HOMOSEXUALITY

as compared with

CHILD

MOLESTATION

and

other compulsions

by

Christian Midence Valentine, author of The God Within (see Book Service) and New Testament Mysteries Unveiled (to be published)

Part I. Introduction

To start with, let me assure the readers of ONE Magazine that I have the fullest understanding and sympathy for them. However, logic and scientific accuracy must not be sacrificed to emotional thinking if we are to prevent personal feelings from influencing our findings.

The answers received so far to the letter of mine which appeared in the February, 1959, issue of ONE signed Miss V. of Pasadena have tried to set logic aside in order to justify homosexuality. This reminds me of a friend of mine, a strong anti-homosexual and a believer of the Bible, to whom I said that the Bible itself extolled homophile love (more correctly called friendship). To this she made the unex-

pected reply that the Bible was a forgery!

There is no justification for the belief that the homosexual, as a member of a minority group, enjoys any privilege that must be denied other minority groups and for which he must fight. (Dr. Evelyn Hooker has prepared a splendid summary of the similarities between different minority groups; see "A Preliminary Analysis of Group Behavior of Homosexuals" in Homophile Studies, Winter, 1958.)

It is selfish and cruel to blind one's self to the fact that the child seducer. the alcoholic, the dope addict and other misfits suffer as keenly as the homosexual and probably even more so and need love and understanding as urgently. The homosexual who condemns other misfits while justifying his own conduct, places himself on the same unthinking level as the heterosexual who condemns homosexuals. How can he ask for understanding or sympathy from society while denying it to others who suffer as he does or more?

This reminds me of the anecdote in the interesting book My Six Convicts by Psychologist Donald Powell Wilson, in which a group of convicts, in jail because of child molestation, beat up another convict because he had molested a child nine years old, whereas the others considered it wrong to touch anyone under ten years old!

Another book that is indispensable for basic research in this field is Cast Not the First Stone by Judge Murtagh and Social Worker Sara Harris; the background material given for the prostitutes described in this book is strikingly similar to that of many homosexuals whom I have interviewed, and leads to the conclusion that the most common factor in both homosexuality and prostitution or promiscuity is lack of love in childhood and adolescence.

Now we shall consider, in very ab-

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