knowledge penetrates into our ignorance, the farther do our law-makers sink into a retrogressive and blind puritanism.

For example, the age below which the sex act committed with a minor becomes a crime-a crime not even considered in 1810-was fixed in 1832 at eleven, in 1863 at thirteen, in 1942 at twenty-one. In fact, on August 6, 1942, there appeared in the Journal Officiel, Vichy, the following text: "We. Marshal of France and Head of the French State, decree: ... shall be punished by imprisonment from six months to three years and a fine, whosoever should, to satisfy his own passions, commit one or several immodest acts, or acts against nature, with a minor of the same sex less than twenty-one years of age."

On February 8, 1945, General de Gaulle, Chief of the Provisional Government of the Fourth Republic, repeated word for word, in a new ordinance, the decree of his predecessor; several months later the text was incorporated definitively in Article 331 beginning with line three of the Penal Code. Thus, without parliamentary debate there was introduced into our law the entirely new idea of an act against nature with an individual of the same sex, and that in the very century in which all the savants from William James to Iwan Bloch, from Havelock Ellis to Freud, and later, to Marie Bonaparte, Kinsey and Wolfenden. were establishing that homosexuality must be considered as a natural biological variation of the sexual instinct, and that it should no more be considered "abnormal" than the particularity of left-handedness or color blindness.

In order to understand this backward evolution, this growing separation between knowledge and the law, we must remember that the spirit of the Pétain-de Gaulle ordinances is exactly the same as that which inspired the revision of the Family Code which

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parliament had, from the date of its first introduction in 1930 consistently refused to approve but which was finally promulgated, thanks to "plenary powers," by an order in council on July 29, 1939, the very eve of the war. Commenting upon this code one of our magistrates inveighs against those whose behavior results in "inciting sexual activity outside the framework of marriage to which, in our monogamous civilization, all sex life must be constrained." By that opinion we are all hog-tied-all of us, heterosexuals as well as homosexuals. We must not forget this commentary for it clearly reveals the true intent of the clerical law-makers and I say advisedly "clerical" and not "Christian" of 1942-1945.

I want now to point out that the lawmakers in setting at twenty-one the age below which the homosexual act becomes a crime acted quite arbitrarily. The excuse given is, of course, that under twenty-one a young man lacks necessary discernment. If this is true how does it happen, then, that the law considers a minor of sixteen to have sufficient discernment to be able to make a will? Furthermore, the law sets at fifteen the age below which the sex act with a female minor becomes criminal. At fifteen, too, a girl is legally empowered to give her consent to marriage. Is it not curious, then, that in their relationships with men girls should reach the age of discernment at fifteen while men, in their relationships with other men, should not reach. the age of discernment until they are twenty-one?

Moreover, even if we assume that the legislator was right in assuming that fifteen or sixteen is too young why was not the age set at eighteen which in France is the age of legal majority instead of at twenty-one which is that of civil majority? At eighteen a young man is considered sufficiently adult (although out of respect to age-old patriarchal tradition he is held sub-

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