regard it as a "ladies' auxiliary of the Mattachine Society, just because the Daughters were organized in proximity with Mattachine at San Francisco in the mid-1950s.

Upon dissolution of the Mattachine Area Councils in 1961, an effort to continue the Denver chapter under the name of "The Neighbors" was made, but it failed. However, there has been recent evidence that this group may be revived. While under the Mattachine banner from 1956 to 1960, this Denver group produced what are among the all-time outstanding newsletters ever issued by a Mattachine office.

At San Francisco, a group headed by Guy Strait in 1960 established the League for Civil Education, which after a few months began issuing a newsletter which developed into a tabloid newspaper every two weeks, heavy with gossip, and otherwise loaded with indictments of police, alcoholic beverage control officials, and so on. These editorial type "articles" were seldom polite, and not always in the King's English (to put it kindly), but nevertheless LCE News captured the fancy of the gay bar crowd in San Francisco, and soon thereafter of persons in many other cities to which quantities of the 8,000 press run were mailed. Priced at 10¢ per copy, and carrying advertising at one time of 17 so-called gay bars in San Francisco, plus ads from other businesses and bars at a distance, the paper was honored more in the breach of its purchase price than in the obser vance of it. In other words, most persons took a copy free and sometimes the floor of a bar was literally littered on dates when a new issue appeared. Everyone read it, though, even if they didn't join the organization. On the other hand, LCE's "War Chest" campaign, conducted through the bars in 1961-62 attained some success, but waging the war was a bust. Some $3,000 was collected and a legal firm was engaged to press an action against certain police and alcoholic beverage control officials and the attorney general, but it never came to pass. LCE did, however, claim some success in causing police and ABC agents' solicitation of individuals in bars (to provoke basis for arrest) to have been minimized during the period. Its other sphere of action, in addition to trying to improve the gay bar situation, was to stress political action--registration and voting by citizens, interviewing (and supporting or rejecting) candidates, and so on. In one 18 mattachine REVIEW

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election it sponsored the candidacy of a popular and self declared homosexual entertainer for election to the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco. While he failed to win, he did get more than 6,000 votes. In following elections other candidates were endorsed (few successfully) but in one instance a significant thing occurred: Three leading candidates for the office of mayor in San Francisco all saw fit to buy paid political advertising space in the LCE News, a frankly homosexual publication. This is the first time the homophile press has been so dignified to our knowledge.

Nevertheless, outspoken policies, sophomoric journalism, slapdash hostility and the game of playing preferences here and there, coupled with a wearing thin of the gay gossip veneer, tended in 1963, to cause LCE and its News to fall into a decline which continued throughout the year until November when its principal officer at a special meeting proposed to disband it altogether. The paper was in debt, and membership (never very high) was way down. A handful of members voted to continue the organization, but the resources were so low that at the end of the year, Mr. Strait replaced the defunct LCE News with what soon became his own "Citizens News" and attempted to continue the unex pired subscriptions and revitalize it, now with a price increased to 256, and for the first time with direct reference to the "homosexual" (under LCE, he was euphemistically referred to as a member of "the community').

At its annual meeting in April, some interest in revitalizing LCE was shown, but the blighted image of the organiza tion, its indebtedness, and a down-the-middle split of fac tionalism all combined to make the future of LCE hopeless. It was disbanded in June, 1964.

At the same time LCE disbanded, another group met and busily got wheels rolling to establish the Society for Indi vidual Rights 'SIR), which has made considerable progress during the summer of 1964 at San Francisco insofar as or ganization is concerned. Feeling that Mattachine has "ar rived," and has leveled off as regards appeal to the average homosexual individual, SIR hopes to capture the interest and attention of these people in a functioning group-participation social service project which will emphasize catering to individual needs. Once again, independence from Matta19