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Homosexuality and Biology

by Serge Talbot

"It is important to understand that, where you say 'against nature,' the words 'against custom' would suffice. A. Gide, Corydon, p. 45.

'Biology,' says Jean Rostand, 'has arrived at the point in its evolution where the consequences of its discoveries are reaching man himself." (Thoughts of a Biologist, p. 49) What light does it throw upon the problems of homosexuality? What judgement does it permit me to make concerning that instinct of man man whom Jean Rostand sometimes calls 'this grandson of the fish,' sometimes 'the absurd animal who was to invent integral calculus and dream of justice? We shall study in succession: bi-sexuality, the inexactness of the sexual instinct, the role of sexualizing secretions and the new modes of procreation which are of the nature of legitimate foresight.

Between fetichism and homo sexuality there is a major difference. 'In fetichism a congenital fetichistic disposition consistent in its expression does not exist; one cannot imagine that there exists an inborn state in the individual which is a specific handkerchief fetichism, writes Krafft-Ebing (Psychopathia Sexualis, p. 721) Fetichism is an associative perversion. On the contrary, homo sexuality, from the biological point of view, is the development of secondary sexual characteristics existing in all human beings. Every person has bi-sexual tendencies.

'Sexual generation,' writes Bergson, 'is perhaps only a luxury for the plant.' (Evolution Creatrice, p. 130) Certain lower animals are today bi-sexually organized. In the hermaphroditism of the coelenterates the male element is scarcely differentiated. Thus monosexuality evolves as issuing from bi-sexuality: 'The greater part of the cirripeds are hermaphrodites, but, however, according to Darwin, there exist in some species of them dwarf males extraordinarily simplified to the point of being only that which is necessary as a seed-carrier with

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