to present the subject in a complete and well-balanced manner with a view toward creating a more rational attitude with respect to sex on the part of both Europeans and Americans.

Some thoughts gleaned from the discussion may be of interest. Homosexuality came to be an element in Greek sexuality and in some quarters, not altogether justifiably, was called "Greek love". The god Eros came to preside over the devotion of a man to a boy. The first related instance of pederasty is that of Laius, father of Oedipus, and Chrysippus. Hesiod, although not a pederast himself, certainly was a misogynist and expressed the disparagement of women that came to be common in Greece. Still the wide use of courtesans indicates that homosexuals were neither unduly numerous nor consistent in their practices. The increasing sophistication of the Greeks led them to invent a vocabulary in the area of sex or love which the English of today cannot equal thus making real understanding on our part difficult. For example, it has been easy to call Socrates a pederast when he was in fact a stern moralist who condemned physical passion. Plato was more lenient but even so preached only the love of the mind, "Platonic love," as we call it today. Aristotle likewise censures physical love apart from its conjugal exercise. The love of a man for a boy was always expected to have an ideal and educational implication and in fact most Greek cities had laws against pederasty, although they seem to have been little heeded.

In conclusion, the homosexual aspect of love seems to be that characteristic of the sexual life which differentiates most our own view of sexual life and that of Greece. But even so the latter has been exaggerated and misunderstood. Heterosexuality will always dominate mankind, as it did in reality in ancient Greece. Homosexuality is a variation largely grow-

one

ing out of abnormal social conditions where males are segregated apart from females, as in the army, for example. There is no reason to find an inherent connection between it and the achievements of Greek genius, in spite of its prevalence among the upper classes where it had attained a degree of conventional respectability. An indifference to the sentiment of conjugal love has marked many societies, ancient China for example. Homosexuals do not claim that their way of life has a general superiority to the heterosexual, nor do they wish to recruit adherents to it. They claim simply that the broad democratic movement of the times should mean for them, that is, for those who are committed to a homosexual way of life, whether by nature or the inscrutable circumstances of environment, as for other minorities, freedom from persecution and unjust discrimination as well as a wholesome and unexaggerated attitude toward the whole sex life.

T. M. M.

ACT OF ANGER by Bart Spicer, New York, Atheneum, 1962,

$5.95, 405 pp.

"To normal and mature people, a homosexual is no part of life. If they think about such a person at all, it is with contempt or pity or anger, often a combination of all those responses. To us, these people are revolting because they pervert the most meaningful relationship in human experience. We are disheartened. Our common reaction is to ignore such people. None of us likes to talk about them."

Benson Kellogg, a Texas lawyer, is addressing a jury. He is summing up his defense of a Mexican youth accused of killing a wealthy man who gave him a lift in his car. Now, it is common knowledge that a defense attorney will use any argument to win his case. Roderick Duquesne, the man Arturo Campeón killed, was a homo-

26