readers of the Star in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands saw the viewpoint of Columnist Ursula von Eckardt in which she brought out several issues conveniently skipped by an embarrassed and overly-pious

political appointee. While her statements include references to emotional disturbance that may not be universal, her plea nevertheless is most constructive, therefore it is published in full:

A Matter Of Civil Liberties

By URSULA VON ECKARDT

THE SAN JUAN STAR-Monday, January 14, 1963

WHILE HOMOSEXUALITY MAY BE distasteful to "normal" people, driving alleged homosexuals away from tourist resorts, restaurants, bars, and other public places through special laws and police action is infinitely more destructive to civil liberty, the principles of a democratic society, and an enlightened understanding of human and social problems than all the types and varieties of sexual deviation together. I am referring to the V.I.Governor Paiewonsky's pledge to "drive the homosexuals out of Saint Thomas" on the grounds that the recent murder of Sheldon Nulty was probably motivated by homosexual jealousy. The logic of this argument is similar to seeking to drive all married men out of town because occasionally a husband murders his wife, or to jailing everyone who may be tubercular because healthy people find sickness unpleasant.

A generation or two ago, the primitive belief was still prevalent that tuberculosis was God's punishment for sin and a shameful curse that made it necessary for a respectable family to keep the afflicted hidden from view even if this meant depriving him of treatment. Today, we are still fighting the same attitude toward

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mental illness.

Some families deprive their mentally ill relatives of adequate care because they are "ashamed" of the illness or refuse the recovering mental patient employment and respect in the community. The major social problems of alcoholism and narcotics addiction are aggravated in our community, because they, too, are considered by far too many people as sins and crimes to be hated and feared, and the addicts, who are sick and troubled, as criminals to be shunned, scorned, driven away, or even jailed and punished.

Yet many public officials and enlightened citizens who protest and fight the ignorance and bigotry that regards tuberculosis, schizophrenia, and addiction as crimes rather than as problems of public health, manifest the same ignorance and bigotry toward sexual deviations. Overt homosexuality is an increasing social problem. But it is aggravated, not resolved by sweeping it under the rug with moral indignation and heaping abuse upon those who are afflicted with such symptoms of emotional disturbance.

More, however, is involved in Governor Paiewonsky's pledge than his personal prejudices or psychiatric ignorance. This is the issue of civil liberty. If one person murders another, seduces a minor, molests a stranger, or creates a public nuisance such interference with the rights of others justifies his being fined, imprisoned or otherwise punished. But if a person who has committed no such explicit crime, as already clearly defined by existing laws in the Virgin Islands as elsewhere, is denied his right to use a public place, is bullied, jailed, or otherwise harassed by police because of the way be combs his hair, dresses, talks, and moves, his liberty as a citizen is flagrantly denied him in a fashion worthy of the most tyrannical of police states. Our entire political tradi tion prides itself on the premise that a person's private life, chaste or lecherous, normal or neurotic, temperate or dissoluteis his own responsibility. A person may think, feel, and do what he likes as long as he does not. violate the equal rights of another. Some beliefs and ways of life are şaner, healthier, and happier than others, Nevertheless, those who are neither sane, nor healthy, nor happy are equally citizens. They have exactly the same rights to their emotions, dispositions, and ways of talking, moving, and living as those who are normal, average, or inconspicuous. To deny civil rights to those whose sexual behavior is distasteful to their neighbors is the first step in denying the right of every person to his private morality and hence, human dignity. Homosexuality is a sympton of emotional disturbance; its prevalence may require public health measures. But if it is made into a crime and its practitioners prosecuted, then our civil liberties are trampled under the foot of bigotry as primitive and destructive as racial and religious persecution or the hounding of the sick.