the heterosexual

he is neither better nor worse.

"Unfortunately I don't phoe too much stock in educating the public since the organs of mass information stack opinion. The public is not asked what it thinks, it is told what to think. Your group should concentrate on the lawyers. I have tried to get a psychology course into the law schools, but without success. If we could change the curriculum in law schools we could start to do something.

In the work he has done with prisoners in New York Dr. Weiss has found that the homosexual suffers from social pressures and anxieties. He cannot say, however, that homosexuals have moro serious mental illnesses or neuroses than do heterosexuals. He pointed out that half the hospital beds in the country are occupied by mental patients and that the American Medical Association has estimated that there are 20-30 million more people who should be treated for mental illness.

Dr. Weiss feels that social bias against homosexuality will always be with us, but that legal bias should not exist. "We all have biases or we wouldn't be human," he said, "but biases can be kept under control."

In answer to a question from the audience he said that only a small percentage of sexual deviates are child molesters and that there was no evidence to show that this crime was perpetrated more by homosexuals than hoterosexuals.

WE MUST REACH THE PEOPLE

Emotional highlight of the convention was, perhaps, the brief opening talk given by Fannie Hurst before the panel discussion, of which she was moderator, began.

Three months before the convention Miss Hurst had never heard of Mattachine nor was she conversant with the homo-

sexual problem per se. Her interest was aroused when the TV program "Showcase", of which she is the moderator, was unceremoniously censored 15 minutes before air time. The subject was to have been female homosexuality following the program of the day before on male homosexuality. (See THE LADDER, March, 1958, page 10).

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