Correspondence
D0i~Q00mDQQO0Qe60QO~@~0geQ~iQjQ~OoIIQ~gQ~o0~0ID0~0iQ0j~QOII~@QDQ~Q0Q~gO0D0Q@0QOQ00OOiDQD0i0~Q0oQQOmO00OID60O~QQQOOQgOO0QDQOIOII0Q0Q~a QgmDgO61@OOOw C O R R E S P O N D E N C E Quack...
...In short,.I am insulted by Mr...
...And should he ever feel the urge to emerge from his closet there are plenty of gay libertarians to turn to for advice...
...Gay defenses of "erotic minorities" appear not only in "dirty books" but in such university press productions as Walter Barnett's Sexual Freedom and the Constitution, in which the author argues that we should aid "the sadists and the masochists...the zoo...
...The compassionate Mr...
...Size is an important factor...
...Maloney's assignment of collective guilt for the idiocy of those with whom I am linked only by my sexuality...
...And of course it would be safer if all automotive transportation were forbidden...
...The exercise of this scapegoating seems to require no respect for facts or logic...
...Maloney ("The Lavender Menace," December) can eventually hit the reader with the statement: "I think it more important that we revivify the family than that we expend our energy seeing that 'homosexual rights' are strictly observed...
...After all, one wasn't born with wings, a knowledge of English, or politic~'l allegiances...
...The object is to be hanging o u t with other affluent people, and to see and be seen...
...Modern scholarship leaves the gays only a few primitive tribes and the limp-wrist set among the Third Reich as connoisseurs of sexual perversion...
...Maloney must be, to have found such material) would realize that such practices are not found solely among homosexuals...
...it is an experience well worth having, and one not easily forgotten...
...Perhaps Mr...
...After all, the recession is over (thank God for peanutst) and if one can afford to spend $20 for a few hours drinking and dancing, he should...
...Energy seems to radiate from the building itself, and provides a cheaper drunk...
...Name Withheld Washington, D. C. Masqueraded Bigotry ...Mr...
...To prevent this possibility, the material should be dropped in bulk form and spread over the entire country...
...Look in any magazine, for God's sake...
...This view, of course, can also be found in the works of other libertarians such as Albert J. Nock and Franz Oppenheimer...
...At the same time they express moral outrage at my essay, they implicitly deny the validity of intellectual and moral judgments...
...However, in so doing, he also condemns a private love which he cannot understand and hence reviles...
...Finally, the renegade William Aaron is about as reliable a guide to current gay life as the turncoat Philip Agee is on the CIA...
...The rest of his letter exemplifies that hatred of heterosexuality which my article found characteristic of gay propaganda...
...I say that psychiatrists deny reality, by calling unruly persons 'mental patients' and their disturbing behavior 'mental illness.' For example: if a man goes to a bank and shoots the teller to steal money and so free himself from the oppression of poverty, that's called armed robbery...
...Maloney provides a service...
...They are based on the same foundation as that ~anderlying the absurd in "Gay Liberation," the inability to be silent about that which one is ignorant of, the desire to say something "profound," though it be meaningless...
...This is not from cowardice, a trait which I have never exhibited, but from my desire not to be the personal target of Mr...
...My article was not directed against the "private loves" of such as "Name Withheld...
...Men, especially the strong, silent types, tend to flock at the bar...
...The ceaseless "gay" attack upon heterosexuality, the law, and the family uproots those institutions that guarantee our liberties...
...But I personally would never drink at any other establishment...
...The correspondents (with the exception of Miss Kristol) attacking my "The Lavender Menace" exemplify one species of the intellectual invalidism of our era...
...Civilizations which neglect this point become at one with Nineveh and Tyre...
...Human waste, I am told, makes even richer fertilizer than the animal variety...
...But I do see the more militant advocates among them as adding to the prevalence of the "Gary Gilmore syndrome" in our land...
...This particular idea has one serious flaw, however, and I believe it can be improved upon as follows...
...Miss Kristol makes some interesting, arguable points before her essay undergoes a bad case of parallelism-itis...
...Not to forget the object of the evening is dancing, the eyes move down to behold the shoes...
...At the worst, they could have been operated with the efficiency of the average public utility...
...Delighted as the Vietnamese peasants would undoubtedly be to receive this "gift from the skies" courtesy of their erstwhile foes, I am sure that this delight would be tempered somewhat should one of the bags land directly on the head of a hard-working farmer...
