that they know intimately men who are predominantly homosexual, and who go to some trouble to conceal it.

"Oh, a deal of pains he's taken and a pretty price he's paid To hide his poll or dye it of a mentionable shade;

But they've pulled the beggar's hat off for the world to see and stare,

And they're haling him to justice for the colour of his hair."* It is commonly thought that homosexuals are found only, or mostly, in certain occupations. They in fact exist in every rank and activity of society. Homosexuals are by no means unknown even in those places where, above all, society makes efforts to keep its figures impeccable and personally unassailable. "It would never do for the British public to hear the 'Weather Report' from the lips of a co-respondent." (A. P. Herbert, Holy Deadlock). Similarly, it is thought even less tolerable that nations should be administered by those, however able, who love their own sex; a series of broken marriages is considered infinitely preferable by the arbiters of public morals.

Because of all this, homosexuals are at a loss to know how to meet each other; and consequently pubs and bars, even street corners or particular beaches, become homosexual meeting places until the police decide to have a purge. When people hear that a particular lavatory is a meeting place for homosexuals, they shudder, and wonder at the lack of taste. But who has driven them there? If homosexuals could meet more openly and with less persecution, they would no doubt choose more aesthetic surroundings. One of the ironies of the last Wolfenden debate in the House of Commons, 29th June 1960, was Mr. Shepherd, M.P. for Cheadle, deploring homosexual contacts in public conveniencest while the member for Billericay, Mr. Gardner, asked whether we were to be confronted with the spectacle of two males living together as lovers. But surely from the point of view of public decency, the latter arrangement is preferable; and is indeed the alternative that those who urge reform of the law would candidly prefer to see.

Many people fear that a more permissive attitude to homosexuality would "open the floodgates" and result in unbridled licence. "It is true that a change of this sort would amount to a limited degree of such toleration, but we do not share the fears of our witnesses that the change would have the effect they expect. This expectation seems to us to exaggerate the effect of the law on human behaviour..." (Wolfenden Report, page 23.) 7

The Wolfenden Committee also rejected another common belief. Some people, they find, hold that "conduct of this kind is a cause of the demoralisation and decay of civilisations, and that therefore, unless we wish to see our nation degenerate and decay, such conduct must be stopped, by every possible means. We have found no evidence to support this view, and we cannot feel it right to frame the laws which should govern this country in the present age by reference

* A. E. Housman: O who is that young Sinner?

↑ Hansard, Volume 625, Column 1484.

+ Hansard, Volume 625, Column 1504.

mattachine REVIEW

to hypothetical explanations of the history of other peoples in ages distant in time and different in circumstances from our own. In so far as the basis of this argument can be precisely formulated, it is often no more than the expression of revulsion against what is regarded as unnatural, sinful or disgusting. Many people feel this revulsion, for one or more of these reasons. But moral conviction or instinctive feeling, however strong, is not a valid basis for overriding the individual's privacy and for bringing within the ambit of the criminal law private sexual behaviour of this kind ...” (ibid., page 22). We should go further, and question whether a feeling of revulsion, however strongly felt, is an adequate ground for moral censure. And the situation is well painted by A. E. Housman in the poem from which we have quoted already:

“Tis a shame to human nature, such a head of hair as his; In the good old time 'twas hanging for the colour that it is; Though hanging isn't bad enough and flaying would be fair For the nameless and abominable colour of his hair."

It has been left to professional writers to reveal as much as they dare, and urge as far as they can, in literature. Among the best fictional accounts of these matters is The Heart in Exile by Rodney Garland, which does a Baedeker's tour of homosexual society, The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal, Finisterre by Fritz Peters, The Charioteer by Mary Renault, and The Tortoiseshell Cat by Elizabeth Thirkell. In non-fiction, Donald West's Homosexuality must be one of the best and most thorough books on this topic ever written; others are Gordon Westwood's The Homosexual and Society, Peter Wildeblood's Againt the Law, Anomaly, The Invert (an impressive 1929 Catholic viewpoint), and Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition by Sherwin Bailey.

Male Homosexuality and the Law

There has never been, anywhere, so far as is known, a law against homosexuality as such in any secular legal code. A man's feelings, emotions or orientations have never been the subject of this kind of attack. It is only with what he does that the law is concerned. Hence it is misleading to say "homosexuality is illegal". It is not, and one might say it cannot be. It has been said, "One cannot try the mind of man, for the devil himself knoweth not the mind of man."

Canon and Ecclesiastical Law. The Church has always frowned on homosexual practices. The ancient Jews distrusted them-apparently because they cannot lead to the procreation of children. The Mosaic law, embodied in the Old Testament and inherited by the Christian Church, was clear (see Leviticus 18, v. 22; and 20, v. 13). St. Paul seems to have regarded homosexual behaviour itself with abhorrence, apparently because he was afraid women would be sexually neglected; and because such acts were "unnatural".* Romans 1, v. 27, "And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the women, burned in their lust one toward another," suggests that St. Paul shared what has been called "the prairie fire" view of homosexual conduct-that it is naturally more attractive than heterosexual satisfaction, and if it were allowed legally and morally everyone would turn to it. This is * See Appendix B, p. 53.