Smut-Nuts and Peep-Creeps

To the Editors:

In spite of my belief in the First Amendment, the cover story on pornography [April 5] upset me greatly. The porn boom has reached levels that are totally antifemale, antifreedom, anti-love. The result: dehumanization.

Debra Shevlin

Greenlawn, N. Y.

Let's round up all the smut-nuts, peep-creeps, massage-kneaders, and their exploiters and launch the raunch on an ark down our sewers.

Ronald Laspagnoletta

The Bronx, N. Y.

Charges that porn is a literature of sexual hostility and male machismo spring not from careful study, but from unexamined prejudices and preconceptions. The fantasies in pornography are more often extremely complex and subtle. Looked at objectively, they can tell us much about the culturally complicated relationships between the sexes.

Given the definition of the human as the animal that imagines, it follows that to attempt to stifle imagination is to commit the ultimate dehumanizing and brutalizing act.

Charles E. May, Associate Professor

California State University

Long Beach

Why do the purveyors of filth believe they have the legal right to violate the rules of civilized behavior?

Eunice Hooper

Butte, Mont.

Better to be plagued by porno than by a self-righteous uncontrollable group of moralists who want to regulate what we see.

Mark Squires

Philadelphia

One aspect of pornography (or, if you will, erotic fantasy material) that is seldom mentioned is the myth that men regard sex as a strictly physical act, while women need "romance" to tolerate it. As a result, sexual fantasies for men keep getting more and more "gross" in attempts to escape the "female" force of emotion. And although there is a growing tide of erotic fantasy material for women, most of it is still steeped in the mushy, false-romantic mode that women have always been conditioned to like. The need for emotion and physical pleasure exists in all of us regardless of gender.

Lynne Bronstein

Sherman Oaks, Calif.

There is humor in our predicament: we have driven sexuality out of the house and into the gutter. Now we are horrified to find it proliferating in a hundred mutant forms. What would seem the obvious solution is to restore the human dignity of the erotic impulse and return it to decent society.

Jeffrey Clayton

Cambridge, Mass.

Taboo or not taboo. That is the question.

Clem Droz

Placerville, Calif.

Woodstein's Words

It is ironic that after spending so many hours researching the story of gross misuse of power, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein also are guilty of this very thing [April 5]. Perhaps theirs is the greater guilt. Political power passes on. The power of the written word endures for all time.

Judith A. Hudson

Colville, Wash.

TIME must long for the good old days when one could have a picnic at a crucifixion or spend a satisfying afternoon watching the bloody tortures in the Roman Colosseum.

Mary Stephanie

McDermott St. Louis

Hard to understand those who would still carry Nixon's banner after he has smeared dirt in all our faces.

Herschel Martin

Bakersfield, Calif.

What Hubbard Wrought

Re Scientology [April 5]: the only way to rid ourselves of the likes of L. Ron Hubbard and other Pied Pipers leeching on our youth is to make religion taxable like any other lucratively profitable human activity. Then all of these parasites would go away.

James P. Murphy, M.D.

Bethesda, Md.

I found your article in need of clarification. The majority of Scientology churches now enjoy tax exemption. Their social reform activities are vast in scope and admirably effective across the world. Further, Scientology saw the last of its governmental difficulties when Richard Grossman, M.P., who chaired an extensive government inquiry into the U.K. ban on foreign Scientologists, wrote, "I have come to the conclusion that most government measures of July 1968 were not justified."

Scientology is an emergent religion of the space age with a technology of pastoral counseling of remarkable effectiveness. Its internal discipline and ethics system is in the best tradition of Buddhism and Eastern thought.

Jerry L. Simmons

Redondo Beach, Calif.

I am one of the "abandoned" anti-Scientologists. My husband left me to follow the silver platter that Scientology dangles perpetually just out of reach.

There does not seem to be a middle road. For those who have in any way been connected with that group, it's either hate or love.

Bernadette Zurbriggen

St. Louis

Catholic Decline

Poor Father Greeley does not realize the Catholic decline [April 5] has been caused by the hypocrisy of priests like him who do not inspire the flock to follow the church, who do not seem even to understand why they should. They say Christ is a nice guy to follow unless you find it too difficult, then change the rules to suit yourself.

The church cannot change its stand in Humanae Vitae even if 99% of Catholics disagree with it.

Janet E. Connors

Bethesda, Md.

The decline, if one may call it that, of Roman Catholicism is due mainly to the huckstering of pastors and bishops who engineered the "liberalism" of the Mass. Banjo plucking, guitar strumming and folk singing, added to the switch from Latin and the reversal of the altar, have disenchanted thousands of Catholics. While these machinations may appeal to the young, they frustrate the older people who pay the freight.

Thomas C. Gordon

Alameda, Calif.

King Lear

Norman Lear's insight on life in the U.S. is a continuous surprise [April 5]. What a healing effect he has on our battered emotions. Now when his show Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman is discussed among friends and family, laughter prevails. We Irish have always known laughter is the best medicine.

Roselyn Wroten

Bowling Green, Ohio

No Sale

So the "great fanfare" didn't sell the Chevette [April 5]. How gratifying.

Their advertising must be the most aggravating TV this side of Mary Hartman's mother.

William J. Price

Houston

Two Miserable Choices

"If Solzhenitsyn was right in his broadcast," you write, "the only alternative is the Apocalypse" [April 5]. This is precisely the feeble thinking that Solzhenitsyn criticizes.

As the world goes Red, you offer two miserable choices: either smile like a helpless goon or start World War III. There is another way: wake up, drive hard bargains, get tough in the U.N., act sensibly.

Gary Kern

Assistant Professor of Russian Literature

University of Rochester

Rochester, N. Y.

Will you tell Solzhenitsyn that I said for him to go home to his own country and clean it up if he thinks it needs it.

We can take care of our democracy.

Clare Stover

East Liverpool, Ohio

Putting Down Peleg

I would like to assure Mr. Zvi al Peleg, former occupation commander of Nablus and the Gaza Strip [April 5], that few people, least of all Palestinian Arabs have any illusions about Israel's being "the wisest and best conqueror in history."

Any illusions were shattered in the first days of the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, when the Israelis razed the Arab villages of Yalo, Emmaus and Beit Nuba.

Tomis Kapitan

Bloomington, Ind.

A Credit for Kesey

I think it is rather sad that with all the Oscars won by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest [April 12], and all the thank-yous for the golden idols, not one of the recipients mentioned Ken Kesey, the author of the novel.

Todd Norlander

Williamsburg, Va.

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