of foreign extraction with whom he usually played. One of the latter is upset by the Pocho's remark that they have fun together because they "love each other." Pocho asks him, "Haven't you ever heard of having love for a friend, of loving people or things, without getting dirty about it?" This at at thirteen; I told you he was precocious.

One of the strongest influences on the younger Pocho was a Portagee dairyman; an exiled nobleman, he taught the boy many things in-