The Sexual Freedom League

On a bright, hot Saturday in August 1965, a young iconoclast from New York named Jefferson Poland strode into the chilly waters of San Francisco Bay accompanied by two girlfriends. The crowd of tourists and sun bathers in Aquatic Park cheered lustily; many shouted words of encouragement. The cause of the crowd's enthusiasm was plain: Poland and his friends were stark naked.

The event had been well publicized in advance and police were on the alert, but Sergeant John V. Kennedy, who was in charge of the detail, did not interfere. Either he was acutely embarrassed by the whole thing or he was myopic. "I can't see anything from here," he remarked softly. "I haven't seen a thing yet."

While Poland and the girls waded about in the water, pickets in the crowd circulated with banners carrying messages such as Make Love, Not War; Love thy Neighbor; Legalize Prostitution; Why be ashamed of your Body? and Being Nude is Wholesome. When Poland, lean and white, trudged out of the water with his two companions, Sergeant Kennedy's eyesight improved perceptibly and he went up and arrested all three on charges of swimming without proper attire at a public beach.

Poland and his friends--a petite brunette named Ina Saslow, who was living with him and supporting herself as a baby sitter, and an ample blonde named Shirley Einsiedel, a sometime bean picker--subsequently pleaded guilty to the charges in municipal court. Poland served five weekends in jail and the girls were given suspended sentences.

It seemed a small price to pay for publicizing Poland's brain child, a loosely knit organization known as the Sexual Freedom League.

Since the historic wade-in at Aquatic Park, the League has become a highly articulate organization with a membership fluctuating between 100 and 200. The East Bay League, located in Berkeley, is the cornerstone of a movement now made up of 15 autonomous units around the country, mostly on university and college campuses.

The East Bay League is both the most active and, according to Poland, the sexiest of sex leagues in the country. Like its counterparts elsewhere, the East Bay group has a twofold purpose: the liberalization of laws pertaining to sex--abortion, prostitution, pornography--and the sheer, unadulterated enjoyment of sex.

"We believe," the League proclaims in a preamble to its "Statement of Position," "that sexual expression, in whatever form agreed upon between consenting persons of either sex, should be considered an inalienable human right.... Sex without guilt and restriction is good, pleasurable, relaxing, and promotes a spirit of human closeness, compassion and good will. We believe that sexual activity ... has a wealth of potential for making life more livable and enjoyable ..."

Poland started the first League in New York, but there were few members and little enthusiasm, so he went West to found a unit while studying at San Francisco State College. The group printed some literature and buttons, but the movement turned out to be too academic in its texture to attract much attention. As a friend wryly pointed out, "Sexual freedom has to be implemented to work."

Finally, Poland, who has from time to time supported himself by selling blood plasma (it beats selling whole blood in terms of income), moved across the Bay to the fertile fields of Berkeley, scene of Vietnam Day Committee demonstrations, the Free Speech Movement and other manifestations of the free spirit.

Still, only a few staunch sexniks joined--until Poland staged the historic nude wade-in at Aquatic Park, which was copiously covered in the local press (the San Francisco Chronicle, which is the champion of topless and other developments on the cultural scene, ran a long, sympathetic piece on its front page). The wade-in gave the League just the impetus it needed and, for a while, enthusiastic adherents of free love stood in line to join.

From a narrow group of intellectually bent sensualists, the membership has grown to include various types of professionals. They are mostly, says Joseph Buch, the League's executive director and curator of membership files, people of the middle class--"young moderns." They have been liberated by the new morality and the pill. (There are no embarrassing pauses at an S. F. L. party.) The average age of the members is 25.

"They are the type of people you are likely to find at an alumni club gathering," says Buch rather matter-of-factly. When the League was reorganized last summer because of leadership problems, Buch, a cerebral, articulate type with a penchant for tweeds and cords, was named to replace Richard Thorne, a pragmatic sensualist who, for a while, taught an amorphous course called History of Western Anti-Sensualism at Berkeley's Free University. Although weighted down by organizational matters and The Issues, Buch has no intention of de-emphasizing the corporeal aspects of sex.

