describes the impression. I have: CONFUSION COMPOUNDED! Military administrators who can debate rationally any other subject, display utter confusion when the subject of Sex and what to do about it in the military establishment is raised.

You may ask, how is this confusion any different from anything we've been hearing about the Federal Government for years? Perhaps generally it is not, but in the case of military and civilian personnel policies-contrasted with taxation policies, or farm surplus policies-we are dealing with living, breathing human beings, whose whole future lives can be blighted by an action taken by an official administering the policies under discussion here. Consider for a minute the impact on a young soldier's life when he's drummed out the gate with nothing but a railroad ticket and an undesirable discharge in his pocket. Or consider the impact upon a professional man who is dismissed from government employment for "immoral conduct off-duty." Where do these people go from there? They either try their best to cover up the circumstances of their respective discharges, and get whatever menial jobs are available to them-for, keep in mind, all defense industry is closed to them-or they quietly starve. The right to starve seems to be the only constitutional right which the policy-makers of the Department of Defense have not yet seen fit to abridge.

How did this sorry business all start? We turn right back to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, our modern-day Florence Nightengale, who used, instead of a lamp, the floor and committee rooms of the U.S. Senate to enlighten us on the ills that plagued the Nation. Dean Paul Appleby, one of America's foremost theoreticians of public administration, summed up McCarthy this way: "He damaged the government generally, and he damaged its ability to deal with this particular problem... Disloyalty to the government of the United States among its officials is no more of a real problem than are insanity and gross criminality, which occasionally are found."

It gives me greatest satisfaction to report that most of the desecration of McCarthyism has been put to rest in Washington by now, but the one vestige which hangs on, tenaciously, is the witchhunt for homosexuals. This has hardly abated an inch, and, in fact, has become more sophisticated as the years have rolled on. The repository of greatest organized bigotry is the Department of Defense. But, as is so true, for every action there must be a reaction, and the center of reaction-yea, even revolution-is the Department of Defense as well. Our friend Masters used a very apt phrase when he titled his book, "The Homosexual Revolution." Fortunately, his compass pointed away from the Bastille, and he went charging down the wrong avenue. Those of us who are precipitating the whirlpool in the Pentagon were just as happy that not a word of this revolution got into print.

mattachine REVIEW

Let us look at the facts. The Federal Government in general, and the Department of Defense in particular, have attempted to establish themselves as arbiters of morality for their employees. The regulations use such terms as "immoral conduct," "immoral and indecent conduct," "moral turpitude," "unsuitability due to immoral behavior," and so on, all variations on the same theme of immorality, but without further definition. In some hidden recess of the vast establishment somewhere is a classified document which says, in effect, that homosexual conduct is "immoral conduct," and on this basis, tens of thousands of men and women have been branded as unfit or undesirable for anything but to starve quietly. And the wonder of it all is that not one single voice has been raised to question the source of authority, if any, for the Federal Government to establish moral standards of any kind for anybody, and most especially for its own employees.

A bit of history. There have been splinter efforts in the recent past, all leading up to the point we've reached right now. I'll review them briefly: 1957-Day v United States. Gregory Day brought suit in the Court of Claims for dismissal from government employment for "immoral conduct" involving homosexual relationships. He had once been a seminary student, and prepared and defended his suit himself. He did introduce some religious arguments, but phrased them in a most obscure, almost unintelligible, way, and did not argue them before the court. The court found that he had been accorded his full procedural rights, paid no heed to the religious pleadings which, under the circumstances was understandable, and dismissed the claim.

1959-Kameny v Brucker. Brucker in this case was the Secretary of the Army. Dr. Frank Kameny was an astronómer employed under a temporary appointment by the U.S. Army Map Service. He was dismissed for "immoral conduct." The issue of homosexual conduct was somewhat cloudy in this case, although this did not deter Dr. Kameny from petitioning the U.S, Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari based squarely on arguments challenging whether homosexual persons could be dismissed from Government employment "for cause" solely on the basis of their sexual inclinations. The petition was denied-properly, I have to admit grudgingly-for Kameny's presentation, brilliant as it was, was long on emotion but short on law. The decision of the lower court had found that, as a temporary em1 ployee, he was not vested with Civil Service appeal rights, and this de-

cision then stood.

1960-This was in a sense, a banner year, with two defeats and one victory. First came Dew v Quesada, with Quesada as Administrator of Civil Aeronautics. William L. Dew had initially applied for employment with the