SOCIAL LEPERS OR SICK MEN ?
SIR,—Mr. J. M. Cohen, in dealing with one aspect of homosexuality, draws an all too vivid and recognisable picture of the type he has in mind. How well one knows these art-struck amoebas But in so far as he implies that modern art is decadent because modern artists (to use a broad term) make a cult of homosexuality, in so far even as he claims that there is any connection between moral scandals and the " broad public's " belief that modern art is decadent, then surely the argument is about as fallacious as it could be. The great ages of art have of course been precisely those in which the public conscience differentiated most between sex and gender.
When scholars and social historians turn up the files of our newspapers in fifty or a hundred years' time what, I am sure, will intrigue them most is the fact that for the most part the only relevant question, i.e., whether homosexual relations are necessarily and inherently degenerate was not, as late as 1953, faced at all. One's experience of life must be very limited, one's attitude very bigoted and one's knowledge of modern sexology nil if one is to deny that, from what- ever cause, a small but appreciable portion of the population reach maturity with ineradicable homosexual orientations. Is the society really civilised that persecutes them and labels them depraved men (or women) ? Are you not, Sir, begging the question when you choose a heading such as the above for a serious discussion on a subject on which, admittedly, almost every statement that can be made requires some qualification ? As John Masefield wrote, in connection with some of the sonnets of Shakespeare (sick man or leper ?): " Men with imagination enjoy sweeter and closer friendships than the many know. The many, mulish as ever, therefore imagine evil." Popular journalists and speech- makers are continually acclaiming the New Elizabethan Age. How soon their smugness is turned to thunder against the crime of being too Elizabethan 1—Yours faithfully,
GEORGE RICHARDS "Blenheim," Mount Pleasant Road, Poole
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