4
Monday, February 26,1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Homosexual Taboo
A bill tentatively approved last week by the Kansas Senate would prevent Kansas probate judges from issuing marriage licenses to persons of the same sex.
Without condoning homosexual marriages, it seems logical to question a legislative body's right to determine their legality. A vote for the bill would tend to reinforce our society's taboo of homosexual relations.
A homosexual is not a homosexual by choice. Psychiatrists differ on their explanations for the causes of homosexuality. Some contend a person is born with homosexual tendencies. Others believe a person's homosexuality results from his childhood or adolescent experiences.
Most do agree, however, that homosexuals rarely are curable. "Curable" is probably a bad term, because many homosexuals do not consider their homosexuality an abnormality. They have come to accept their homosexuality as part of their characters and are unashamed of it. Unfortunately, society is not so quick to accept their differences.
Homosexuality in our society is defined both legally and socially as a criminal and deprived practice. The homosexual is threatened by social and occupational ostracism, ridicule, violence and, in some states, imprisonment. He is forced to choose between keeping his "deviant" sexual tendencies secret, so that he may have a chance at social and economic security, or openly admitting his homosexuality,
"The thought that you are 'gay' is always with you and you know it's there even when other people don't. You also think to yourself that certain of your mannerisms and your ways of expression are liable to give you away. That means there is always a certain amount of strain. . . You know, the only time when I really forget I'm gay is when I'm in a gay crowd."
thereby lowering his social and economic status.
Most homosexuals naturally seek some form of campanionship with other homosexuals. This provides a social context within which he can find acceptance. Many who wish their homosexuality to remain a secret fear detection and are often anxious about their association with other homosexuals. A statement made by a homosexual illustrates this fear.
And the more liberated homosexuals, those who are willing to openly admit their propenitions, are also persecuted. They have decided to stand up against society's taint. But as they try to conduct what they consider normal, moral lives, they find themselves pinned in by laws that try to force them to be something they can't be. If a psychiatrist can't help a willing homosexual become heterosexual, how can a law change him?
One mark of a healthy society is its tolerance of people who deviate from the norm. Today's homosexual can hardly escape the harsh judgments of society. He should at least be free of restrictions by the laws.
—Barbara Spurlock
Eradicate Town-Gown
Guest Editorial
The best way to unload a tacky, leftover conflict like the hoary town-gown one in Lawrence is to take an active part in getting rid of it. On March 6 some University of Kansas students will have an excellent opportunity to do that by voting in the city commission primary election.
There is no practical method of discerning how many KU students are eligible to vote in the election, but of the approximately 37,800 people in Lawrence registered to vote, the percentage of KU students undoubtedly is significant.
Most of the town-gown conflict is traceable to lack of interest by students in city business. This situation has deteriorated to the point that some students do not know what town they are in the moment they set foot off campus. Therefore, a typical city commission primary usually would evoke little more than a yawn from students.
This year's primary, however, is anything but typical.
Two of the candidates are members of the KU faculty, which alone should be enough to arouse student interest. Three candidates
running under the auspices of the Support Your Local Police Committee have adopted a platform that strongly condemns city officials currently in office. The other nine candidates present a broad range of backgrounds and opinions seldom seen in a city commission election.
Three of the five city commission posts are open this year, an important number since three of five represents a majority vote. Because Lawrence is in a crucial stage of development and growth, the three votes will be vitally important in coming years.
Plans to expand K-10 highway to four lanes and to develop the Clinton Lake area will cause Lawrence's strong university flavor to fade as the town becomes more attractive to people interested in KU. The University's current strong position can only be maintained if students and faculty alike take an active part in the growth of Lawrence.
On March 6 eight of the 14 commission candidates will be eliminated by the primary. Each student who is qualified to vote should ask himself, "Who has to go?" and vote accordingly.
Chuck Potter
James J. Kilpatrick
Kennedy Promise Unfulfilled
WASHINGTON—One of the most perceptive writers in Washington, British correspondent Henry Fairle, has written one of the most perceptive political books of our time. The late Nicolae Luccei wrote that years, could not have done a better job than Fairle has done with "The Kennedy Promise."
Machaavelli's purpose in his masterpiece, "The Prince," was to advise a young Medic on the art of statecraft. Fairlie's purpose in this brilliant work is to analyze a young president's aborted administration. His retrospective documents of the recent days are the best judgments yet rendered, but his observations on the American presidency look beyond the Kennedy years.
Yet, looking back, Fairlie asks what it all meant. The incessant demand for action ruled out the alternative of inaction, of simply, in a given situation, doing nothing. The Kennedys never knew how to do nothing. The spirit of the New Frontier, in
Fairie has subtitled his book, "The Politics of Expectation." His thesis is that the Kennedy administration, dining on a diet of daily crises, lived on the rich sauce of things it meant to do. In their public lives, no less than in 1960s New York and Kennedy and their team had to action. That was the watchcry: Action!
