proposes that in remedy the legal status of persons under 21 years of age relating to sexual behavior be clarified. In general, persons under the age of 7 are legally regarded as not responsible. On the one hand this age group stands at the extreme in the scale of age disparity. On the other hand the legal definition of the minor ignores the intervening events of puberty and the large variations in physical and emotional maturity observed in many persons stamped as minors. It may be true that such persons cannot enter into contracts, but many are by endowment and training fully capable of part or exceptionally even full responsibility for sexual behavior. Thus, in the later years of childhood age disparity may diminish to a point of a day or even hours. By the same token in the later age levels the legal concepts of rape and of contributing to delinquency become increasingly untenable. The foregoing comments on the legal status of persons under 21 reflect the committee's need for further study with the help of the legal profession. At best, these are matters which call for considerable research, reinterpretation and application on the part of the legal profession. The committee recognizes that a large number of adults mutually and privately carry out illegal sexual practices with other persons of adult status. These are not to be considered as coming. within the purview of the committee's legislative recommendations.

LEGISLATION

The committee is hopeful that our sex laws can be modified to correspond to modern sex knowledge with the aim that justice fit the realities of modern life in keeping with scientific psychological concepts of sexual behavior. The committee believes that there is need for a realistic assessment of the American sex laws that penalize sexual behavior; that some laws should be revised and perhaps some entirely abandoned. In operation our sex laws are harsh, too often nourish corruption and fail to protect the community from persons who are potentially dangerous. At best, they are inapplicable. Moreover, if they were strictly enforced we should be indeed witness to a colossal travesty reaching all levels of American society. Absolute law enforcement would perforce touch about 95% of the total male population. In contrast to the universality of illegal sexual behavior actually only a meager number of persons falls into the law enforcement het to suffer inordinate punishment for the conduct of the many. In one category alone recent statistical studies bring to light that 6 million homosexual acts take place each year for every 20 convictions. In the area of extramarital copulation the frequency to conviction ratio is nearly 30 to 40 million to 300.

There is great variance of the sex laws with actual human sex behavior. Such sex laws are uniform in that they permit the judge to decide the issue of delinquency on the basis of antecedents in archaic common law which are even further removed from the realities of modern life and human behavior. In some American courts the conviction of a defendant can be secured on testimony produced by an immune witness, himself tainted by participation in the illegal act.3

Herein is set forth a tentative proposal intended for the eventual formulation of a model for legislation applicable to

3. Kinsey, A. C.: Personal communication.

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