control over organic ones." The article also includes a review of much anthropological material on primitive cultures, leading to the conclusion that each culture produces its own special psychosexual norms and variants by means of its own unique structure of sociosexual and other community values; and that these norms and variants can be properly understood only in terms of the total social context in which they arise.

The SZASZ review of the legal and moral aspects of homosexuality dwells extensively on governmental attitudes, both civil and military, and students of the field will find little that is new in his treatment of the legal issues. However, he introduces some of the most pungent ethical commentary ever to appear in a scientific treatise. For example: "In defining heterosexuality as normal and homosexuality as abnormal, what is the basis for our judgment? The main reason for adopting

this standard is the value of hetero-

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sexuality for the survival of the species. But, from an ethical point of view, such a decision begs the question; the survival of the human species today does not depend on the procreative performance of every man and woman. On the contrary. Our biological survival is now threatened by too much procreation, not by too little." After a close analysis of the legal and moral strictures suffered by the homosexual in this and other societies, this author concludes: "For men and women, the performance of the sexual act-whatever it may be-is complex and symbolic. No simple generalization about it can be valid.”

In his discussion of the historical and mythological aspects of homosexuality, TAYLOR stresses the attitudes of different ancient cultures to homosexual practices, and makes the interesting distinction between ancient cultivation of homosexuality as a form of religious expression, and the not infrequent intolerance of it in other soci-

al contexts. Ancient Greek pederasty, for example-a non-religious practice -was originally supposed to be kept free from sexual passions, and a sexual act between man and boy under the pederastic relationship was a felony punishable by death according to the code of Lycurgus (825 B.C.). But as the succeeding FISHER article points out, Lycurgus was Spartan, not Athenian, and, at any rate, by the time of the Periclean era, pederasty in the Athenian state was openly and legally homosexual under the laws of Solon, who was himself homosexual and, incidentally, the originator of most of the basic principles and procedures of modern democracy. FISHER also states (without, however, attempting to assert a causal relation) that during the much earlier Homeric period, pederasty was unknown, and that during this period women enjoyed great freedom and played important social roles; whereas, after pederasty began to flourish, the role of women in Greece became greatly depreciated-shrinking, in fact, to little more than that of childbearer and domestic servant. These juxtapositions are so pointedly stated and elaborated upon that it seems more than merely possible that FISHER intends his readers to conclude that a rise in male homosexual activity within a society generally and necessarily results in a depressed, impoverished social status for women. His readers should be warned against jumping to any such conclusion. What we know of history is a reflection, not of everything that was said or done by everybody, but only of what a few have recorded, or otherwise left behind for posterity. Thus, because certain Greeks, during a period of ancient history, were highly forensic and literate on the subject of male homosexual practices, it may not be supposed that similar activities did not exist in the same degree in some other period, merely because that other period appears silent on the subject. It is a well-recognized source of sociolog-

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