feels guilty about it. It is also wrong in terms of legal morality. A state trooper could be considered trivial for issuing a citation to the driver, but it would be legally justified. Homophile morality is the voice that tells a person that walking around naked on a deserted beach cannot possibly bring injury to anyone. But if the harmless act is observed, a charge legally may be brought against the presumed exhibitionist.

Homophile morality suggests that behavior between consenting adults, so long as force and fraud are not used, and where no one is injured, cannot reasonably be considered wrong, which is to say, immoral. Philosophically, this is right. Legally, it is wrong. In time, the philosophical, reasonable argument is almost certain to win out. But that will not be tomorrow, and the trail to reason may well be littered with shattered careers, jail sentences, and examples of public ridi-

cule.

There are many reasons for this, of which three are:

1. Public homosexual behavior has been disapproved in the Judeo-Christian world for thousands of years. It is one of the oldest public policies known to man and is likely to continue to be enforced for a long time simply because of its long

tradition.

2. Individual, personal morality in our society increasingly is torn by adherence to legal morality on the one hand and the appeal of the perspective of homophile morality on the other. This is bound to produce guilt feelings. Most of the people who pursue homophile preferences live in cities partly because they are able to secure an anonymity away from the old restraints back home. More important is the likelihood that cities and rural areas have many, many more people who would like to pursue homophile preferences but cannot or will not because of inner conflict and outer fear. As the pressure

builds up, they may be likely more rigidly to accept legal

morality.

3. Too many people have too much of a vested interest in holding homophile morality to be objectionable, at the least, and in certain circumstances, to be dangerous and subversive. Among those people are some police who enjoy play ing at homosexuality, in order to trap honest homophiles and by arresting them to gain reputations as effective law enforcers. Some athletes who engage in many varieties of homosexual behavior and then react to their own feelings. Others are the thousands of ordinary citizens who like to peek and tour and giggle through homosexual tourist attractions in every major American city because they get vicarious satisfaction while still feeling self-righteously moral.

This combination of reasons, with others, will make it difficult for homophile morality to become totally acceptable to the general population for some time to come. Adult homophiles remain susceptible to some of the most punitive and irrational laws ever enacted.

The conflict between public morality and homophile morality is clear in the acceptance of the definition of homophile practices as "a problem" or an "illness" and in the crazy quilt pattern of laws enacted in the various states to repress those practices.

There is no state which does not have laws controlling sexual relations. In fact, virtually the only form of sexual union which is not illegal in some state or states is private, face-to-face copulation by a man and a woman who are married to each other. In 1966, an exhaustive study whose results were published in the UCLA Law Review showed that while forty-nine states specifically outlawed homosexual activity, there was no agreement at all on what constituted such activity or what specific acts were objectionable. Thirteen states referred to sodomy; nineteen to a crime against nature; one to buggery; and the rest used a combination of terms. Judges have variously referred to a "crime against nature," "the unspeakable crime"; "abominable acts"; and so on, depending upon the level of sophistication of each judge's creative jour-

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nalism. This vagueness follows the pattern set by early Christian writers, who refused even to name homosexuality, referring to homophile behavior as "peccatum illud horribile, inter Christianos non nomenandum": "That abominable sin not fit to be named among Christians."

The confusion about the nature of homosexuality for the purpose of making it a crime is crystal clarity compared with the confusion about proper punishments after conviction. The UCLA study revealed that punishments included life imprisonment in five states; thirteen other states gave less than life but at least 20 years or more; twenty states authorized fifteento-twenty year sentences. Seven states had no jail sentence at all, preferring to fine the offender.

This striking variety makes obvious the disagreement about the degree to which homophile morality offends public morality.

Even greater confusion is apparent in the area of law enforcement and sentencing. Police practices range from the

illegal to the merely absurd and include the use of decoys, entrapment, clandestine observation or Peeping Tom, and so on. Women are hardly ever arrested or convicted and when they are, they receive lighter sentences than men do. Professional men are arrested far less often than others. In one sional men and only 45 professional men were found among study, 493 felony convictions included only eighteen profes475 misdemeanor convictions. Undeniably, the legal view of morality fails in its own prime test that of impartiality.

If legal morality means anything, it is that the same rules should apply equally should apply equally to all. However true or untrue in some areas of law, it is grossly untrue where applied to homophile morality.

A striking example of the hypocricy of legal morality is found by examining the efficacy of the law. There are at least three major reasons given for enforcing anti-homophile laws and using courts and jails as instruments for enforcing antihomophile laws and using courts and jails as instruments for enforcing public ideas of morality. These reasons involve: deferrence of forbidden acts; protection of society from the forcing of the forbidden behavior on others; and rehabilitation of the perepetrator of the offense. There is scarcely a desired effect! Scarcely anyone claims that homophile behavshred of credible evidence that any of these reasons has the ior is deterred by law. Neither is it encouraged. It seems to go on about as much as it would in the absence of any law. In fact, most nations in the "free world" have no anti-homophile laws and do not seem concerned about what is seen in the United States as a "problem." Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy and Spain do not make homophile activity illegal and there has been no reportable increase in homophile activity over recent years.

The argument that socity must protect itself from the homosexual is, according to Stanley Mosk, rejected by virtually every medical and legal authority who has written on the subject.

Finally, the rehabilitation argument, when it includes a jail sentence, fails for the obvious reason, but for others, too. As