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ciplines, or processes of processes of thought which can increase human understanding, sharpen the cultural tal-

ents which are of social benefit, and widen fields of thought to that point where sexpality and its problems are seen in the right perspective against the great range of human interests and aspirations. If persons cannot be valuable as biologicalagents of reproduction, then they must become valuable as persons. There seems to be no alternative for them, other than to be valuable as neither, and thus remain without value at all.

Someone has said that the homosexual represents a "biological deadend." There is a truth here, containing also an implication of uselessness which must be admitted if human nature is nothing more than a biological phenomenon. However, biological dead-ends can also sig-

nify spiritual beginnings, sometimes of the highest order. Some hold the view that organic life is only an expression, in this environment of atoms, of the spiritual realities of thought, substance, and creative powerthat where biological necessity stops, there spiritual, opportunity begins, in terms of all of those cultural endowments and qualities of character which make humanity human. There should be no room for discouragement or indifference, with so many 'social forces now at work to improve our knowledge of human nature in its sexual and other phases. No matter what human problems may be, knowledge and understanding counsel is becoming increasingly available, and will eventually produce a new social environment, free: from the ignorance and prejudice of the past.

Everyone seriously interested in problems of sexual morality should read it . . .

ONE does not have all the answers. It does not sponsor pet theories, but it does survey various theories about homosexuality, past and present. ONE prints contributions from major figures in science and fiction, religion, psychology, philosophy also, what "the man in the street" thinks.

Now in its 4th year...Established January 1953 · ONE MAGAZINE published by One, Inc. Monthly. Subscription rates: $2.50 per year (U.S. & Canada, 2 years, $4. First class mail subscriptions $3.50 per year. Single copies, 25c on newsstands or 31c by mail. All other countries, $3.50 per year: Send orders direct to:

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mattachine REVIEW

་

لهم

homosexuality, morality and

By Luther Allen

MOST SCIENTIFIC and scholarly

books dealing with homosexuality agree that the source of the condemnation and persecution of homosexuals in the Western World can be traced directly to theological and ecclesiastical sources. Our secular laws and customs, the attitudes and opinions of the man in the street, for the most part, have their origin in the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. It is significant that the very word "sodomy" used in so many of the civil codes of our forty-eight tates to designate homosexual acts, derives directly from the Old Testament. And the idea that homosexuality is a "crime against nature" has its origin in the writings of St. Paril. As nearly everyone knows these days, until the Eighteenth Century homosexuality was punishable by death. The precedents for hanging homosexuals and burning them at the state are to be found first in Jehovah's extermination of the peorle of Sodom by fire and secondly in the Mosaic law as recorded in the booke of Leviticus.

To establish my own point of view at the beginning, I will quote a bit from the French writer, Simone Weil, who, in her little book, LETTER TO A PRIEST, has written, "if some Hebrews of classical Jewry, were to return to life and were to be pro-

RELIGION

vided with arms, they would exterminate the lot of us-men, women and children, for the crime of idolatry. They would reproach us for orshinning Baal and Astarte, taking Christ for Baal, and the Virgin for Astarte .. .. But the cruelties bound "'p with the cult of Jehovah, the exterminations commanded by him, cre defilements at least as atrocious (as the sexual debauches which accompanied rival religions). Cruelty is a still more appalling crime than lust."

"Cruelty is a still more appalling crime than lust."

The sound core of Christian morality lies in the following words from the book Matthew, Chapter 22, Verses 35 thru 40:

"Then one of them (the Pharisees), which was a lawyer, asked him‘a question, tempting' him, and saying, "Master, which is the great commandent in the law?

"Jesus said unto him, thou shalt

love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with thy mind.

"This is the first and great comanment.

"And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,