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.

Ever since the middle of 1964 I have urged that we should cut our losses by extricating ourselves from the Viet Nam conflict under carefully planned conditions that would result in minimum damage to our interests and authority around the world. If that is what the Nixon Administration is at long last seeking to achieve, the effort has my sympathy.

Yet, though a carefully phased redeployment should certainly be tried, I doubt that American opinion will any longer sit still for it. The announcement of the first troop withdrawals made clear that from now on America will regard the war as, at most, a rearguard action.

To me it seems very likely that in the months ahead the logic of our internal predicament will impel an accelerating withdrawal from Viet Nam that may well at some point put unbearable strains on the present fragile government in Saigon. This remains, as it has long been, the most vulnerable center of potential breakage--and we should be under no illusions that in a pervasive climate of sauve qui pent a successor government could be deterred from making a rapid deal with the North very largely on the North's own terms.

My own position is, therefore, not that I favor a rapid withdrawal as a matter of policy but that I see the strong possibility of such a withdrawal as a matter of prediction--and I have come to the reluctant belief that the war is probably destined for a messy ending sooner than most Americans expect.

This is not a happy prediction and I hope I am wrong, for America is by no means prepared either intellectually or emotionally for such an outcome. In fact, if we are to save ourselves from a long, angry season of divisive name-calling and isolationist frog-croaking, we had better get down to realistic discussion as soon as possible.

It is dangerous nonsense for us to equate our extravagant declarations regarding Viet Nam with our security commitments toward either Berlin or Japan. In Viet Nam our national interest is marginal; in the others, fundamental. Our friends and allies well understand this distinction; they will identify the two only if they think we are doing so.

Certainly the U.S. will suffer serious political costs in liquidating a struggle in which we have excessively enmeshed ourselves, and it would be naive to pretend otherwise. But if we are sensible about it and do not blow up the dragons of catastrophe beyond life size, those costs need be only short term. In fact, if we learn the right lessons and resist drawing the wrong conclusions from this unhappy national experience, we may, over the long pull, emerge the stronger for it.

GEORGE W. BALL Manhattan

Sir: Listen! After the tremendous amount of money, arms, help and good U.S. blood we've poured into that area, if the South Vietnamese were anywhere near united in wanting the war won, it would have been won twice over. If they don't want it won, then what the hell are we doing? Going out looking for a fight?

Win? Win what? Lose? What we're darn sure going to lose is all national honor if we can't recognize our mistake and quit fighting just to "save honor."

D. W.SPENCE Palo Alto, Calif.

Sir: Being against war, in Viet Nam or anywhere else, is as simplistic as being for motherhood and regular meals and about as significant. The sterile noise of the protesters, devoid of constructive recommendations, is a bore. And their attitude of flexible sin, in which their rigid judgments and moral fulminations against their own nation are matched by permissiveness to the adversary, is absolutely terrifying.

This month's laugh (hollow) must go to North Viet Nam's delegation in Paris, which refuses to negotiate with any representative South Vietnamese group. The burglar won't talk to the store manager and screams "Get out!" to the police.

JOHN Joss Los Altos, Calif.

Sir: Approximately one-half of 1% of the American population demonstrated on Oct. 15. The U.S. then, like Ivory Soap, cannot claim to be more than 99.44% pure.

ROBERT D. MONTGOMERY Metairie, La.

Sir: Your article quotes former Assistant Secretary of State Roger Hilsman's offer to "make a small bet that the official Viet Cong position [in the event of a Communist takeover following American withdrawal] would be no retribution" against antiCommunists. That proposition appeals strongly to my gambling instincts. In view of the tens of thousands of peasants slaughtered in the North during the collectivization campaign of the mid-'50s, and the 3,000 noncombatants murdered in a single week of Communist terror in Hue last year, I feel so sure of winning that I'm willing to give fairly generous odds.

STEPHEN G. JOHNAKIN Charlottesville, Va.

Sir: I do not think that America's overwhelming military presence in my country will give my people their right to self-determination. Today, there are more political prisoners in South Viet Nam than in North Viet Nam, and Vietnamese continue to be shot and imprisoned when they utter the word coalition or peace. Many of these jailed Vietnamese are the crop of tomorrow's leadership in Viet Nam, and nothing has been done to protect their right of speech. They include classmates of mine, friends, and my own father, Truong Dinh Dzu, runner-up in the 1967 presidential elections in South Viet Nam. If one cannot secure their rights, how could one claim to protect the rights of 17 million Vietnamese?

TRUONG DINH HUNG Vietnam Political Freedom Committee Manhattan

Sir: It's about time to stop criticizing President Nixon on the handling of the Viet Nam war. He has set in motion the return of 15% of our troops and reduced the level of fighting to the point where our casualties are the lowest in more than three years. He has given top priority to the Vietnamization of the war and offered to negotiate a cease-fire under international supervision.

What has Hanoi done? Nothing. The protesters seem to forget the announced plans of the Communists to liquidate hundreds of thousands of their foes when they take over South Viet Nam. The mass graves of innocent civilians found at Hue after its temporary occupation by the Communists give plenty of evidence of what would happen if we just pulled out and let the enemy win. The U.S. did not initiate the hostilities in Viet Nam. We responded to the armed aggression of the Communists. We are fighting to prevent Communist enslavement of still another nation.

BOB KELLY Arlington, Va.

Rattling the Cage

Sir: If the sale of the potentially dangerous cyclamates [Oct. 24] determined the election or re-election of specific Congressmen and Senators and provided as much advertising and tax revenue as the deadly cigarette, would they have been taken off the market? And to really rattle your cage, consider the possibility of dope being legalized and creating the same pressures and revenues as cigarettes!

MRS. HARLAN HARRIS Phoenix, Ariz.

Sir:

While deep in thought immersed,

I ponder the problem of which I'm now cursed.

What to drink that won't inebriate

Put on weight or contain cyclamate.

I suddenly fear a fate, the worst!

That I shall surely succumb of thirst!

(MRS.) CAROL E. CLARK Costa Mesa, Calif.

Green Belt

Sir: Senator Gaylord Nelson's protest over the International Boundary Commission's fumbling efforts to mark the U.S.Canadian border by defoliation of a 20-foot-wide strip of wilderness [Oct. 24] is justifiable, since there's a better way to do it--by fertilization.

Industrial foresters have stimulated timber growth by applying nitrogen fertilizers, which not only makes for healthy timber but intensifies its green color to a degree that makes fertilized areas clearly identifiable from the air. This technique would mark the international boundary and also guarantee a healthy wilderness.

J. R. TURNBULL Executive Vice President National Forest Products Association Washington, B.C.

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