strangle to death the little Rice boy under the Santa Monica pier last Summer, the population took notice and decided that Mr. Nash was dangerous after all. The boy who beat and shot Wm. Westcott in Westcott's Hollywood apartment, Rodrigo Castro, 19, got off with a light sentence in 1956 when he pleaded that Westcott had made indecent proposals to him. The cases go on and on. Daily news reports and clippings sent in from all parts of the country by One's disgusted readers attest to the near-hero position accorded the murderer so long as the victim is a homosexual.

The reason for this strange situation seems to be explained by Kinsey and the present-day psycho-analyists. Their studies show that unconscious impulses toward sexual deviations are more common than has been supposed. Unconsious desires to commit such acts are said to generate the most severe anxieties, not only in the obvious criminal, but in judges and general public as well, resulting in the excessively vindictive punishments meted out to sexual offenders, whether the offense is real or merely statutory.

But, oddly enough, and that which is not explained is that, not only have the people's reactions to their own unconscious sexual drives brought about harsh and unequal laws pertaining to sexual deviations and specifically homosexual acts, but the sexual repressions have induced a general neurosis whereby murder and mayhem are finally excused as long as the victim is a homosexual. This curious twist of "justice" allows many individuals, including some policemen, to "take out their neurosis," as it were, by making the nearest hapless homosexual the object of their morbid self-release, with the only result that one more homosexual is gotten out of the way, one neurotic feels cleansed and virtuous, and the rest of the prejudiced public unwittingly finds itself on the side of the criminal. It is only when the beast of prey makes the mistake of attacking an “innocent" or non-homosexual victim that the public sits up and takes notice and becomes outraged and, to late, asks why the man is loose, why he was not locked up before.

So under present conditions, the life of a homosexual is cheap. But the constant state of prohibition, of denunciation, of interference with our private life, of public inquiry, which is characteristic of the American attitude toward the homosexual, would appear in itself to constitute a neurosis of a very specific kind; a neurosis in which the mind is continuously obsessed by sexual thoughts, the omnipotence of which is testified by the frantic efforts that are made to overcome them. As we all know, the more serious the attack the more strenuous is its defense. Quantitatively, we think, the defense-neurosis of the Lunas, the Nashes, and the beguiled public, should be viewed as having the same significance and value as the so-called "homosexual neurosis" which, at the very least, gives positive expression to the libido.

Don Slater

Managing Editor

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