"Hell, everybody involved likes to screw," he remarked recently.

As the group grows and furthers its efforts in disseminating information about sex and related matters, it often finds itself bogged down in the same procedural difficulties that beset other political and social groups. There are many arguments about procedures, committees and general structure; but it is still the only group whose membership application asks such diverse questions as "Are you interested in: mate swapping? picnics? public relations?"

In the beginning at the Berkeley chapter, under Thorne's stewardship, there were signs of sexual repressions and uncertainly, and gatherings joyously announced in the invitations as nude parties were embarrassingly covered up during the early hours. "This is a nude party." a host would rather testily remind his guests as the evening wore on. He would then lead the way in helping a pretty young thing undress and by and by everybody was naked. From nudity to "expressive use of the body" was but a short jump and in no time couches, sofas and rugs became the scene of what one member described, with considerable satisfaction, as "a sheer undiluted sex orgy."

The nude party is less shrouded in inhibitions and uncertainty these days. The purpose is well defined in everybody's mind and the guests go at it zealously.

"The American people," Buch said recently, by way of introduction to a typical nude party, "are beginning to realize that there is more to sex than once a week with your wife in the missionary position. They are discovering that, despite the blandishments of advertising, one of the great leisure activities is sex. The Sexual Freedom League serves as a place where sexually liberal people can meet sexually--rather than having to look through the ads of the back pages of the tabloids."

At a nude party, sex is there for the asking--but you have to ask right.

"If a man wants to make it with a guest," explains Buch. "it depends on how he does it. If he comes up to a girl talking to a date or somebody else and says, 'Hi, I'm such, and such, let's make it,' chances are she is going to look at him as if he just crawled out from under a rock."

One goes about establishing relations much as at any other social affair--except that the sexual interest is taken for granted in advance, and the chances of "making it" are infinitely greater. But there are, of course, "no guarantees," Buch warns.

That doesn't mean that all of the members accept the informalities. A young girl named Joan told of an experience she had at one of the first nude parties. "The party was kind of dull and I felt very uncomfortable and didn't undress. There had been some games and then a hypnotist tried to put a group into a trance, but things weren't going well. Then one very pretty girl accommodated all of the men who hadn't made any contacts, and I thought that it would be wonderful to have a thousand men to choose from--all who wanted me. I wasn't ready to do it, but I couldn't help thinking about it. Then the hypnotist announced he was going to put us all into a deep trance, and we fell asleep. I vaguely remember being handled and moved about and I finally agreed to have intercourse with one of the men. Later I was told that I had been completely undressed and was crying and four different men had used me. I had been mumbling 'No, no, no.' Later, one of the men tried to convince me that I hadn't been insulted. That's not my idea of sexual freedom."

Many of those early problems have been solved by requiring that each male guest bring a female date to keep the odds even. Of course, both guests are free to make any new contacts they wish. As one might expect, the League has more male members than female at any given time. But the females are steady members, while the men are short-termers. Often a new male member will attend one or two parties without participating, "just to see what it's all about," and never show up again.

The setting of one recent typical nude party was a five-room apartment on the first floor of a stucco building on a pleasant tree-lined street on the fringe of the Berkeley campus of the University of California. The walls were buff-colored and empty, save for a couple of abstract paintings of no great merit. The decor was decidedly early Salvation Army--a blend of nonperiod chairs, an old sofa, a large couch covered with a purplish material and a gray patterned rug. (In the early days, the League had trouble finding hosts willing to hold nude parties in their homes. "The Social Committee," said an item in Love, the League's newsletter, "would like to plan more social gatherings but is hampered in its endeavors by a lack of facilities. . . . Members of the League have opened their minds and bodies but few have opened up their homes.")

There were about a dozen people in the living room of the stucco house, a few more men than women. A tall, lean man with a walrus mustache, dark hornrimmed glasses and wearing light corduroy pants and black turtleneck sweater stood in a corner, cocktail glass close to chest, offering his expertise on Lyndon Johnson's failures in Vietnam to an earnest young man in white jeans and open shirt and a baby-faced blonde girl in tight green pants and matching blouse. The girl appeared bored with his ruminations and glanced around the room from time to time, hoping that somebody would rescue her.

