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by ONE'S legal counsel

The American Law Institute has voted to drop sodomy from the list of "public offenses" in its forthcoming Model Penal Code.

This is a step of the greatest magnitude in the struggle of the homosexual minority in America for equality under the law.

Sodomy-broadly defined as intercourse conducted orally or anallyhas been a crime in every State of the Union since Puritan days. It is a crime even between consenting adults or man and wife.

The American Law Institute is a group of this country's leading jurists and scholars, founded by Elihu Root. For 30 years, the Institute has been compiling Restatements of American law that have become landmarks in jurisprudence. The Institute, to put it briefly, has been bringing our laws up-to-date.

This year, the Institute began work on its Model Penal Code. It was only natural that the question of the inclusion or exclusion of sodomy as an offense would be one of great difficulty for the drafters of the new Code.

Some have felt that sodomy should remain a crime as a "deterrent" or expression of public morality. Not so Judge Learned Hand, 83-year-olddean of American jurists, who said to the meeting of the Institute:

"Sodomy is a matter of morals, a matter largely of taste, and it is not a matter that people should be put in prison about."

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HANGE IN

AMERICA'S SEX LAWS

The Institute agreed, voting 35 to 24 to exclude sodomy as a public offense, unless it is committed by force, or with a minor.

The Institute said:

"The code does not attempt to use the power of the state to enforce purely moral or religious standards. We deem it inappropriate for the Government to attempt to control behavior that has no substantial significance except as to the morality of the actor. Such matters are best left to religious, educational and other influences."

The action of the Institute will not have much effect on the lives of the homosexual minority for some years to come. It is the expression of what the law should be. It does not change the law as it exists: sodomy is still a crime in every State in the Union.

But in other fields of law, the opinion of the Institute has come to be the law. In the field of criminal law, its opinion will eventually prevail. Together with the forthcoming work of Dr. Kinsey on obsolete sexual laws, the old concepts of "deterrent" will be subjected to strong blows in the near future.

The main ingredient and moving power behind legislative change is public sentiment; a new climate of opinion, created in part by the existence of such organizations as the Mattachine and a magazine such as ONE, is responsible for the change.