WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.

'Wilde' Law

and Hypocrisy

The House of Commons is about to repeal the old "Oscar Wilde" law and there is all kind of hypocritical talk about the triumph of truly Christian attitudes concerning the question of homosexuality.

Truly Christian in the sense that Christian lawmakers, by consenting to repeal the old anti-homosexuality act, are acknowledging the division of responsibility between church and state. The argument is that it is the church's unique responsibility to govern the moral order, the state's to concern itself with the civil order and that the relationship between the two is of course not identical, though BUCKLEY, JR. the lines do cross. Murder is both a moral and a civil affront. Homosexuality between consenting adults, it is argued, is not: it is merely a moral affront.

WILLIAM F.

It is that hypocrisy which has annoyed the prestigious English editor with my favorite name this side of the Pickwick Papers, Mr. Peregrine Worsthorne. He believes that the old law should be repealed, because it is ineffective, because it encourages licentious methods of detection by police (peep-holing, etc.), and because the opportunities for blackmail are so great.

BUT, MR. WORSTHORNE observes, the real reason why the House of Commons is finally repealing the law is not because it confidently hopes "that the Almighty will do a better job than the Director of Public. Prosecutions" in punishing malefactors.

The reason why the law is being changed is because homosexuality has ceased to shock. Mr. Worsthorne gave as an example a reference in the course of the debates in Commons to homosexuality as an "unnatural vice." The House "quite noticeably stiffened with embarrassment, rather as if some oldfashioned member had referred to Great Britain's 'imperial mission.' Plain homosexuality is no longer thought of as 'unnatural vice.' The whole idea of sex having anything to do with sin is alien and slightly comical."

In New York the legislature is, depending on how you look at it, either ahead or behind the Mother of Parliaments, in that it recently refused to repeal either the antihomosexuality law or the anti-adultery law, but certainly ahead on the question of frank-

ness.

ONE LEGISLATOR, during the heated debate in Albany last year, when asked why he favored repealing the adultery laws but not the homosexuality laws, replied: "After all, there are more of us than there are of them."

So far, According to any number of reports, the rise in the homosexual population is enormous. And, inevitably, there is a new morality that comes in to justify and even to honor this abnormality. Theologians have gotten on the bandwagon who talk about "unselfish love" as the sole criterion. "Homosexuality permits a rise to a higher level of conscience for one who cannot experience sexual love with one of the opposite sex" one minister writes. And from a philosopher: "The merits and demerits of sexual union rest properly upon personal rights and values, not only natural processes. We human beings are psycho-sexual creatures. Our spiritual and moral relationships, our responses to others, are most complete and genuine when they are voluntary surrenders and mutual commitments including physical as well as spiritual comradeship.

"It is for this reason that we regard sexual love as good, not for any reason of naturalistic utility or physiological mysticism.

"Therefore, when there is good and sufficient cause to eliminate the possibility of reproduction against our rational will, in order responsibly to fulfill the obligations of love, we are more than justified morally in doing so."

THE APPEAL of such arguments explains why the honorable gentlemen in the House of Commons are acting as they do-not because the arguments against the homosexuality law are actually quite persuasive, which they are. It is another historical example of the capacity of the species to generate a morality to keep the conscience

easy.

It is, however, in an ironic way, a tribute to the endurability of the conscience. that it should always insist on a means of justifying itself, and that it should continue to have the power to compel hypocrisy.