In the dining room, a jovial round-faced chap in his mid-20s was regaling two couples with a story about a physician who had mistakenly prescribed an overdose of male hormones to nymphomaniac. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a pretty young thing in her early 20s, with closely cropped black hair and wearing only a bikini-type bottom, emerged. Her waist was slim and her breasts bobbed as she casually strode by the group at the dining-room table.

"I see the nudity is beginning," remarked a cherubic gentleman in a neat dark business suit, after casting a long look at the topless girl.

Shortly, one of the men stepped to a corner and deftly removed every shred of clothes, except for socks and loafers. "Why don't we go nude, too?" said a tweedy man to a sexy-looking girl he was talking to. "Everybody else seems to be." In short order, they both were.

The pace quickened and the volume of the hi-fi went up. One couple began to dance a mild version of the frug in the middle of the living-room floor. Shortly, another couple joined them. The rest of the guests appeared to pay no attention to them, although all four were stark naked. Some were drinking; others were talking in clusters, standing, or sitting on chairs or the couch.

"We play anything on the hi-fi," one of the guests remarked. "Jazz, blues, rock 'n' roll. Sometimes even Beethoven."

Another gentleman, who introduced himself as Herb (many League guests use first names only, often for fear of public identification) and said he was an insurance salesman, was standing in the kitchen, nude, pouring himself a glass of wine from a gallon jug.

"It's funny," he mused, "how one's attitudes toward sex change after a few nude parties."

He pointed to a couple slouched, nude, on the couch in a corner of the living room. The man was cupping one of the girl's breasts in his hand as he pressed close to her.

"When I went to my first party," Herb went on, "I was frankly embarrassed and curious. When couples would start making love, on the rug or on the sofa, my eyes almost popped out of my head. I had never seen others make love before. Once I got used to it, I found it quite stimulating.

"Now it all seems so natural. Of course, you're still curious--after all, we are human and not robots--but there is no longer this intense, almost morbid curiosity about what other people are doing with each other at a party."

The couples on the floor were standing in warm embraces, swaying gently to the rhythms from the hi-fi. A girl was lounging on the sofa, drink in hand, gently, almost casually, fondling the erect penis of the dark-haired man sitting next to her. The turtleneck expert on Vietnam was still holding forth, although the girl in green had been replaced by a dark man in briefs. The girl was nowhere to be seen.

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Sexual Freedom League

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The doorbell rang and the host, a rang, bespectacled statistician who needed a haircut, went to the door and admitted two couples. After a few casual introductions, the four repaired to the kitchen, where one of the men began mixing drinks with a bottle of Scotch he had brought along.

"They are two married couples," volunteered a trim nude blonde, who strutted about the living room apparently looking for a suitable mate, "but I doubt that they are together tonight. I think the men came with each other's wives."

Buch explained afterward that this is not at all unusual. "Each married partner frequently shows up with somebody else. Maybe they started out from different places, maybe they just wanted to enlarge the party. There is no jealousy; I don't think there has to be.

"Nobody makes any bones about being married. Nobody in the League is ashamed of being married. In fact, it is a mark of some status. But nobody lets marriage interfere with their sex life." (In point of fact, about 85 percent of the female members of the League are married, and most of them come to League functions with their spouses--although they frequently have sex with somebody else at a party.)

"The love-roses-and-marriage bit, the romanticized love, is a pretty sick aspect of love," Buch continued. "The religious setup of Western society teaches us to regard our wives as our possessions. Maybe it's a little silly to think of your wife or husband as chattel. Besides, often a man is involved in so many things that he is not really capable of giving his wife as much time as she, as a sexual being, deserves."

The apartment was now permeated with an aura of sensuality; interestingly, there was no longer much talk of sex. As one of the guests explained it: "Eventually, it can get to be boring to discuss the same subject with the same people all the time. It would drive me up the wall."

