and unerring sixth sense for recognizing one another, since a blind man who came before his court was observed soliciting another homosexual in a public urinal. His essay is a display of "understanding" and "fairness" carefully juggled to lead inevitably to a judgement predetermined by bias. All the arguments are loaded. The predictable conclusions are that homosexuals are that way because they don't exercise will power; that all their loathsome acts are socially dangerous; that prison (or some substitute form thereof) is the only answer.

He

Viscount Hailsham's contribution makes less attempt to mask prejudice with sweet reason. blandly assumes that increased police prosecution of homosexuals reflects a spread of homosexuality itself, and concludes from this that inversion is like a proselytizing religion. Paying lip service to the widening English notion that it is not so evil to "be homosexual" so long as one doesn't "act" the part, he conceds that many (non-practicing) inverts may be noble, talented and all that, adding even that "romantic affections of a homosexual kind" may not always be evil, but, of course, such affections (and such talents) are possible only in the complete absence of physical intimacy. Homosexuals, he says, are invariably corruptors of youth ("The normal attraction of the adult male homosexual is to the young male adolescent. . . to the exclusion of others.") Lesbians, he feels, are not dangerous that way the true lesbian being invariably fully feminine. He, like Judge Rees, declares strongly against any liberalizing of the law.

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Both seem assured that though all men are naturally and intensely repelled by homosexuality, all men would gladly take up its exclusive practice if ever the legal bans should fall. Both these writers, men of real integrity, wrote out of obviously warm sympathies, but were restricted by their unexamined bias and the conceit of their authoritative ignorance. The reviewer in the New Statesman and Nation caustically said that "It might not unreasonably be suggested that reform in the handling of this question should include not only the law but also the mentality of some who practice and administer it."

Dr. Bailey comes as a relief, though his wishful views of human motivation and interactions are somewhat etherial. Summarizing what he had previously said in the Interim Report of the Church of England Moral Welfare Council and in his own book, Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition (reviewed here, Nov.'55) he denies that the homosexual is inherently evil, or that homosexual acts constitute a greater danger than other sins. Still, he sticks to the notion that homosexuals should abstain for life-no hint that the ensuing frustration might have worse consequences than the acts themselves, which he admits aren't really very big sins. He further holds that by the nature of the homosexual condition, many homosexual acts may be sinful, but not blameworthy. This reviewer would be less inclined to write off this symposium as a total loss for the average reader if Dr. Bailey's own book were not

available.

The longest essay in the book almost compensates for the rest.

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