...And no one forgets the Hustle, both on and off the dance floor...
...Wayne Dynes New York, New York Stick to Beer I have rarely read a piece of material in almost any magazine that was as unscholarly, harmful, and bigoted as Baloney's (maybe his name really is Maloney...
...Yes, homosexual relationships preclude a true family structure, and sure, the weakening of the modern family has probably given rise to an increase in homosexuality among the young...
...Alan Bell, of the (Kinsey) Institute for Sex Research in Bloomington...
...It is a stunning example of a kind of self-indulgent pseudo~ conservatism that has come increasingly to disfigure various parts of your magazine, notably the Editor's opening monologue, "The Continuing Crisis...
...As sources, he relies on the Greek versions of Mort Sahl and "Triple-X" movies...
...The last thing our enfeebled instinct for authority needs now is people like this to come along and abuse it...
...the Constitution, as Justice Goldberg said, is 'not a suicide pact.' " Mr...
...Only once a week or so am I ever conscious of having violated a traffic law...
...I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the Grand Inquisitor's staff...
...Homosexuality is only one facet of my unique and multi-faceted personality and, unlike Mr...
...Like most militant gays, Dynes clutches the comforting myth about the ancient Greeks' tolerance of pederasty...
...Thomas and Hedrick...
...Who is that typical driver who violates a rule every 30 seconds...
...Rubin, one of the great favorites of the magazine-rack set...
...I cannot imagine any rational person who values clear and precise thought putting stock in such ridiculous assertions...
...It would be even safer if all transportation were prohibited...
...Maloney's preoccupation with such activities brings him to condemn them in a manner reminiscent of the Inquisition (though presumably his "closet libertarianism" would prevent him from being so harsh) while I am more tolerant, and I believe, mature...
...Maloney engages in collective character assassination...
...In the old days a lot of satisfaction was gained from slamming Negroes and Jews, but these are no longer safe targets...
...Much of what is said in the article can be paraphrased into an anti-heterosexual liberation movement, too...
...It was full of misstatements, untruths, half-truths, and evidence of ignorance...
...The only sin I admit to is misspelling Charles Socarides' name...
...John IV...
...Maloney will have us recognize a clear causal relationship between homosexuality and the deterioration of the American family...
...The fact that some people who are homosexual have succumbed to the prevailing intellectual atmosphere of idiocy should surprise no one...
...One does want to dance under his own power, and not be mistaken for a frenzied Pentecostal preacher...
...cowboy boots and manure turn my stomach...
...Finally, I ask her to consider that more societies have atrophied because of a spiritless pseudotolerance than have succumbed to the pressures of authoritarianism...
...Masqueraded bigotry is a genre which has served too many causes too well...
...Surely, a reader of The Alternative will put little weight on the verdicts of such frauds...
...Maloney, I do not feel it necessary to condemn the voluntary lifestyles of others...
...I am a male homosexual and a reader of The Alternative...
...Just a few points: The greatest living expert on homosexuality is NOT Socarides --whose publications and research in the field of sexuality are considered naive and incompetent by such people as the American Psychiatric Association--but Dr...
...Perhaps this may shock Mr...
...Is it unnatural to fly planes, to read books, or to vote Republican...
...It exploits authority--what little there is left of it--without a scruple...
...ible with the ordered, family-centered society that undergirds a free people engaged in preserving and protecting our Constitution and our culture...
...At the outset Maloney claims to be a closet libertarian who will not "begrudge homosexuals their civil liberties or their privacy...
...Maybe Maloney and all others involved with The Alternative should just stick to getting drunk on "cheap domestic beer," and give up writing and publishing...
...No hand is complete without at least one turquoise ring, and wrists need a silver nail bent into a bracelet...
...Maloney quotes in his tirade one quack psychiatrist and sociologist after another in a frenzied attempt to show that homosexuality is "sick" or "unnatural...
...Every source I used in writing my essay came out of the open stacks of the University of Georgia library...
...I am much more interested in the battle against the Omnipotent State and in living my own life to want to contend with the petty vindictiveness of such people...
...Truck 36 The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1977 stop rock is for the "10-4 Good Buddy" crowd, pubs always smell like Irish Spring soap, and the Holiday Inn-type bars are usually too quiet and cater to middle-aged men with adultery in their eyes...
