Calling

Shots

THE OLD TIME LINE

Entitled "A Plea for Perversion?", a February 23, 1962 review in Time of the British film, "Victim", concludes with this expression of opin-

ion:

"But what seems at first an attack on extortion seems at last a coyly sensational exploitation of homosex uality as a theme-and, what's more offensive, an implicit approval of homosexuality, as a practice. Almost all the deviates in the film are fine fellows-well dressed, well spoken, sensitive, kind. The only one who acts like an overt invert turns out to be a detective. Everybody in the picture who disapproves of homosexuals proves to be an ass, a dolt or a sadist. Nowhere does the film suggest that homosexuality is a serious (but often curable) neurosis that attacks the biological basis of life itself. 'I can't help the way I am,' says one of

the sodomites in this movie. 'Nature played me a dirty trick.' And the scriptwriters, whose psychiatric in-

2 Printed in U. S. A.

formation is clearly coeval with the statute they dispute, accept this sicksilly self-delusion as a medical fact."

Any homosexual who declares, "Nature played me a dirty trick," is undoubtedly suffering from a "sick-silly self-delusion". It is not "Nature" who plays the dirty tricks. His is an unfortunate line, but it is "clearly coeval" with the "psychiatric information" of the editors of Time.

Ever since Time has condescended to mention the unmentionable, it has done so advisedly-in collaboration with the late Dr. Edmund Bergler (see "Berglery: How Oral Can You Get?" on page 22 of this magazine). Never has so much credence been given to so little.

The Bergler-Time line 'is clearly expressed in the above paragraph: "... that homosexuality is a serious (but often curable) neurosis that attacks the biological basis of life itself." This reads like a plea for heterosexuality. It also reads like: "When a culprit is then sufficiently signalized for this crime to be tortured, the torture of fire must by all means be employed, though not always to its whole extent, assigned in the Text, namely, the length of two Miserere. And this is enough on this most foul iniquity." But that was written in the seventeenth century.

As we now contemplate the vast array of literature written in an attempt to glorify the heterosexual life, are we to deny the homosexual his "coyly sensational exploitation of (Continued on page 27)

mariachine REVIEW

mattachine REVIEW

Founded in 1954 First Issue January 1955

Volume VIII

Editor HARQLD L. CALL

Associate Editor LEWIS C. CHRISTIE

Business Manager ...DONALD S. LUCAS

Treasurer

O. CONRAD BOWMAN, JR. Editorial Board

ROLLAND HOWARD WALLACE DE ORTEGA MAXEY

Trademark Registered U.S. Patent Office

Published monthly by the Mattachine Society, Inc., 693 Mission Street, San Francisco 5. California. Telephone: Douglas 2-3799. Copyright 1962 by the Mattachine Society, Inc. Eightb year of publication, Mattachine Foundation, Inc., established in 1950 at Los Angeles; Mattachine Society formed in 1953 and chartered as non-profit, non-partisan educational, research and social service corporation in California, Founded in the public interest for the purpose of providing accurate information leading to solution of sex behavior problems, particularly those of the bo-

mosexual adult. The REVIEW is available on many US. newsstands at 50¢ per copy, and by subscription (mailed in plain, sealed envelope). Rates in advance: $5 in U.S. and possessions; 56 foreign.

}

MARCH 1962

Number 3

TABLE OF CONTENTS }

2 CALLING SHOTS

4 HOMOSEXUALITY: A MORAL DILEMMA?

by George J. Lehmann

7 FAT CHANCE (Fiction) by C. C. Hazard

12 LET THE PEOPLE MIX,

19 BOOKS

25 THE GAY LIFE-BROADWAY, '61-'62 by Tom Wilson

30 READERS WRITE

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