Most of the 20 or so persons in the apartment had drifted off. One couple was unabashedly engaged in lovemaking on the couch, others were fondling each other on the rug, several were in the two adjoining bedrooms. One paunchy gentleman still wearing his shorts was walking about rather aimlessly, obviously dispirited about not having made a contact and obviously trying not to be obvious about his curiosity and frustrations.

A pretty girl with long blonde hair drifted out to a small factional group in the kitchen. She pointed out the significant difference between this and other kinds of nudist groups: "Most nudist camps are really quite prudish. They have to use all that sunshine-and-health jazz as a justification for going nude--instead of just pure sensuality."

After a few more minutes of chitchat, she and one of the males in the kitchen moved on into one of the bedrooms, where a few moments later, the man could vaguely be seen through the open door on top of the girl. A stockily built man in his middle 30s brushed by the open door and peeked in. "Oh, pardon me," he said and turned around with an apologetic smile. He explained quite unemotionally that the girl was his wife and he certainly did not wish to intrude on her lovemaking.

From time to time, a couple would drift back into the living room. Some put on their clothes, thanked the host for a pleasant evening and left. By one A.M. the party was over.

"The striking thing about these parties," said Buch afterward, "is that they are really not very much different from any other social gathering."

That seems fairly accurate. S. F. L. parties start slowly, like most ordinary cocktail parties. If most of the preliminary talk is about sex, it is not very different from the average penthouse bash. When normal cocktail parties loosen up, the liquor flows freer and the guests become more gregarious. Here the stimulation is of a different order, but the pace quickens in like manner. And while you can dig up strange histories of sexual trauma and disturbing adolescent experiences, there are probably quite similar tales told at the average P. T. A. meeting.

As another member put it: "What we do is really no different from what many Congressmen do on their junkets or what fraternities do at their parties--except that we do it without shame or guilt or concealment. The only criterion for any sexual act is really, 'Do I want to do it? Does it hurt anyone else?'"

The intensity of the sensuality at parties varies from one to another, depending on in-group psychology and the personality of those present. Some are obviously trying to overcome deep-seated inhibitions and guilt complexes.

Others seem quite stable intellectually and emotionally, and they are consistent in word and deed. At a nude buffet dinner party, a lovely girl named Carol explained why she had joined the League: "I derive a lot of pleasure from having sex with men, but ... after I sleep with a man, he will invariably develop a psychological dependence on me. I enjoy sex ... and I consider any emotional involvement ... an entirely undesirable side effect. I came to these parties hoping to meet men, enjoy sex with them, and then break off ties with them until perhaps the next party, so that there will be no possibility of ... emotional hassle." Later Carol went upstairs and spent time with a few different men. Afterward she stood around watching the merrymaking of the others.

A more anxious attitude along the same lines was expressed by another girl, also quite attractive, named Shirley: "I might meet a young man I like at the party and go to bed with him. But I wouldn't want to do this with anyone I had met beforehand, and I would hope afterward that he would forget about me, unless perhaps we met at another nude party. That is, I would like to be two people, one person when I am at a nude party and another when I am leading my everyday life. I wouldn't want the things I did at the party to follow me ..."

Shirley had some criticism about the parties themselves: "It often seems to me that there is no love present. People are merely playing games, engaging in exhibitionism, voyeurism. There are no guys or girls talking to each other, no groups of threes or fours; everyone seems intent on making someone or getting made."

A sociology student from Berkeley doing field research at the S. F. L. parties had a more general theory about the motivations of the participants. "I used to wonder," he said, "why people would form groups like this when there are so many other opportunities to have sex. And why have it in public like this? I think the answer, especially for the girls, is that these are people who are easily stimulated and quite eager for sexual activity, but they condemn their own sociosexual behavior. They may be less socially adept than others and find it hard for a dinner conversation to develop into a roll in the hay, even if both parties are willing. At a nude party, all of the real and imagined barriers drop. Sexual intercourse becomes normal and acceptable, and some girls want to place themselves in a position where they have to have sex to go along with the crowd. I don't think this is deviant or perverted behavior. In many ways, it is the healthiest outlet for hyperactive or oversexed people to relieve their sexual problems."

