CORRESPONDENCE
CORRESPONDENCE SoizhenitsMn Staten Island, N.Y. To the Editors: Frank Getlein's criticism of Solzhenitsyn's Harvard speech is a classical example of ignoratio elenchi [July 7]. Mr....
...Homosexuals in most places can be denied housing, jobs, and licenses...
...Paul voters...
...If anything it is an effort to overcome the obsession against homosexuals of the heterosexual world...
...Paul's 'Affectional Preference' Vote"--July 7) gives low grades to "teaol3ers" (liberals, enlightemnenttheory politicians, 'clergy) for their failure to know the public heart last Spring...
...Still, it was a victory of sorts for a parish that chose not to duck a high-risk issue...
...Thus homosexuals are thrown into a dilemma of personal integrity which is incomprehensible to most of us in the dominapt groups and sets them apart from other, visible minorities...
...THOMAS J. OARVEY Church of St...
...and social approval of homosexuality...
...Getlein's posited relationship of them to the Russian and then the Soviet secret police is historically, morally, and symbolically false...
...For these matters it is hard to find words...
...To the young who have been subjected to this importunate clamor from the time of understanding, the belief is confirmed that in~ ordinate greed, and the need to satisfy it, is an inherent part of human nature...
...Or should I ask when there was last a knock on his door in the middle of the night...
...It is time that heterosexuals stop "blaming the victim" and face up to the way we have politicized our society against the elementary human rights of this significant minority of our population...
...Getlein, Russian sooiety and history...
...Continued on page 606) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued lrom page 579) Mr...
...the receiving...
...It was not easy to deal with issues raised by Rev...
...That being the case, why the diminutive reference...
...And speaking of fudging,, how much "state-inflicted terror" came along in the package without being "too much" for Mr...
...There seem to be few models for public education on issues of this temper...
...may we say, rather, that the Czarist secret police passed this tradition by way of the Soviet government on to the FBI and the CIA...
...The decision to "come out" has nothing to do with obsession...
...If it had not been there before this indoctrination, it has certainly been created and nourished...
...The Russian gulags are not unspeakable, and neither is Auschwitz, though what went on in both places may be...
...Angwin ("I am the same age Jesus was when he was crucified") and others: the sin of it all...
...To the Editors: In Madeleine l'Engle's article, "We of the Broken Body [May 26], she declares her aversion to homosexuals who publically declare their "sexual orientation...
...Getlein disapproves of HaiR, or dislikes him, or both...
...To the Editors: James Tracy (',Behind St...
...MARK TAYLOR Romomexua|s Evanston, Ill...
...Soon on in the campaign it became clear that concerns of the people were deep and complex...
...Yet homosexuals can "pass...
...On the other hand, for one for whom all internal security operations are more or less identical, maybe nothing can be spoken of very easily...
...I think it not accurate to suggest that anti-repeal leaders were eager to teach and unaware of the :C6nc~ms and feelings of St...
...Solzhenitsyn addressed the problem of materialism and corruption in the American ethos, and he finds its civilization wanting...
...Or is itand this seems more likely, I shall admit~that Mr...
...Solzhenitsyn asserts the materialism and lack of spirituality in American society...
...Is Mr...
...One of his most interesting conclusions is that in America there are "strong mass prejudices which condemn unfashionable views to obscurity and which result in a selfdeluding interpretation of the contemporary world...
...But that's not what really gets me...
...Luke...
...The helping professions especially reject them...
...and the "sensationalism, superficiality and misleading statements of the press, all without rectification...
...The practice of using someone's name against him is an assault on civil discourse and human dignity that was, and remains, contemptible...
...the "stupor" of television...
...How ingratiating...
...They look just like the rest of us...
...seduction in the classroom and neighborhood...
...Government and military employment is generally closed to them...
...REV...
...2. "That Russian drive to the sea that the unspeakable A! Hair worries about," etc...
...I know of few 'leaders' who did not have to be dragged into the campaign, so virulent and divisive was the issue for our tranquil little river city...
...Nobody can know if one is a homosexual unless one declares this...
...it's the "AI" in the "unspeakable AI Haig...
...This he finds an unworthy surrogate...
...Sotzheni~syn is discussing American society...
...Perhaps, educators like Dr...
...The impli implication is that one's sexual orientation has nothing to do with the job at hand, of either priest, doctor, or whatever...
...Getlein attacks the Russian intelligentsia, and their belief in the salvific mission of the Russian peasantry...
...Or was it an act of Soviet benevolence, of proto-dttente...
...It is doubtful that an individual, especially one whose name is known, as Haig's is to Mr...
...Beware the passive voice, which so conveniently fudges the relationship of subject and object...
...how much did it cost us...
...He contends that spiritual life in the West is being destroyed by "commercial interests," and that there is a loss of ethical standards with only legality as a substitute...
...Getlein is reminding us of that sort of grammar school rhetoric by which bullies twist one's name, mispronounce it, substitute for it a rhyming word that is scatologically or erotically leading, or use a normally affectionate variant, which, because the bullies are neither family nor friends, becomes the opposite of affectionate...
...Getlein, can be "unspeakable...
...Our society is not neutral towards homosexuals, thus leaving them in the same position of discretion as heterosexuals...
...The closest analogy might be an assimilated German of Jewish ancestry after the Nuremberg Laws of 1936 barring those of Jewish ancestry from education and public employment...
...On the contrary, it is vehemently politicized against homosexuals...
...Those, therefore, who make this deolaration are in some way obsessed with their sexual orientation, and this is itself a disqualification...
...ROSEMARY RADFORD RuB'rHER Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary i A Cmmpl~ Is~ i St...
...Its misuse notwithstanding, "unspeakable" suggests, minimally, that Mr...
...The name, after all, lets us speak...
...Tracy could take the lead here to point out how formation of public opinion might be done more successfully...
...Getlein trying to say that he and Haig are buddies, for all their differences, and that it is as AI that he familiarly thinks of him...
...This kind of judgment is shockingly ignorant of the actual social and legal discrimination under which homosexuals suffer...
...The very act of homosexual love between consenting adults is illegal in most states...
...One has only to listen to television and radio to have the news constantly interrupted by the Venality of advertisers telling us of the need tO have a new car or some philter of magical effect in order to be happy or truly American...
...It is fundamentally a decision of personal moral integrity...
...To the Editors: Two remarks in Frank Getlein's Washington Report of 7 July, "Holy Russia Rises in Vermont," call for response: 1. "The tradition' [of the Czarist secret police and its practice of becoming friendly with suspected subversive movements, like student groups, the better to destroy them] was passed intact to the Soviet successor, along wi.th state-inflicted terror against the populace, and without too much of that addition, to the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover and the CIA under Allen Dulles and Richard Helms...
...There is at least one precedent, and that one just across the river in Minneapolis where an inner-city parish was asked to allow Catholic gays to use their church as base of operations, an initiative far more inflammatory than the St...
...Solzhenitsyn's speech at Harvard gives me all sorts of trouble, but Frank Getlein's dismissal of most of it as "claptrap" is an act of pure arrogance...
...After a personal face-to-face education program coordinated by the church, the local Charities office and gay representatives, "no's" were in the majority by one vote...
...Paul ordinance fight...
...JOHN BRANIGAN South Nyack, N.Y...
...Most professions will automatically bar a declared homosexual...
...Paul, Minn...
...For all the excesses of the FBI and the CIA, Mr...
...Who did the passing...
...It is apodictic that for many Americans, success is their God, and the making of money and the accumulation of things, the reason and justification for existence...
Vol. 105 • September 1978 • No. 18
