Historically speaking the association between morality and religion is comparatively a recent one and so varied have been the religious interpretations of moral questions over the centuries as to arouse considerable scepticism regarding the reliability of their statements.

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For example, homosexuals told that marriage is a sacred institution and part of God's plan for humans. Why, then, it is asked, did priests not perform marriages until fairly late mediaeval times, and why was marriage considered too profane to be performed anywhere within proximity to a church?

In Imperial Rome Christians were fed to the lions as having violated the moral codes of the Roman religion. Moslems executed "the Christian dogs," because their conduct violated the moral codes of the Koran. Subscribing to a different moral code Christians enthusiastically slaughtered Moslems during the Crusades, when they were not slaughtering each other for "heresies."

The Inquisition under Church approval executed a code of morals featuring refinements of physical torture undreamed even by Hitler's experts. The story of the Portugese and Spanish conquerors of North and South America as well as the more recent British, French and Dutch records in Africa, India and Indonesia. again throw a clear light upon the flexibility in practice of what religions claim are immutable moral laws.

Many homosexuals mean exactly what they say when they announce that they are placing religion and the churches on trial. They refuse any longer to accept as valid a inoral code based on ancient Jewish records appropriate to other days and other ways. Nor do they find themselves persuaded as to the authoritative value of every single phrase ascribed

to Saul of Tarsus. Especially suspect do they find his statements concerning homosexuality in view of his own well-known instability and some circumstantial evidence that he himself was a repressed, hence fearful, homosexual.

A moral imperative of compelling urgency faces the churches today, say homosexuals. For if religion is unable to produce men who are humane and decent, then the moral codes of the churches are ineffective. "By their fruits shall ye know them." The old excuse that one should not judge Christianity by Christians no longer seems persuasive in a pragmatic age such as our own.

The churches will continue to lose the respect and the allegiance of those homosexual men and women who refuse to settle for an ethical standard that has two faces. Either religion makes provision for the inborn goodness and dignity of manall men or religion is found wanting.

The moral imperative has now been so defined. The churches must come humbly and willingly before the judgment seat of the religious demands of all humanity. If their self-righteous obduracy should stiffen instead and if old shibboleths persist, then, like dinosaurs covered by ice, the overriding strata of higher ethical levels will cover the churches from sight. The religions of today will become footnotes of history, alongside Mithraism, Isis or Adonis worship, and all the myriad others which have vanished with the dust of the ages.

If it shall have fallen to the lot of homosexuals to force the issue many of them stand ready these days to raise the challenge. The vintage time of a higher morality is at hand. Will there be vessels for the new wine?