Fairie's telling line, was a spirit of physical bravura joined to intellectual bravura. The comedy was composed entirely of cadenzia.
"Whenever there was something when he wished do, she would have said 'amersa and could rely on obaining the desired popular
reaction; the expectation was aroused, and the expectation was supported; but on the following morning the thing had still to be
James J. Kilpatrick
Fairlie continues with a Machavelian insight: "There is in fact very little that the people behind it know. They are in office; brought together at a general election, they are dispersed between elections; brought together by different address nodes; dispersed the next day. Popular
leadership can bring only small returns; and it should be used sparingly."
A part of Kennedy's difficulties rested in the intellectual activism of the men who were closest to him. With few exceptions, they had been hardworking studed power, and analyzed power and talked about power, but they never had exercised power. And when at last they got hands on this beautiful instrument, it would play to play it loudly and with flare.
Thus, in the ill-fated Alliance for Progress, the team acted on the assumption that it was "one night" or "midnight" in Latin America.
Says Fairlie, "But it was at one minute to midnight that the administration believed that the hands of the clock always stood, all over the globe; and they were driven by the fear that, if they did not act before the clock struck, their plains would be pinned. They aspired to greatness, not just occasionally, but all the time."
Greatness, of course, is a fine thing to aspire to, but true greatness is seldom capable of anything. You can somehow expected of their politics, "not the modest arrangements which are their proper concern," but a humanist arrangement, an inhuman fulfillment."
The atmosphere of dizzy ex-
New Emphasis on Prayer
By GEORGE W, CORNELL
AP Religion Writer
After a period of decline, prayer is making a strong comeback, according to religious authorities.
The Rev. W. Norris Clark, a Jesuit philosopher, calls it an "inward turn."
It is a "turn back to contemplation as to the living roots of truly fruitful action." Clarke said. "This is what we find happening all around us today."
The resurgence shows up in the spread of prayer houses, prayer retreats and shared prayer groups, and in a growing charismatic movement of Pentecostal prayer meetings in major Protestant and Catholic denominations, and in youthful interest in Oriental meditation.
In the past decade, as technology has swelled and religious forces have concentrated mainly on operational reforms—theological inquiry and widespread action for social justice—many church scholars have cited a dwindling of past disciplines of prayer.
"People all about us are hungry for dimensions of mystery, for experience of the spirit," says the Rev. Dr. C. F. Allison of the biological Seminary, an Episcopal institution.
turning to devotional resources to firm up the religious basis for action in the world.
A one-sided dedication to action brought a slow spiritual starvation, Father Clarke of Fordham University wrote in the New Catholic World.
But now, he said, "generous Christian people dedicated to Christian social action are beginning to feel the need to take time out from their action, from their working for God . . . to turn within . . . to live with Him in mutual presence."
But now, they see a reviving awareness of a need for inner consciousness and prayer, a
The new interest in prayer could mean a withdrawal from social action, said the Rev. Gregory Baum of the University of Toronto, but it also could mean that church people have found that sound action requires sensitivity to God's directions for it.
Kevin Ranaghan, a leader in the charismatic movement, said that secularized theology led to the impression that prayer is passe, but he added that it now was being revitalized in the church from classic prayer disciplines to loosely structured, spontaneous prayer meetings.
In a recent address in Washington, D.C., the Rev. Bernard Hearing, a moral theologian, said the modern struggles for a deeper understanding were related to a surprising growth of personal prayer.
Griff and the Unicorn
By Sokoloff
pectation, in Fairie the view, was bound to produce the Bay of Pigs fiasco. It could not have been otherwise. The Kennedy players, supremely confident of their skill in putting intelligence to work, saw only the promise of glory. The sauls of the administration were well aware of the intelligence which it gathered, impelling it forward to yet another operation. What it lacked was an anchor."
Fairie's judgments may seem harsh. Ten years after the Kennedy administration, he reworked the language of any measure of government which he established which has survived." Kennedy wished to do so much – but wishes it not enough: "He in fact achieved what I have aptly termed to be a desired, but ply 'its, its true."
(C) 1972 Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
While he is keeping his mouth shut about the nomination, however, he is keeping his eye fastened securely on it. He has given President Nixon would not say, as he has been quoted, that he favors Connally as his successor. The President has indicated he, Mr. Bush, will be until the picture is clearer. He isn't expected to express a choice until he sees how the candidates do in the presidential primaries. Meanwhile, he is encouraging all the candidates to compete for the nomination.