The theory was given substantiation that same evening. A beautiful 19-year-old (girls that young are rarities at S. F. L. gatherings) was attending her first party. She remained clothed and aloof from the goings on for most of the evening. Then she demonstrated her basic belief in sexual freedom by performing fellatio with one of the long-established male members. Afterward she remained as clothed and aloof as before, but she seemed more concerned with the activities of the others. Then that same male returned to prod her to undress and have intercourse with him. She refused, and he spent quite some time and energy accusing her of getting "kicks" from denying him. He then tried breaking her down with eloquent rhetoric about her glorious body and its capabilities. She seemed to be as aware of her capabilities as he, for she suddenly left him, strode over to another member who had obviously been scrutinized, proceeded to undress completely and tumble with her new friend.

The old hand never fully recovered from the loss of that pretty thing, even though there were many others around to kiss away his wounds. In fact, it is remarkable how good-looking most of the female League members are. The sociology student contributed some comments on this, too: "The females attending the parties vary from the average to the exceptionally well endowed. I'm sure that young ladies with less-than-average gifts are extremely reluctant to join." The same thought has been more profitably expressed by an advertisement for a local reducing salon that asks, "Are you ready for your first nude party?"

Another important observation that the student sociologist made concerned male physiology: "I've often heard that men don't get erections at nudist camps, because the atmosphere is intentionally sterile. Well, erections are the exception at nude parties, too. Of course, physical contact brings immediate results, but when just standing around, most men are relaxed in every sense."

Something else notably absent at nude parties are beards and beat types. The Berkeley activists and Telegraph Hill hipsters seem to regard the S. F. L. as square and overregimented. One coffee-shop frequenter put the members down as "suburban wife swappers." A writer expressed a more general attitude that people who would join the League must be sexually "hung up."

The orgiastic nature of the S. F. L. parties is by no means viewed with equilibrium by all those participating. Not long ago, Love dutifully printed a disclaimer from a disenchanted male member, who wrote:

How frightful it must be to go to an orgy expecting to be smothered with love and nothing happens except that you get pawed around a little. . . . I've been to orgies and they are always sad. Someone ends up crying or passing out drunk.... This is quite a comedown from the League's original crusading spirit, when they first ventured forth with proud banners flying from erect penises. I'll be frank. I'm against sex under most conditions. Orgasm has a tendency to turn off friendship, tenderness and flowingness, while at the same time turning on possessiveness, jealousy and cantankerousness. You have no idea how many good relationships I have literally fucked away. Always there is guilt. Always there is "You made me do it" and "How can you still respect me?"

The League, this critic asserted, is clearly a place for men to "roll up a score." "It doesn't surprise me," he added gruffly, "that there are more men than women in the League."

A girl member of the League, an intense, young red-haired girl with an absorbing interest in sexual freedom, complained even more vociferously: "Frankly, I do not enjoy this kind of sex at all. Before you know it, there is nothing in the room but twenty-odd sweating bodies."

She was understandably depressed about her experiences at a nude party at which she was chased, during the course of an evening, by half a dozen strange men who considered her fair game.

"I had no empathy or feeling for any of them," she related. "Finally, I fled into a bedroom and plopped down on the bed--only to find a man in the bed who started pawing at me. I told him I didn't feel like it now and asked him to leave me alone."

She was obviously not being a gracious guest. "Then get out," snarled the enraged would-be swain, "this is my pad." The amative young man was, indeed, the owner of the apartment, and our red-haired ladyfriend beat a hasty retreat.

Love's editor, David Lichtenberg, a young and zealous Berkeley science student who has tried communal living under a kibbutzlike system and has dabbled in nonverbal communications programs sponsored by the Unitarian Church, sadly agreed with the male correspondent's criticism. "Some of the parties have been as you suggest," he said, but he felt confident that the rough spots would be smoothed out once the membership attained greater sexual maturity.

Love's editorial attitude is expressed by this statement from an early issue:

Sex is an Art, the most fundamental of all the arts; like dancing, it is the expressive use of the body; like a play or novel, it is the use of conflict, suspense and the interaction of contrasting personalities; most of all it is like music.

