Query to DR. ALBERT ELLIS....

QUOTING LORD BERTRAND RUSSELL:

"Bad Laws Create a Contempt for All Laws..."

It is of course true that public opinion in general is more liberal than it was, and this has had some effect upon legislation, for example, as regards divorce. On the other hand, police measures against homosexuals are being intensified in this country; and in New York State, where adultery is punishable by imprisonment, there is no effective movement to alter the law in this respect. Many people say: "What does the law matter, seeing that it is not enforced?" To my mind this is a very fallacious argument. In the first place, any law which cannot be enforced is bad, since it brings law into contempt. In the second place, although the law is usually not enforced, it can be invoked by a vindictive spouse or a political opponent, and can be used as a means of blackmail. For these reasons, among others, I cannot think that the official profession of an ethical standard that is neither obeyed nor believed in by the majority of the population is a matter which ought to be viewed with equanimity.

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An ethical principle may be judged by the kind of emotion that causes it to be welcomed. By this test, it will be found that a great many generally recognized principles are not so respectable as they seem. A candid examination will often show that, whether a principle be valid or not, what makes men cling to it is that it affords an outlet for some not very noble passion, more especially cruelty, envy, and pleasure in feeling superiority. If, on self-examination, you find that it is passions of this sort that cause you to cling to some moral maxim, that is quite sufficient reason for a re-examination of your convictions in the matter. It is because superstitious ethics so often spring from such undesirable ¦ | sources that it is worthwhile to combat them, and to accept only such moral rules as seem likely to promote the general happiness, and to reject all those which attract us because they cause unhappiness to | those whom we dislike.

BERTRAND RUSSELL in "Human Society in Ethics and Politics", New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955.

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BY HARRY BENJAMIN, M. D., New York & San Francisco

ADJUSTMENT?

The Mattachine REVIEW and its many people as a doctor, as a couneditor should be congratulated on sellor and as a friend. She is no the June, 1959 issue. It contains an stern, Madame Curie-like scientist unusual amount of instructive and and does not claim to be. I myself valuable material. am far from sharing all of her beliefs and theories. I am convinced, however, that she is right in ascribing many cases of homosexual behavior

In this issue, my good and esteemed friend, Dr. Albert Ellis, wrote a critique in which he says some rather unkind things about Dr. Blanche Baker. Knowing Dr. Baker personally, I feel that a word of defense is in order.

Dr. Ellis is a brilliant psychologist. He is as sincere in his opinions as Dr. Baker is in hers. But Dr. Ellis is inclined to be, at times, impatient with views that do not coincide with his own. He does not he sitate to express his opposition and annoyance in perhaps unduly harsh terms (drivel, non-sense, distortion, etc.). While I am thoroughly in favor of calling a spade a spade, I do not think it is necessary to hurt anybody's feelings by being too personal, and I fear Dr. Baker's feelings must have been hurt.

especially if such behavior is exclusive to constitutional, biological, inborn factors, possibly inherited and inaccessible to present-day therapy.

Dr. Baker shares the biological training and medical background of my own. A purely psychological and invariably (that is to say, in all cases) environmental, acquired etiology of homosexuality is utterly inacceptable to my clinical as well as to my common sense. Alone, the physical structure (not mannerisms which could be acquired) of many fixed homosexuals betray their intersexual constitution.

But even in those cases in which environment and conditioning are re"Dr. Blanche" is an exceptionally sponsible for their homosexual inclikind and unselfish person who has nations, an organic basis exists in been extremely helpful to a great our ever-present "physiological in-

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