WASHINGTON—Vice President Spiro Agnew has decided to turn his back on presidential politics for another year or two. He has rejected the advice of political pros who are urging him to stay in office, saying he foresees his rivals can move in on the Republican power brokers.
Jack Anderson
He is more concerned about Connally's moves. If the former governor moves too fast, his strong bribes for the presidency, this could divide the conservative vote. Then a moderate Republican, who might stand a long charge of winning.
Agnew's response to the move by Senate Republican moderates to block his nomination and to the increasing talk about former Vice President Ronald Reagan, finally for President, therefore, will be to lie quiet and play it cool.
The stop-Agnew move by Republican moderates in the Senate would help President Obama be ident. He doubts they will be able to unite behind a single candidate but expects them to divide the party. In several presidential hopefuls.
Jack Wrather, millionaire producer of the popular "Lassie" TV series, has been helping the Nixon administration decide what shows to kill on public television this year.
One program on the cutting block turns out to be a direct rival of the local radio series, "Lassie," now in syndication, roams the screens each week in 150 cities, the city where we have public television stations.
Wrather, who sits on the powerful executive board that directs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) recommended holding up the funding of the children's show "ZOOM," which is aimed at the same group as "Lassie," "ZOOM," "injured" and the second-matched program produced by public TV.
Agnew Tones Down 'Spiro of '76' Tune
Wrather denied his recommendation was a conflict of interest. "I like ZOOM," he told us, as Mr. Jupp noted, as chairman of CPB's program review committee, in the decision to delay funding the same time, palms TV 37 for children's shows were renewed.
Wrather told us that, to his knowledge "ZOOM" and "Lassie" didn't compete anywhere in the country. But our own quick survey of the top 20 TV markets show otherwise. We did not expect "Lassie" have competed for young audiences at the same time in at least two major cities, Baltimore and Pittsburgh.
The soft-spoken millionaire referred us to Campen Soup, which sponsors "Lassie," and the New York advertising firm of Ogilvy-Mather, which distributes it.
TRAINING-SCHOOL HOAX
"We don't consider 'ZOOM' as competition," Howard Eaton of the ad firm told us. "Comparing 'Lassie' to 'ZOOM' is like comparing the United States to New Zealand," he added icily.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is preparing to crack on schools that allegedly have misapplied courses to believe that their courses will qualify them for airline work. The FTC says the training, say FTC investigators, only to find out later that their diploma isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
The schools, which rake in hundreds of millions of dollars a year, will be accused by the FTC of false advertising. Two of the schools under investigation are in Kansas City and Miami.
Other schools have already been served "cease and desist" orders to stop advertising that their training qualifies a graduate to work in the airline industry. The degree of employment picture in the industry is good. Both statements, in fact, are false.
A spokesman for one of the schools told us the schools provided a needed service. A high school kid," said the spokesman, "wouldn't have a prayer landing an airplane with a personel director disputed this; they told us the training made no difference in their hiring practices.
Copyright, 1973 by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
An All-American college newspaper
Kansas Telephone Numbers
Newsroom—UN 4-4810
Business Office—UN 4-4358
Published at the University of Kansas during the academic year except holidays and examinations prior to graduation. For more information, visit www.unik.edu/college/kaun. Kan 60414. Academic goods; services and international origin offered to all students without regard to color, creed or national origin. Opinions expressed are not necessarily intended as an offer to purchase.
NEWS STAFF
NEWS STAFF
News Adviser . . . Susanne Shaw
Editor
Angela Editor
Campus Editor
Editorial Editor
Joyce Dunbar
Appaloosa Graduate
Campus Editor
Bob Simpson
Editorial Editor
Joyce Dunbar, Anika Krupp, Hal Ratier
Joyce Hoe
Copy Critics
Linda Chapa, Guinne Mieke, Lindsia Schmidt
Assistant Campus Editors
Robin Groom, Silas Morgan
Entertainment Editor
Mary Lind
Sports Editors
Emerson Lynn, Ken Barker
Wire Editors
Jim Kendall, Cathy Sherman, Ginnie Mieke
Makeup Editors
Harry Wilson, Anika Krupp, Hal Ratier
Portfolio Editors
Ed Laloo, Dunn Laung, Charlie Camnetta
Photographers
Steve Foster
Editorial Writers
John Bailey, Christopher Caldwell, Robert Duncan,
Thomas Sillman
BUSINESS STAFF
BUSINESS STAFF Business Adviser . . Mel Adams
Business Manager
Associate Business Manager
Advertising Manager
Assistant Advertising Manager
National Advertising Manager
Promotional Advertising Manager
Counselant
Coral Drive
Chicago, Illinois
Steve Come
Boston, Massachusetts
Kathy Sawyer
Mike Hilderbeck
Lance Hudson