To the Editor:

I am quite content to let your readers decide whether I have misrepresented Samuel McCracken’s views, or he mine: and indeed which of us may be hysterical and prejudiced [Letters from Readers, April, in a discussion of Mr. McCracken’s article, “Are Homosexuals Gay?,” January]. It seems clear in any event that Mr. McCracken’s intemperate outburst is hardly a model of that reasonableness and stability which he finds lacking in his critics.

What remains worth repeating, for those who are persuaded by Mr. McCracken’s reductionist arguments as well as the unregenerate lot who may not be, is that human sexuality is in all its aspects extraordinarily complicated; that the transition from childhood to mature masculinity or femininity defies sophisticated analysis, let alone snap judgments; and that the easy dicta of popular prejudice, even when trotted out in the guise of a purportedly even-handed inquiry, do not much advance our understanding. It should be obvious even to Mr. McCracken that among his acquaintance are individuals, both happy and unhappy, who may be homosexuals without his being aware of the fact. If he wishes to deal seriously with the entire question of homosexuality, he could start by asking those of his friends he has identified as homosexual whether they are in fact as wretched and self-destructive as he claims. If they are, he might then ask them why. Starting from this admittedly small sample, he might possibly arrive at some larger truths about sexuality altogether—and perhaps in the process come to appreciate some of the needs and difficulties that have made his friends the human beings they are.

If such an exercise fails to enlighten Mr. McCracken as to the total nature of the phenomenon he claims to be exploring, it may at least teach him an appropriate humility: it was, after all, St. Thomas Aquinas who observed that “knowledge depends on the capacity of the knower; for what is known is in the knower according to the measure of his capacity.”

A. J. Sherman
New York City

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Samuel McCracken writes:

In his original letter, A. J. Sherman, among other misrepresentations, characterized my position—which includes opposition to laws discriminating against homosexual teachers—as “firmly in the camp of the ideologues of the Third Reich.” He also claimed that I ignored “the amply-documented fact that over 90 per cent of child molestation cases concern heterosexuals”; the plain fact is that I alluded to this truth not once but twice in my article, using it as part of my justification for opposing the laws advocated by Anita Bryant.

I am not surprised that Mr. Sherman now pleads nolo contendere to a charge of misrepresentation.

As for my temperateness, it is of course difficult to argue with a reader over the effect one’s writing has had on him. I restrained myself in the composition of my answers, and the final text was certainly more irenic than my first thoughts. If the result suggests that I need more practice in temperateness, I shall not go to school to Mr. Sherman, whose idea of temperateness is to call one a Nazi.

(In this connection, I might note the astonishing intemperateness of the reaction in San Francisco to the verdict in the Moscone-Milk murder trial. Intemperate not merely those who rioted and vandalized throughout the night, but also those who defended the riots and said that Dan White ought to have received a severer sentence, up to and including death. Although only someone present at the entire trial should form an opinion on the verdict, if the jury saw the testimony as its members reported it did—that is, as providing no evidence of premeditation—it could have brought in no other verdict. Suppose that Dan White were a homosexual, had done the same two killings, received the same sentence, and that mobs of heterosexuals had rioted with signs reading “Kill Dan White!” Would it not have needed all the art of a Gore Vidal to chronicle such excesses of the Heterosexual Dictatorship?)

If, as Mr. Sherman alleges, human sexuality defies even sophisticated analysis, then it is a mystery beyond mere human knowing, and we both might as well return to less taxing matters. But he is apparently undaunted by his own pessimism, for he suggests that even J, with appropriate field work, might begin to know a little of the truth.

Mr. Sherman may be right that among my homosexual friends are some I do not recognize as such. Having raised the possibility, he immediately drops it, moving on to suggest that I conduct sexual research among those of my friends whom I know to be homosexual. I am astonished that Mr. Sherman, who believes that I wish to place such people in concentration camps, thinks any are my friends.

He errs in also believing that I think all of them “wretched and self-destructive.” The fact is, as is clear from my article, the majority of them are no such thing. And when I judge some of them to be thus troubled, I make the judgment not on the basis of their homosexuality but rather on the basis of such phenomena as suicide attempts and acute alcoholism. Whatever their sexual preference, there is no point in my asking people so afflicted whether they are really happy and self-fulfilled.

Mr. Sherman quotes St. Thomas to good effect. He might ponder whether the cited epistemological observation may be so universal as to apply even to himself.