and the sodomites particularly, as so pagan and dissolute that, on one occasion, when the King of Sodom proffered his material wealth to Abraham (then Abram) after the latter had rescued Lot and Sodom's goods from certain enemy kings, Abram proudly rejected all of Sodom's riches, saying:-"... I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet... that is thine, lest thou shouldst say, 'I have made Abram rich'."

The moral decay of Sodom is perhaps most explicitly suggested in the 19th Chapter of Genesis, as is also the apparent addiction of the people of Sodom to homosexual practices. According to this story Lot, the nephew of Abram, having dwelt for a period of time in Sodom, was visited one evening by two messengers from the Lord, who had come to ascertain the moral condition of that city, and to warn Lot and his family of its imminent destruction. Lot, knowing the predilections of Sodomites, prevailed upon his two visitors to spend the night within the safety of his home. But even before they had retired, the men of Sodom swarmed about Lot's dwelling, shouting "Where are the men which came in to thee this night? Bring them out unto us, that we may know them!" With considerable daring, Lot went outside and, after fastening his door, tried to distract their attention by an offer of his two virgin daughters. However, the men of Sodom were not interested in Lot's daughters, and pressed their first demands to the point of violence, so that only by the miraculous intervention of Lot's two guests was a debacle prevented. Shortly thereafter Sodom, in which the Lord had found not even ten righteous men, was reduced to ashes by fire and brimstone from the heavens. To describe Sodom less indirectly, it could be stated that its male inhabitants were so debauched sexually (in this case homosexually), and so bored with each other's company, that they could not see a strange male without at once seeking carnal knowledge of him. It is to such an abysmal condition of moral turpitude and intellectual degeneracy that the homosexual of modern times is usually equated.

For most readers of ONE magazine, and probably for quite a number of intelligent heterosexuals, it is surely not necessary to dwell at length either on the injustice or the outright fallacy of this equation. It is well known that there is a type of mind which falls an easy slave to sexual appetites, and readily abandons all principles and scruples in favor of these appetites, thus deserving descriptions of "dissolute", etc., regardless of the nature of sexual inclinations in the particular instance. It is also well known that there are other types of minds which approach the problems of sexuality from an entirely different direction, seeking to regulate sexuality according to ethical and moral principles, and to place it subject to other human requirements of an altogether higher and more social nature-and this again regardless of the nature of sexual inclinations in the individual instance. It is very true that the homosexual cannot claim any natural logic for his or her sexual inclinations, and in this respect cannot possibly invalidate heterosexual arguments based on natural logic. But natural logic is not necessarily the only logic, and the intricacies and dimensions of the human personality are such that most persons are compelled to accommodate within themselves a certain amount of illogic, if not on a sexual level, then on other and perhaps even more far-reaching levels of human experience.