that has to be solved. This difficulty was once the specific bane of the homosexual, but now it faces the heterosexual too. It is the problem of a rational or ethical sanction for sex. Propagation of the species was the reason for heterosexual sex, the obvious value that allowed its pleasures. Every homosexual has heard the argument that homosexuality can't be natural because it has no purpose, no reason except pleasure. "Sex is for reproduction"-so ran the argument. And though the reasoning may not have seemed convincing to the homosexuals, many would admit that pleasure as a goal in itself holds up poorly. Some other reason has been needed.

The heterosexual now faces the same problem. Over-population threatens man as surely today as the chance that he might fail to reproduce himself could ever have endangered him in his ancient past. The family man cannot, if he is responsible, just go on reproducing. It is interesting that just when he has begun to realize the dangers of his generative capacities he has found himself with both time and energy to spare for more frequent (and more varied) sexual experience. But, sex for what, if it can't be reproductive? Because he is a thinking creature, man must have a reason for his experience. Psychiatry has shown us that it is dangerous folly to expect the mind and the deep ethical sense to stand idly by while the body and emotions proceed with their merri-

ment.

So we see an interesting combination of facts converging, and they may, if we look closely, make some faint writing on the wall. Erotic capacity is on the increase. But the requirement for its reproductive uses is sharply diminished. Why? With procreation and perpetuation of the species no longer the reason for the

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expenditure of this irrepressible erotic energy, what will be its use? Can this energy have some further role in human development? Man's advance to date has depended on his ability to make sense of facts like these that might so easily have been passed off as pointless or purely chance, and on his flexibility in acquiring new uses for organs and capacities when old uses had run their course. Consider, as one example, the lungs which once were floating bladders. Without their use as breathers Our oxygen-hungry brains could never have developed. We are told by endocrinologists and other students of the human body that we are full of organs that serve functions without which we could not live a human life but which are utterly different from their original

uses.

We have also mentioned and must not forget that the same chaos that has given us grave problems (problems which are shared more equally than ever before by heterosexual and homosexual alike) has also given us tentative freedom. One can only hope that homosexuals will not spend their part of that freedom on getting a crack at the old marital system with its ownership and jealous rights, traits that ought to be disappearing into man's ancient and primitive past. Dodging the marital trap, can we find a new basis for responsibility and continuity in human erotic associations? Can we discover new purposes for the investment of our swelling endowment of erotic vitality?

Who is in a better position than the homosexual to feel these problems? Who by imaginative capacity and creative strength is better suited to attempt their solution? Who is freer to experiment? Again the homosexual may be cast in the role of pioneer.

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