"They don't even know what's happening," is the way they put it.

What in fact is happening between boys and other males and between girls and other girls, or women? By the time they are ending their teens nearly four boys in every ten will have engaged in at least some sexual activity with other males, either their own age or older. For the girls the percentages are smaller by about half.

It has already been outlined on previous pages that much of this activity represents either the sheer lively curiosity and of a wholly natural urge toward experimentation and learning or, on the other hand, an equally natural adolescent desire to find emotional experience which the family is not equipped to supply. Society tells teen-agers that they are not yet ready. for marriage, that it is important to spend their time preparing themselves educationally for the challenges and responsibilities of adulthood, but society does not tell these teen-agers what to do about bodies which have by then emerged into the full flowering of energies and physical vitality.

Is it any wonder, then, that such an overflowing of turbulent forces will try to find outlets? During the earlier years of adolescence boys quite often find relating to other males both natural and convenient. Their contacts and experience with the other sex may have been somewhat limited, and much of society certainly would not approve sexual contacts between boys and girls of these ages anyway. Faced with limitations of this sort as they are, four boys out of ten will find their emotional and physical release from the company of other males, according to Kinsey.

DOES ANYONE BECOME HOMOSEXUAL?

Does this mean that they will "become homosexual"? Should adults make every effort to break up such relationships, if possible? According to the Kinsey figures twenty-five out of every hundred young men are going to continue having male to male sexual contacts for a period of not less than three years some time after the age of 18. For ten of them such relationships will be nearly exclusive during a three year period of their lives. Four out of every hundred men will "become" entirely homosexual and remain so during their entire lives.

Psychiatrists Saghir and Robins in a study at Washington University have reported that 98% of the homosexual men they examined reported "that their first experience with an adult was of no significance in relation to their homosexual desires and orientation. They emphasized that their desires. preceded the experience with an adult." This finding gives. evidence that contacts between youths and older men are not a deciding influence, that boys are not "turned" homosexual by such experiences. Two-thirds of the men studied already had strong homosexual desires before they were fourteen, suggesting that homosexual inclinations had not been induced in them by either older persons or by the intensified physical arousals of adolescence. In the light of such information the prospect of breaking up homosexual inclinations at adolescence, or earlier, begins to seem unrealistic.

During more than twenty years of counseling practice in dealing with several thousand persons of homosexual inclinations the writer has observed many cases where great psychological harm had been done by the ill-advised efforts of parents or others who sincerely believed that the old adage "as the twig is bent" can always be made to work. Unfortunately, there are some who will break before they will bend. The present stage of scientific knowledge gives little warrant for believing that some, or even a good many, homosexual experiences are signs of mental disturbance or psychological disorder. Nor do studies so far undertaken justify anyone in attempting either by forceful or by subtle measures to bring about rearrangements of the life patterns of young people

whose sexual patterns do not meet our approval. Parents, clergy, psychologists and psychiatrists should bear this in mind. Alterations of sexual behavior are indeed a very risky undertaking.

"Surely," it may be asked, "Should we not do whatever can be done to spare young people from anything which is so socially disapproved? Does anyone claim otherwise for homosexuality?" That homosexual behavior is both unnatural and abnormal has long been believed by a great many people in the United States, yet today many physicians, psychiatrists and psychologists are changing their views in this regard.

New York Endocrinologist Harry Benjamin, M.D. asks, "Do we know what 'normal' means? I don't know. I believe that we only know what is customary, and this, of course, is not always in harmony with what is permitted." He then continued at the International Congress of General Medicine in Salzburg, Austria that, "If the physician shares the prejudice still held in wide areas of society against homosexuals, he will injure his patient rather than help him." Many would now agree with this view.

WHAT CAN HISTORY TELL US?

It has been said that history has shown that homosexuality, where condoned, has undermined civilizations and brought about their downfall. Widely thought to be true this is one of the myths that have somehow persisted in long misleading the public. Quite the contrary is true, or closer to the truth, except for one nation. Germany during the past two or three centuries has suffered a series of social and political disasters in which a number of homosexuals were featured at or near the center of the troubles. Otherwise, the historical record is plain that in many nations and periods great men and women of homosexual inclinations have either been great leaders or have made fine contributions to the countries where they lived. This is not the place to undertake extended discussion for or against the idea that the deep friendship as described in the Bible of Prince Jonathan for handsome young David was indeed homosexual. Such relationships have been frequent among all the Middle Eastern peoples from that time until today, hence homophile aspects of the friendship would have by no means been exceptional.

Equally commonplace among military traditions from preBuddhist India, from Sumeria and Babylon, through many centuries of Greek history, in the great samurai tradition of Japan, and the flowering of mediaeval knighthood, as well as much later, the concept of the pairings of soldiers in an affection constant even to death has been frequent and much admired.

Greek science, politics, literature and art, to which all modern nations owe so much, virtually rose to its great heights through the genius and efforts of century after century of famous men for whom a love relationship between males was held to be both natural and virtuous. Homer's Illiad poetically

describes at an early period in Greek history the inconsolable grief of the great Achilles at the death of his soldier-compan-

ion Patroclus.

The great law-giver Solon, whose name is given today to our own Congressmen and legislators, had many male love affairs which have been recorded. The statesman, Aristides, whose moral standards were so high he has ever since been known as "The Just," had many such love affairs. So also did the great naval hero Themistocles whose leadership at the battle of Salamis saved Greece from the Persians thus changing the course of Western civilization.

Among philosophers and writers mention can only be made of Demosthenes, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Pindar and Epicurus. Perhaps most famous of all Greek generals, living many centuries after Homer, was Alexander the Great, whose homosexuality has been frankly described in Plutarch's Lives and by other writers of that time. When Greece "fell," it was for a number of political, military and economic reasons, not

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