Letters: Nov. 7, 1969

Homosexuality and Society

Sir: I am a homosexual. I am also happy as a homosexual (though this society does not make that very easy) [Oct. 31], and I reject the implications that I have an "undesirable handicap"—for it is not my homosexuality, but rather society's insane reaction to it, that is the undesirable handicap.

More than a homosexual, I am a person: a person with most of the same goals in life and needs from life that heterosexuals have. The amount of love, and not the sexual object choice, determines the value of a relationship. The "problem of homosexuality" is misnamed. More accurate is the "problem of a society that refuses to accept (embrace?) minority behavior." The Indian experienced that problem; it killed him. The black man experienced that problem; it enslaved and ghettoized him. The homosexual experienced that problem; it castrated him.

JOHN UNGARETTI, '72 Applied Behavioral Sciences University of California Davis, Calif.

Sir: Being gay can be normal and satisfying, and has been for centuries. You will never raise the Lavender Curtain with psychiatric investigation. Faggots are not taking over the world, but they are indeed becoming more and more a part of the mainstream; and the sooner European attitudes become more prevalent, the sooner tolerance will ease any hang-up tensions that create those poor, sick, swishy things that a "welladjusted" homo can tolerate even less than the hetero world.

ZEBEDY COLT Stockton, N.J. .

Sir: I now learn that a distinguished group of Washington eggheads in the mental-health ward says that I must not feel "hostile" if my child is "queered" by one of our nation's 12 million homos.

I find it incredible that a panel of professional people has ignored the almost universally accepted premise that infantile and adolescent sex experience shapes the recipient into either a happy, healthy person or a depraved, miserable wretch.

I do hope that Nixon repudiates, or at least disavows the Hooker report.

HUGH MAXWELL JR. Indiantown, Fla.

Sir: As a well-practiced heterosexual and father of four grown offspring, I should like to hazard the guess that a major contributing factor to homosexuality (male and female) in Anglo-American society is the still dominant Pauline ("better to marry than to burn") ethic.

A second thought: perhaps a permissive social attitude toward homosexuality could serve as an element in the population-control picture over the long run.

DAVID HALL Wilton, Conn.

Sir: How applicable is this quotation of Alexander Pope from his Essay on Man:

Vice is a monster of so frightful

a mien,

As to be hated needs not

to be seen;

Yet seen too oft, familiar

with her face,

We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

(MRS.) CLARIBEL E. DUTCHER Harrisburg, Pa.

Matter of Prediction

Sir: Your Essay "What Withdrawal Would Really Mean" [Oct. 24], quotes me twice in a context which suggests that I favor a precipitate withdrawal from Viet Nam. That is quite incorrect.