...But, references to the Weimar Republic, the end of the family, the rise of dictatorships--all in an article on homosexuality--this is not fact, it is scare-tactic, pure and simple...
...article, "The Lavender Menace" (December...
...if the speed limit is 50 and almost all the vehicles are moving at 60, the police catch and arrest the few moving at 65 or 70...
...Too often our society mistakes a lack of moral integrity for tolerance...
...To assert that a certain kind of chosen behavior is "sick" is to engage in an incredibly sloppy use of metaphor...
...I do not hate homosexuals...
...Special note to women: Never order drinks from a waitress...
...I can't figure out whether you see the article as a serious contribution to libertarian theory or as a warning against what happens when one takes a useful principle and runs off with to find where the sky meets the sea...
...The United States was on the verge of stumbling onto a practical libertarian road policy in the early f ~ i e s , when several states such as Oklahoma had begun to build hundreds of miles of toll roads for high-speed intercity travel...
...For a capacity crowd of 250 people, a ten-bytwelve foot floor will suffice...
...For men, a hairy chest is mandatory, so when their shirts are unbuttoned to the navel they won't look completely naked...
...A glance through some equivalent heterosexual literature, including the daily papers, will reveal many, many sick heterosexuals who rape their children, murder each other in jealousy, and are "jaded and tired" of sex with only one other person...
...Hitherto unmentioned is FASHION...
...D0i~Q00mDQQO0Qe60QO~@~0geQ~iQjQ~OoIIQ~gQ~o0~0ID0~0iQ0j~QOII~@QDQ~Q0Q~gO0D0Q@0QOQ00OOiDQD0i0~Q0oQQOmO00OID60O~QQQOOQgOO0QDQOIOII0Q0Q~a QgmDgO61@OOOw C O R R E S P O N D E N C E Quack Psychiatrists Your article, "The Lavender Menace," (December) by Stephen Maloney was, so to speak, a mixed bag...
...I've been driving since 1932, in all kinds of circumstances and places, including Los Angeles...
...Walter A. Peek New Rochelle, New York The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1977 37...
...Marsba Tarbert Havre de Grace, Maryland Come off it...
...Bowling Troy State University Troy, Alabama Drop it I read with interest in your January "Current Wisdom" the humanitarian suggestion of Mrs...
...But that is partially covered by at least eighteen gold chains and a religious medal or two...
...Defending the Disco It's become a ritual of late for the "Great American Saloon Series" to sling opprobrium on singles bars (see contributions by Brian Thomas, November, and Kenneth H, Hedrick, December...
...In throwing out the meaningless, the ridiculous, and the absurd in the "Gay Liberation Movement," Mr...
...Maloney is unfortunately not spiritual, just plain lazy...
...this pseudoconservatism allows that in the name of family and "the mystical complementariness of male and female" it is permissible freely to disgorge every irrational prejudice against homosexuals and feminists...
...I, for one, would be much happier...
...Dancing is the most noteworthy aspect of disco bars...
...Application of medical terminology to mental traits is inexcusable license (though I would not deign to outlaw it...
...The article by Professor Hilton on "Highway Despotism" in the December issue exemplifies one of the more endearing characteristics of The Alternative: I never am sure whether or not you are kidding...
...This affords what can be compared to choosing a brand of frozen orange juice-look them all over, and pick up the best one to go with breakfast...
...The compulsive libertinism evident in the public statements and (generally) private acts of homosexuals is incompat...
...And anyway, the police take unenforceable rules into account...
...But even if it could have gone ahead, or be miraculously reborn, the operating companies or authorities would have to police them in order to attract customers, and I suspect their private guards would be as troublesome to Professor Hilton as are today's traffic cops...
...philes, the incest offenders, the necrophiles" in their search for consenting (or deceased) objects who will help them "fulfill their unusual [!] sexual proclivities...
...If readers are dubious about the lavatory setting of the typical gay lovelife, I suggest they visit the swishy bars in any large city...
...A quote from libertarian psychiatrist Thomas Szasz may illustrate the inapplicability of such metaphors: "Psychiatrists say that mental patients deny reality...
...Yet at the end of his pathetic diatribe he ominously intones: "there comes a time in certain social issues when tolerance becomes spiritual laziness...
...Helen Maguire Muller that the United States drop bags of fertilizers on Vietnam...
