men just want a girl'. Indeed if one reflects on the extreme promiscuity of heterosexuals, both in the past and today, I doubt if any charge of exceptional promiscuity can significantly be made against homosexuals. Nor do I think that it could be shown that homosexuals are noticeably more 'neurotic' than other people (assuming this to be an undesirable characteristic, which I would not necessarily concede), unless one were to make this true by definition: though it is true that the life they lead is in some respects more difficult than that of heterosexuals.

Most difficult enterprise

This brings us to what seems to me the only serious and important piece of the 'hostile case': that a homosexual menage is essentially unstable. It may well be true that it is more difficult to establish a stable long-term homosexual menage than it is to establish a stable long-term heterosexual married menage. The reasons for this are obvious, and some of them are removable and some are not. The secrecy imposed by society obviously makes the dissolution of a relationship an easier matter. When you are not known to be 'married' you can part quietly without undergoing the public misery of a divorce. This may be a source of instability though it may also be a blessing. There is also the fact that homosexuals cannot have children: this seems to me the only purely biological fact which is relevant to our problem. The arrival of children in a heterosexual menage constitutes immediately a powerful moral reason for the continuation of that menage; whereas the homosexual menage lacks this particular motive. All this may be true, but what follows from it?

It seems to me simply this follows. It is possible that those who choose, or who find themselves instinctively

upon, the homosexual road are engaging in a way of life where it may be harder for them to settle down with a permanent partner, or, to put it another way, where they will not be forced to stick to their decisions. The search for a permanent partner is probably for most people the most difficult as well as the most interesting enterprise in which they ever engage. There are of course many who do not want such partners, and these can be found among both homosexuals and heterosexuals. But the homosexual who does want a steady menage may find it more difficult to achieve one because society will not endorse or approve of or even notice what he attempts, and because he is childless. It may also be that he becomes more possessive and jealous simply because his possession' is less secure. A heterosexual in the same situation would experience exactly the same difficulties. A homosexual has here the advantage that he cannot be trapped in an unhappy union which both sides continue only because they fear social disapproval. On the other hand, affection and loyalty may be more readily supported and made to grow in the context of a permanence which is simply taken for granted and not bedevilled by secrecy. In fact many homosexuals do succeed in their search for a steady partner and do achieve a happy and stable menage.

Ridiculous insult

It does not then seem to me that the arguments from the 'special nature' of the relationship succeed in showing that there is anything inherently immoral about being a homosexual; and I have argued that other objections,' often framed in would-be scientific terms, are really disguised moral judgments. Or one might say that many people regard homosexuality as an illness in order

9