made it even more barbaric several years later.

We declare that love between those of the same sex, however incomprehensible, absurd or even abhorrant it is to the feelings of normal people, is neither a vice nor a disease; it is not a mockery of nature but a manifestation of nature; it is an erotic variation that has been observed amongst all peoples on earth since the dawn of human thought. The MiddleEastern and East-Asian cultures have tolerated this variation from ancient times. A large majority of the nations of the white race have abolished their proscriptions against it. Among the neighbors of Germany, the following do not have a law corresponding to Par. 175: France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Italy and Switzerland.

Regarding the concept "unnatural," it may be said that it is truly unnatural to believe that nature will produce phenomena that is unnatural. Experience has shown that we often see a law of nature when actually only a rule exists. What nature "thinks," considering that she permits exceptions to her rules again and again, would seem to be as difficult to establish as the secret of life itself. Homosexuals admittedly exhibit characteristics that are undesirable, but these do not arise out of a natural predisposition, but out of their environment of suppression and persecution. It is illuminating that one does not find these characteristics in homosexual women-would not the reason for this be that our society and our laws do not attack homosexual women?

We ask for the general principle of equality of men and women before the law, in accordance with the spirit of Article 3 of the Basic Law of 1949, which law should be applied in fair'ness and without pettifoggery. This principle should be valid even for the

most embarrassing part of sexual sociology, prostitution. While a certain level in homosexual circles is a known "breeding ground of crime," especially of blackmail and murder, it is not proper to single out certain humans, who may belong to this level

If force or violence is involved. Abuse of persons before the age of puberty, or wards and incompetents. Public nuisance.

And fourth, extra-marital sexual acts forced by threat to office, profession or employment of one person by another.

We suggest that the "age of consent" be set at 18, although many European age limits are set lower.

In this and many other points, the liberalism of the petition of 1897 was much more radical. With our present proposals we meet half way the understandable inhibitions of certain tradition-bound groups. Our main aim is to eliminate, at long last, state persecution of a harmless and innocent minority of the population (estimated at 3 to 4 percent) who presently are threatened by the state with prosecution as criminals, with the severest ruin and calamity, for private acts between two adults entered into freely and without threat or force, acts by which not a single hair of any fly in the cosmos will be bent, and acts by which the state is not harmed in any way. IN COUNTRIES SURROUNDING GERMANY THESE UNREASONABLE. UNCIVILIZED AND INHUMAN PRACTICES HAVE LONG AGO BEEN ABANDONED. WE ARE OF THE OPINION THAT GERMANY, AT LONG LAST, SHOULD DO LIKEWISE. Hamburg, May, 1962.

Scientific-Humanitarian Committee

For the Committee: Kurt Hiller, L.L.D.; Franz Reinhard, L.L.D.; Juergen Roggenhausen, M.D.; Walter Stellman, Wolfgang Wenzel.

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