...Republican Eisenhower killed off this promising development with the unfortunate interstate highway program, which ended as a subsidy from the pockets of all to big-city commuters...
...Heterosexuals cannot appreciate the full joy of sex because they have to worry about making sure, or not making sure, as the case may be, of having babies...
...The deterioration of the family unit, the rising divorce rate, the increase in homosexuality: these are all symptoms of a general decline of authority in Western civilization, lamentable results of the disrepute which has befallen authority in all its forms...
...The disco scene was made for me...
...Tradition is called in to make the barbaric sound civilized...
...Since it apparently confused them, the letter-writers ignored my corollary attack upon heterosexual promiscuity...
...he says my article is "full of misstatements"--and then he feebly produces a quibble about Socarides' professional standing, coupled with a fearless denunciation of child molestation, rape, and murder...
...I avoid such practices and those who perform them...
...Come off it[ As for public policy with regard to highways, Professor Hitton's suggestions, while useful, are not politically practicable...
...I've never been stopped by a traffic officer or given a ticket for anything...
...it] gives course and direction to experience, and [it] reinforces our awareness of the indispensability of human choice in every moral situation...
...The old canard that the Greeks had stringent legislation rests on no more solid The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1977 35 foundation than some Byzantine interpolations-exposed in 1896--in an oration of Aeschines...
...The absurd claim that "gay sexuality in fact is almost wedded to the lavatories"-Maloney's use of nuptial imagery is revealing--comes right out of the notorious Dr...
...For my evidence, I relied upon the un-Byzantine statements of Plato as well as the researches of such scholars as James B. Graves and Will Herberg...
...I tend to think along similar lines as Robert Nisbet (in his stimulating work, The Twilight of Authority) and find much of value in the family and church...
...The men all look so masculine when they're dressed up, and I love the Tom Jones look in trousers...
...Personally, I prefer the highly waxed wooden floor, which makes the sometimes intricate foot maneuvers easier, but much is to be said about the lucite lighted ones...
...The truth is they are both symptoms...
...No Texas honky-tonk for me...
...It might have been possible at a later date to lease the operation of the roads, or even to sell them to private bidders...
...However, homosexuals like hir~ are parasites in that they profit from civilization while they do nothing to ensure the continuance of the race...
...5, Brut, English Leather, and assorted Avon scents is much better in close quarters, and hides any trace of-heaven forbid--perspiration...
...The State (with its apparatus of coercion), Professor Nisbet observes, grows at the expense of the voluntary association of community and family...
...Collin C. Sehwoyer Bloomington, Indiana Mr...
...If the shoes have electric lights built in, be sure to check for the UL seal of approval...
...A critical assessment of homosexuality, or of any individual or pressure group, is not ipsofacto bigotry...
...Heterosexuals are generally characterized by a hatred (sexually) of the same sex...
...If she wants to make authority a Platonic ideal divorced from social and familial behavior, that is her privilege...
...However, any peruser o f " Adult Bookstores" (which Mr...
...It is a shame that he cannot force me on suspicion to undergo an immediate and legally binding breath test which can be used as evidence for a DWI prosecution...
...The analogy with the Soviet secret police is something I would expect to see in a Weatherman publication...
...Of course speed limits reduce traffic deaths, not just the deaths of the speeders, but the deaths of me and my two small children...
...So, I might add, is the appellation "unnatural...
...While the soles are at least six inches high and rigid, the uppers should be flimsy enough to turn toenails blue in the winter (saves on nail polish), and turn ankles year round...
...I do not read their literature so that I can cluck disapproval to others, thereby proving that I do not engage in such activities...
...Logic transforms common prejudice into the highest reason...
...but if a man goes home and shoots his wife to kill her and so free himself from the oppression of marriage, that's called 'temporary insanity.' " In picking out such examples of "homosexual literature" as would offend anyone possessed of a modicum of common sense and clarity of thought, Mr...
...It has never occurred to me that I have been in danger of random arrest for doing what everyone else does all the time...
...The actual dance floor itself is a boon to disco bars...
...Shimmery fabrics, clinging dresses slightly below the knee, and lowcut blouses are hip...
...A further thought has occurred that would vastly increase the beneficence of this compassionate gesture and at the same time alleviate or indeed eliminate forever our own problems with water pollution and over-burdened sewage plants...
