LONG BEACH, CALIF.-Half across the world from Blighty another bartender tangled with police and came off loser One night in the Fidley Inn, the bartender told two customers, "I won't serve you because you are undercover officers and the vice-squad boys hollered that this was a violation of their civil rights. Under the law, no California business may discriminate against a person because of his race, religion or occupation. Furthermore, said the officers, the Fidley Inn permitted "the premises to be used as a disorderly house with lewd acts and conversation." James Reimel, director of the State Alcoholic Beverage Control Dept., said the charge was based on alleged homosexual offenses, and ordered its license suspended indefi nitely But the Fidley doors remain open. Will there always be a Long Beach?

SAYVILLE, NY The Suffolk County News reports on the annual raid on Cherry Grove this summer It was carried out by "plainclothes detectives and patrolmen who dressed casually and some hardly at all, in order to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible. They bagged 20 males at Cherry Grove and an additional five at Fire Island Pines in simultaneous raids carried out with split-second precision." While the report seems matter of fact, even good-natured, there is nothing good natured about printing the names of each and every man arrested. That the court was merely going through the motions of enforcing the law is evident from the fact that all sentences were suspended and fines were a minimal $50. But the News seems to have felt constrained to ruin as many lives and reputations as possible.

SAINT-TROPEZ, FRANCE Another beach, in another corner of the world, experienced a police raid recently

Here on the Riviera a 300-yard stretch of sand was, by common consent, giv en over to nudists. But, while un doubtedly the largest, General De Gaulle's nose is not the only blue one under the tricolour Neighbors began complaining about exhibitionists and homosexuals beyond the rocks and

bushes that sheltered the nudists from the rest of the beach. Result rocks and bushes bulldozed away and nudists put to rout' What ever happened to Liberte, Fraternite, Egalite?

News & Views

The New York Review, in a brilliant essay on the new Kinsey report on Sex Offenders, submits it bears. out the thesis of Norman O Brown in his important book Life Against Death-which, briefly stated, is that all kinds of sexual expression are equally natural to human beings. But down in old Virginny, the Rich mond News Leader headlines an editorial "Cracking Down on Sex Criminals" that asks for even stricter laws

against what our still benighted society calls deviant behavior In hard Chicago the censorship concept dies

see July Tangents The Sun Times prints pictures of vice-squad ders raiding book stores on south State street and hauling away cartons of girlie and nudist magazines. In another issue of the same paper writer Cliff Sessions sheds saurian tears over the plight of virtuous Post Office officials who have to answer complaints about "obscene" mail with a form letter telling the recipient