HOMOSEXUALITY
Stit,—It is a long time since Tread in the Press a notice which is so shocking, and indeed dis- gusting, as the article in your current issue headed 'A Biological Homosexual's View,' and I venture to say that my feelings are shared by the great majority of your readers. It consists in an apology for, and a plea on behalf of, the homosexual which I consider simply out- rageous from every point of view.
It declares that the present state of the law is intolerably unjust te.och men, who are compelled to break the existing law, and points out that if a large number of people are driven
by their instincts to break the law, it must be a bad law. Everyone is aware that there is a large number of people who, owing to their environment or natural depravity, are driven by their instincts to prey upon their fellows by stealing, so the statute which punishes them for theft must be a bad law.
Your contributor, as a final bombshell, suggests that the practice of homosexuality is not unnatural. I read in the Bible that the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah had the last penalty thrust upon them for such an indulgence, and the practice has up to this day been looked upon by normally-minded people as horrible and degrading, carried on only by men in the last stages of moral infamy. Yet here we have a man who, in cold blood, flaunting himself as a homosexual, and with the leave of the Editor of the Spectator, de- fends a practice which can only be likened to the methods which might obtain in a moral jungle.
The dangers which flow from such a defence and plea by your correspondent are quite incalculable. The habit,now under question is one which I have always thought is talked about with bated breath as a thing unspeak- able, and rightly so, but nowadays there is nothing too shameful to be discussed, and explained and apologised for in the pages of the public Press, and all this in the interest of toleration, so called.
Who could assess the harm which might, and probably would, be done by such an article getting into the hands of the adolescent or the man hitherto brought up to regard such revela- tions as a sealed book, not to be opened by the person nurtured in moral and religious belief?
'Vice is a monster of such frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace.'
I can only sum up your contributor's article, dexplanations, and his plea, as quite amnable, and 1 trust, sir, that you will excuse the epithet as justified under gross provoca- tion.
Your correspondent withholds his name, and I follow suit with mine, as not for publication. —Yours faithfully,
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