judgment, meaning only that the analyst personally dislikes homosexuality, and attributes to the homosexual nature certain unhappy personality features which appear in some homosexuals as a result of discrimination.

Many readers may feel that Benson's final argument, which takes half the volume, is irrelevant, since he generally is not directly discussing homosexuality. But he lays a sound base for a positive defense of homosexuality. In order really to evaluate the position the homosexual is in, it is necessary to know rather more than the average reader does about scientific and logical method and limitations. Scientists since the 1880's (thanks partly to Freud, partly to the positivists and semanticists) have generally realized that it takes more than an assemblage of facts and logic alone to pry open a closed mind. New ideas are rarely accepted on the basis of argument alone, but must utilize the same sort of non-rational convincers that cement the old prejudices. Often as not, new ideas simply have to wait until a new generation grows up already accepting them.

Our arguments may be ever sound, but some intelligent and quite decent people will be quite incapable of recognizing homosexuality as anything other than abominable behavior.

Benson argues that we must strategically circumvent their blindness. We can do this in part by finding allies on the basis of broader common interests. For example, many heterosexual partisans of contraception can be made to see some parallel between the restrictiveness they have to put up with, and those suffered by homosexuals. The same sort of arguments are used to attack homosexuality, so by emphasizing the opposition we share, we can generate a sort of empathy. There are many other issues as well, though Benson does not explore them, where homosexuals can make common cause with other groups.

Though he insists that we have no universal standard by which to determine superior or antecedent values, Benson denies that this leaves each man fully his own judge, with no standards at all. We have certain pragmatic guides: that is, our freedom depends on extending the same guarantee to all other men. Thus, the golden rule, the pragmatic yardstick, the categorical imperative (all essentially the same thing) requires that each man guard every other man's freedom and self-worth in order to insure his own freedom and worth. We must each resist all attempts to force others to do what some one person supposes to be "good for them.”

Rather than trying to pressure society to accept homosexuality, as such, Benson insists that we ought to work for the general acceptance of every man's right to determine his own life.

Benson is excellent when dealing specifically with questions of logic. When dealing with questions of human behavior, even homosexual behavior, he goes afield, for example in perpetuating the foolish old nonsense that swishes behave that way simply because they resent the unfair laws, and want to throw their resentment in society's face. Whatever varied causes may go into the molding of particular swish individuals, the character is usually fairly well established long before they know anything about the law, and in most cases, even before they have experienced any unusual form of social disapproval. This is not to say that when they are given immediate cause for resentment, they may not lay it on a bit thicker than usual. Besides, it is clear that extremes of effeminacy in males are not limited to societies that discountenance homosexuality.

All that aside, this is a lively and forceful presentation of the sort of sound argument that all homosexuals ought to have on the tip of their tongues.

-JAMES KEPNER

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