• • •

When Richard Throne was president of the East Bay League, he liked to put on sex games. His type of gamesmanship fell somewhat short of the standards set for games in other strata of society, yet some members complained that there weren't enough sex games at nude parties. (Buch thinks that games "smack of directedness and lack of imagination" and eschews them.)

A letter from a young wife in Marin County, who is studying for a master's degree in philosophy, to an officer of the League, sheds light on the games as well as on the attitude of married women who attend League functions with their husbands.

Let me explain to you about Saturday night. I imagined it was obvious to you that neither Ron nor I were in our usual do-what-you-want-to-do-with-anybody mood. That was no accident, but it was our decision to stay pretty much together, since we enjoy each other's lovemaking and find it stimulating to watch sexual activities together. I see now, though, that this attitude is not one to maximize my pleasure, nor his. I found myself wanting to meet other people and perhaps do sexual things with them. He was content to just watch other couples on the bed. It would have been possible to separate, but I know there would have been repercussions on his part. I found in the past that the only way I can help him not to be jealous is to assist him in developing a definite mental set before we go to a party. After this is done, he usually enjoys and encourages my lovemaking with other people. With this in mind, our attitude about the future will probably be much less sexually monogamous.

What also contributed to our leaving early was that I wanted to get some sleep Saturday night so I could stay up and study for a test on Monday. At first, I thought there would be quiet places to sleep at the party, but there was none.

One of the main attractions of the party to us, one that made us decide to spend the time going to Berkeley when we had a million things to do here, was the announcement of games, prizes and films. We expected some unique sex games and stag films.

A suggestion for future parties, by the way, might be to think up some new games to play. I know only two. One involves the male partners standing in line, with the females blindfolded and trying to guess who their partners are. The only part each girl is allowed to touch is the genital area (no trying on for size). I have no idea what the prizes would be, but I'm sure you'd come up with something.

The second game, and not quite as good, is for the guys and girls to squirt whipped cream on each other and then eat it off. This has interesting results.

You may or may not like the idea of games, but I think they are enjoyable diversions...

The prevalent attitude about past failures of games was expressed in a letter to Love: "People, mostly shadowy personalities, watched or participated, took what they wanted and slipped away. All feeling of total group communication was lost..."

One group that has been surprisingly absent from the fun and games has been the Berkeley police department. They have publicly stated a hands-off policy unless formal complaints are filed. And there has been only one full-scale raid, complete with plainclothesmen (but no noclothesmen), a midnight charge by camera-toting patrolmen popping flashbulbs, and all the other accouterments. In this case, a complaint had indeed been filed by a relative of the host; and the cops were looking specifically and only for minors who were drinking. They found none. More importantly, no arrests for sexual misbehavior were made, although some League activities are illegal under California law.

For the entire time the police were on the premises, one girl castigated them for not bringing dates and for ruining the male--female ratio. There was general confusion otherwise; no one was sure of his rights, nor did anyone want to reveal his name and address. Most of the members hastily dressed when the police arrived, but one young man stayed adamantly naked and he was left alone. When the little blitz was over, the party resumed; it was reported to have been one of the best in a long time.

Not all of the League's social affairs are au naturel. In fact, get-togethers are normally dressy affairs at which invited guests are urged to get acquainted and exchange views on sex and other pertinent matters. Nor, for that matter, are all affairs held indoors. Frequently, nude beach parties are held at Half Moon Bay, a stretch of which has long been the playground for other nude groups.

Not long ago, the League found an agreeably different setting for a social affair--a large ranch near San Francisco. While the ranch hands were tending cattle and horses, members of the League frolicked happily in and about the swimming pool in unencumbered nudity. From time to time, individual couples would drift off to patches of green under shady trees to practice, with crusading spirit, one of the avowed purposes of the League--the enjoyment of the art of sex.

Sometimes League members become confused and anxious about their goals and they turn to Love. It has, from time to time, run a lively column of advice to the sexlorn, conducted under the nom de plume Colette. The column offers a good deal of insight into the views and sexual appetites of the League's members.

