towards the other sex Except for some cases in which the homosexual interest was either rather superficial or one symptom of a more polymorphous general maldevelopment, experience has shown the impossibility of such cures. Hence it came to be considered satisfactory to help the homosexual patient in adjusting to the actual society he is living in. In this way it was possible to remove many features of the behavior of some homosexuals, which could be understood as the result of resentment, or of yielding to public opinion which expects this or that behavior from a homosexual person. Doubtless much good was done by this. The scientific literature strives to find explanations and thus offer a plea to some extent on behalf of the invert However, homosexual acts are still more or less identified with "other transgressions", particularly as far as the law is concerned.

Admittedly, all this is a "hot potato", a field of human life which is loaded with emotion and it appears understandable that the principle of hic Rhodos hic salta (we happen to live here and now. in this environment and are part of this society and its structure) finds its way somehow into the most scientific pub. lications. and that the invisible threatening finger of a conventional morality and comfortable materializes tradition within

them. The question is rarely asked as to why other nations have abolished those paragraphs concerning homosexual relations between consenting adults from their legal statutes, or how it comes about that they do not

even know of such prohibitions, or that they do not look upon such matters as of particular interest. While psychiatry cannot avoid considering the sociological basis on which an individua! happened to grow up, and while it has to regard their strong influential and formative powers, any general biology and any research of a biological-anthropological coloring should not need to do so.

Whenever I think of the articles in many representative magazines I also notice a tendency toward an apology, towards an explanation of the homosexual life. Quite frequently “manliness" is stressed in artiles and stories in a way which arouses the suspicion that even here the superstition exists that "male" and "female" are well defined realities. There seems to be an inclination to believe that a man's being in love with another man means he has a feminine soul, to say the least. In any case, there is a tendency towards an apology; such apology may be more comprehensible in this connection than anywhere else.

Many laws feed on prejudice and on superstition, One has only to think of the tragic folly of witch hunts all over the world and of the deadly persecution of the

Phillippines, a vegetarian sect in 17th century Russia, the members of which did no other harm than prefer vegetables to meat. There is no need to mention what is going on in our "enlightened" days in many parts of the world; a list of unjust and unnecessary persecutions and "inquisitory trials" would contain innumerable cases of the mattachine REVIEW

most hideous injustices.

Prejudice and superstition feed in turn on the laws which they foster. Many people justify their opinions by pointing to the law: these laws would certainly not exist without reason; and the lawmakers should certainly have known what they were doing in enacting them. This thought will be particularly stressed where belief in authority is very strong. The "previously convicted" su!. fers more from such bias than from the law; a previously convicted person must necessarily be a bad person who has deserved the penalty imposed on him; he cannot be trusted in the future

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How many people become punishable again only because society refuses to accept them back into its ranks after they have already paid their official debt' Indeed, Indeed, these are actually truisms. Laws and biased public opinion condition each other, especially when strong human emotions are involved. Unfortunately Einstein was right when he marked that it is more difficult to extirpate prejudices deeply rooted for generations than to split atoms.

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It cannot be repeated often enough that prejudices are particularly strong whenever the matters concerned are loaded with emotion. Very clearly this is the case in sexual matters. When some homosexuals insist that their tendency is congenital or inherited, when they even quote scientific theories which nobody but they themselves believes any more, they demonstrate thereby that they themselves have succumbed to prejudice. Above all they show

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that they have fallen victims to a more or less conscious feeling of guilt which has been imposed on them by force by the majority of "normals" one feels much less guilty if the guilt-arousing cause is congenital or inherited than if it were "acquired" even at very early stages of childhood. One feels uncomfortable if it is possibly true that the psychoanalytic theories of the "acquiring" of of homosexuality came closer to reality than all other theories. However, they should consider that, according to the very same theories about the development of infants and children, heterosexuality is also acquired and not congenital or inherited and is by no "natural". Nevertheless, “acquiring" means a process which takes place in early childhood and is thus left untouched by any real guilt.

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Actually, it is practically unimportant whether homosexual. ity is congenital or acquired

very early. The results of thera. peutic attempts show this. It may well be that a person is scduced into a homosexual act during or after puberty or even later; he can never, however, be seduced into becoming a homosexual.

Very seldom is the idea put forth that the problems of any minority are actually those of the surrounding majority which feels unable to deal with them appropriately. The majority projects its problems onto the minority. All the difficulties o! these problems are depicted as belonging to the minority and are forced upon it until the minority itself believes it. I mav cite antisemitism; but I may als

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