prudence, as well as the many other areas he deals with in concise yet essentially judicious and certainly compassionate manner.

In regard to the still controversial subject of sexual relations with minors, Mr. Roeburt's thinking reflects, disappointingly, the attitudes of the unenlightened “general public." Psychiatrists are in agreement with what anyone of normal insight can observe, that the human being is a sexual creature from the cradle to the grave. Only those who believe that sexual activity in itself is "nasty" or "dirty" can consider it an area of life from which the innocent must be protected at all costs. For the unformed, malleable adolescent, the tender example of a beloved older person can be a positive value for good, a truly educative experience, and not the traumatic nightmare some bogeymen would have us believe. It is a theme as recent as Colette, Gide and Peyrefitte, and as old as human time.

Perhaps in a future generation, more thoroughly emancipated from the family and its ingrown habits than the present, lies the hope of an enlightened attitude. For only when the child is encouraged to participate without fear or restraint in every kind of sexual activity, can we hope for a society of truly free individuals. Of course, this is a subject of primary concern to all thinking people, not alone the homosexual.

The author prefaces his "Case for the Homosexual" with a quotation from Dr. Harry Benjamin (from the American Journal of Psychotherapy): "If adjustment is necessary, it should be made primarily with regard to the position the homosexual occupies in present day society and society should more often be treated than the invert." Limitations of space permit the citation of only one example of society's need for therapeutic treatment, and this as reflected

one

in the thinking of a so-called vicar of Christ, one of the leaders in an anti-homosexual crusade. His argument against homosexuals may be reduced to this statement: "The homosexual has no children to come back. He is referring to the resort town of Provincetown, Mass. We have no financial future in them." Two thousand years after Christ, we see that prophet's radical yea-saying practically ignored, and the Hebraic tribal codes he repudiated still subjecting most of civilized Western man to misery and guilt.

Mr. Roeburt is to be congratulated on showing us how justified we may be in jesting at the present state of justice in America. Widespread reforms are many years overdue, and the legalistic approach has much to recommend it in the way of affording minorities of all kinds some measure of protection from the tyranny of the majority. Homosexuals, already seriously limited in the exercise of their rights as citizens and human beings, may wake up too late to the truth that no group has ever gained its freedom by ignoring the fact of oppression, by self-centered pursuit of pleasure, by attempting to "pass" in an alien environment.

Of course, the problem is much deeper than the legal approach suggests. Homosexuals, by acquiescing in attitudes of American society which are inimical to the full development of human nature, undermine the very foundations of their being. The individual homosexual must free himself of those guilt-feelings which afflict Americans en masse and which are reflected in our laws. The homosexual must examine his conscience and decide whether he can in honesty subscribe to the anti-sex bias which is the basis of the American ecclesiastic, educational, as well as legal, establishments. Must we not all, in Auden's words, "look shining at New