"Dear Colette," an apprehensive girl member wrote recently, "after talking only a few hours with a man I met at a party, I had sex with him. I thought he liked me and expected he would call me again soon. He hasn't. Do you think that he has been fair?"

"It is very unwise," Colette responded, "to have sex with someone you've known only a few hours, unless you expect no more than an enjoyable sexual experience. If you want to see him again, call him. Why assume that maintaining the relationship is solely his responsibility?"

Another girl was faced with an equally painful problem. Would it, she asked, hurt her relationship with her husband if she had sex with an old boyfriend visiting from out of town? "Having several sexual relationships at the same time can be enriching experience," wrote Colette, "if everyone involved is agreeable. Discuss your feelings with your husband and find out exactly how he feels about it. Indicate to him that your love for him would not be affected if you had sex with Phil [the old boyfriend]. Be sure that Phil understands how you feel so that he does not become jealous or suffer guilt."

Finally, the girl was advised that if she had sex with somebody else, her husband could scarcely be blamed for having his fun, too. "The problems that arise from multiple sexual relationships," averred Colette, "are usually caused by misunderstandings. Good luck!"

• • •

The philosophy of the League is fully--and ponderously--set forth in its published "Statement of Position" (the cover of which is adorned with an artful woodcut showing Adam and Eve about to make love in the Garden of Eden). The statement lashes out at Protestant ethics and a society rife with taboos, repressions, guilt complexes and antiquated sex laws. It specifically states the League's position on such social phenomena as:

Public nudity ("that nakedness excites others in an unwanted and prurient way and abets sex crimes is a myth"), young sex ("we believe that a sex organ in the hand of a child is more desirable than a toy machine gun"), pornography ("writing which focuses on sex does not need anything of 'redeeming social import' in order to justify such a focus on sex. Sex ... is redeeming in and of itself"), abortions ("all laws and hospital regulations which restrict or deny such freedom should be repealed") and prostitution ("we believe that it is the prerogative of all persons to engage in sexual activity with all other consenting persons, free or for financial return").

Earlier this year, Thorne instituted a class in techniques of eroticism, a sort of academic 12-hour course, with demonstrations of sexual techniques. The new management of the League has scrapped it. "It is out, finished--as of now," Buch said recently. "All it succeeds in being is a big ego scene for the guy who is doing the demonstrations. The basic goal may be all right, but we're going to have to try to implement the idea in a more cerebral way. After all, the basic problems between man and wife are not the kind that you need to demonstrate."

Since the reorganization of the League's top leadership last summer, the group has in fact, taken on a somewhat intellectualized approach to sexual problems--although, Buch insists, not at the expense of the pure enjoyment of sex. He thinks it will strengthen the League immeasurably.

Under the new setup, members are organized in circles--each circle being a semiautonomous body represented on the League's executive committee, each with a membership that shares mutual interests in addition to sex itself. As of this writing, there were plans to organize a circle on eroticism and the arts, one on abortion problems, another on public relations and one on play reading. The young lady who conducts the Colette column, fearing that the play-reading circle, much like the one she had participated in in the Unitarian Church, might overlap with the eroticism-and-the-arts circle, suggested as an alternative that it might be a good idea to form a chess circle. The response was less than enthusiastic.

The purpose of the circles, explained Buch, is to get a dialog going among people who are interested in sexual liberality. But some people doubt that the Sexual Freedom League with its circles and nude parties can accomplish anything really significant in the way of sexual liberality and removal of repressions.

"Those who clamor the loudest are not really sexually free," says the Reverend David Baar, chaplain to the Bishop of the Episcopal Church in San Francisco, and an outspoken liberal. "Sexual freedom means that you retain your sexual identity and the ability to feel the sexual impulse in the face of confrontation with other people. Free sex isn't per se going to make people accept others any better and establish bonds with them. The ultimate object is not free love, but to be free to love."

Others, such as Realist editor Paul Krassner, take a lighter but no less serious view: "They [the S.F.L. members] are a horny but consistent antidote to Norman Vincent Peale and Dear Abby. They are silly and I respect them."