Comment on SEXOLOGY's Symposium...

The Causes of

HOMOSEXUALITY

In presenting a "Symposium on the Causes of Homosexuality, the June issue of Sexology gave opportunity for some leading experts in the field to express their opinions.

By and large, that opinion was: Causes are still unknown, but probably the result of a great many varied factors, excluding heredity.

Outspoken prejudice, in all probability, was best reflected by Joseph G. Wilson, M. D., part-time psychiatrist who wrote, "Are Prisons Necessary." In summary, he listed nine factors, many of which his own professional contemporaries would be first to condemn. He listed sich causes as "Oedipus complex;" alcoholic indulgence; seduction of boys by homosexual men; an unusual distribution of male and female harmones; the boarding school; lack of opportunity for normal or natural sex outlets; mental illness in the form of psychoses or feeblemindedness; imbalance of determining sex factors, and, finally, most important of all, as he put it, "the public's conciliatory attitude." Here he sharply criticized fiction authored by heterosexuals who make no effort to condemn the practice of homosexuality, and autobiographies of homos themselves who plead for special privileges.

This series of vague "reasons" without basis in fact, was, however, offset by a member of that magazine's board of medical and sexological consultants: René Guyon, LL.D., famed French sexologist, of the faculty of Paris, anthropologist, government legislative advisor, and presently at work in Thailand in this field. He is author of a 6-volume series called "Studies in Sexual Ethics," and numerous other books on law and philosophy, which are being translated into English. Dr. Guyon's reasoning held that the reason for our failure to understand the homosexual personality is that inverted and noninverted people are separated by a difference so profound that it at first may be suspected to be biological.

"Nothing is more difficult for one species of animal to understand than the sensations or feelings of another species,". he says.

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Dr. Guyon draws a difference between the real homosexual and the accidental one. For the former, it appears congenital and unchangeable; for the latter, it has no real effect of changing the person from his real heterosexual orientation: Real homosexuality, is therefore the homosexual's properly and deeply-implanted nature. On the other hand, if an individual does not have the constitution of a real homosexual, he will forget any unusual practices and invariably return to heterosexuality. Children likewise tend to forget accidental acts of homosexual experience if they are not constitutionally preDEVIPW

disposed toward homosexuality.

Guyon's studies have led him to believe that homosexuality is caused by a physiological predisposition. If this is so, a homosexual is no more responsible for his deviation than are people responsible for the color of their skins. This is certainly an important reason for sexual tolerance, and it should · make legislators more reluctant to solve the problem by providing jails for homosexuals.

"Furthermore," concludes Guyon, "It is my opinion that homosexuals should not be considered as persons affected by a disease. They should not be subjected either to jails or to medical treatment in hospitals or other therapeutic institu tions." 1

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Errors seem to show up unavoidably after an issue has been printed and it's too late to change them. In the previous issue of the REVIEW, these mistakes made our faces red: 1. Tel-. ephone number of the San Francisco Area Council should have been listed EXbrook 7-0773 (page 37); 2. In James Barr's story, top of column 1, page 42, the sentence, should have read: "Oddly enough, I made sincere friends and implaccable enemies within the Navy, though the number of the first group was dwarfed by the second," And, incidentally, Mr. Barr has clarified the pronunciation of his last name: Fu-GA-te (a French surname). Just don't call him "Few-GATE," he says!

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