...if he proceeds to 2121 South El Camino Real in San Mateo, California, he will find the supposedly nonexistent gay newspaper, The Advocate...
...Elizabeth KHstol New York, New York Just Plain Lazy Stephen R. Maloney's "The Lavender Menace" (December) is slipshod, irresponsible, and bigoted...
...In such cases, we are increasingly hesitant either to make moral judgments or to enforce those social responsibilities enshrined in laws that assume individuals are responsible for their acts...
...There has never been a newspaper named the Gay Advocate...
...Maloney grandly awards shrink Charles Socarides the title of "perhaps the greatest living expert on homosexual behavior," but can't spell his name right...
...Maloney's hatred and vitriol...
...For a superb discussion of the deleterious effects of gay propaganda on adolescents, see Levine and Shaiova, "Biology, Personalities, and Culture" in Israel Annals of Psychiatry, March, 1974...
...The wonderful, intoxicating mingling of Chanel No...
...For obvious reasons, I am withholding my name from this letter...
...But for my money (or yours...
...If no tall, dark, handsome man is available, girls can always dance with their best friend or another girl, one more fantastic side effect of the Women's Lib movement...
...Occasionally the tragic happens, usually in passionate moments, when all of those chains get caught in a hirsute chest, but a quick shave remedies that...
...So go on thumbing your noses at the singles scene, Messrs...
...That gentleman's "quack" status, as one letter-writer puts it, consists only in his making the unspectacular point that it is the destiny-biological, cultural, and spiritualnof man and woman to mate with one another, to produce children, and then to nurture _9 them...
...Schwoyer first makes fun of my name and then finds me guilty of bigotry...
...Maloney seems to have done--in a manner suggesting a Peeping Tom luridly peering into a public washroom) for examples of such garbage...
...Land acquisition problems made it necessary for the government to build the roads, but operation was usually in the hands of authority commissions insulated from ordinary politics, which were expected to meet amortization of construction bonds and operating expenses, plus maintenance sinking funds, from tolls...
...The very idea that the occupation of traffic patrolman attracts people "who want to dominate their fellow man" is ridiculous...
...Platform shoes, especially those with shiny, metallic colors, the higher the better, are always chic...
...One needn't, however, look in homosexual magazines (as Mr...
...Sidney Hook has rightly said that education for liberty deals with "the ideas and ideals of what is of most worth in life...
...What on earth does that prove...
...Wayne Dynes also sniffs out bigotry in "The Lavender Menace...
...While most of the under-thirty crowd is seen out and about in blue jeans and Earth shoes, disco bars will not generally allow a person so attired to go in and pick up a six pack to go...
...If I am ever stopped for a traffic violation, I want the officer to be sure that my vehicle is not stolen,+ that l'm not fleeing prosecution, violating narcotics laws, etc...
...It's ever so much fun rubbing bodies with strangers...
...Assuming you, or the author, or both of you, are serious, something further needs to be said...
...However, in many disturbing ways contemporary America is the new Weimar Republic, a point made by Stephen Spender, Lewis Feuer, and Saul Bellow, among others...
...I get excited merely thinking about doing the Bump with some tall, dark, handsome man...
...I know lots of traffic officers and lots of college professors, and I have a strong opinion about which occupation attracts those who want to dominate their fellow man--it's not the cops...
...He also picks up on the other sexual desires exhibited by some homosexuals, traits which I consider distasteful and unpleasant...
...The claim that in ancient Greece "the rare consumation of homosexual affairs...was punishable by death" can be refuted by opening almost any page of Aristophanes or a tour of the cellars of our museums where the more explicit Greek vases are kept...
...Science turns opinion into irrefutable fact...
...Why don't we simply bundle up our entire "output" and sprinkle it impartially over the verdant acres of Vietnam...
...Maloney replies: Arguing with defenders of the dreary "gay" life is a little like contesting with ardent members of the Flat Earth Society...
...Defenders of homosexuality add to the general confusion about sexual identity which pervades our society...
...Maloney, but I am an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism, am very conservative in my personal lifestyle, do not hate women, and am a great advocate of the family (for those who desire it...
...Libertarianism obviously does not mean intellectual agnosticism on all moral questions...
...Where else can a bottled beer be bought for only $1.50, after paying a paltry $3-5 to enter...
...Maloney's personal character is defined by his heterosexuality, but I am not so narrow a person...
Vol. 10 • February 1977 • No. 5
