We must now pass from the normal or hetero-sexual to the second-class of sex-temperament. This is the homosexual—that in which the individual’s sex attraction is directed towards the same sex. And here it will be necessary to utter a note of warning. The sex instinct lies so deep in human nature that many men are incapable of regarding sex characteristics save through their own temperamental colour. Normal men are frequently found, for instance, of such underdeveloped mental faculties that they start out with an immense sex prejudice against the homosexual. Without being able to consider the question impartially they abhor this variety as an unspeakable evil. It is essential that we should place such critics outside the area of practical investigation. The homosexual tendency may be as evil as they imagine it to be, but we must only arrive at that conclusion as a result of impartial and incontestable reason. And any man who cannot undertake that inquiry is as valueless for our purpose as are his prejudicial opinions; he must simply go back to the nursery.

Let us therefore, as far as is individually possible, attempt to treat this question with an open mind. And accordingly we shall find it most convenient first to consider the various attitudes which have been taken up with regard to this difficult problem.

The legal or State attitude we have already to some extent anticipated. The State looks with suspicious eyes on any influence which tends to sterilize the birth-rate. Accordingly, in England, homosexuality is branded as a crime for which a heavy sentence can be pronounced. It is true that legally this sentence, under the Criminal Amendment Act, can only be inflicted for the physical sex-act itself; but this includes any assault or any behaviour which may be construed as an attempt to lead up to the commission of the act. And, accordingly, any man is legally under suspicion if he is thought to be homosexual, even though no perpetration of the physical offence can be alleged against him. The hideous system of blackmail is thus encouraged by the law. Once a man is understood to be subject to these proclivities, it is assumed that sooner or later he will commit the offence, and he is watched, if not by the over-busy police, by those idle persons who trade upon the legal attitude toward this problem. Any conversation or literature on the subject is suppressed, so far as is possible, by the State, because the physical expression being a crime, all that may become an incentive to the crime is itself criminal.

We have already mentioned the basic fallacy of the legal attitude. It does not follow that because a line of conduct may decrease the birth-rate, it is therefore wrong. Celibacy, as we have seen, may be an actual virtue. But in this particular instance there is a still more serious error. The English law, by branding homosexuality as a crime, assumes that it is a deliberate perversion; for it would be obviously ridiculous to punish a man for doing what he could not help doing. Even the law is not so illogical as to sentence a madman to penal servitude because he insists on being mad. No, the State regards the homosexual as one who has of his own choice assumed this form of sex temperament, in the same way as a man decides to rob or forge a signature. The legal attitude must rest on this supposition, for otherwise its policy would be flagrantly unjust. And accordingly we find the law classifying this family of behaviour as “unnatural.”

Now, if there is one fact which is clear from an investigation of the problem, it is that this supposition is as false as it is possible for any supposition to be. Let it be granted that a certain number of homosexual offences are committed by persons who are sexually normal in temperament. There remains the whole body of homosexuals, of those, that is to say, in whom the homogenic attraction is as integral a part of their nature as the appreciation of music or the love of colour. Abundant proof of this contention is to hand. There have been thousands of individuals in every age, including the present, who have never heard of homosexuality,[16] have never met other homosexuals, or come into contact with anything approaching homosexual practice; and yet they have been homosexual all their lives. I have known persons who believed that no one else in the world shared their aspirations, and also have suffered tortures because of their supposed isolated abnormality.

The State attitude simply ignores this factor, and accordingly reveals itself as unscientific.

It is true that perhaps by such an agency as psycho-analysis reasons could be found in many of these cases why the individual had developed on inverted sex lines; home repressions, the system of early education, the age of the parents, these or other influences, may have produced a complex which has switched the sex-nature on to a particular path. But these reasons do not necessarily show the result to be artificial; it is our very nature indeed which these influences construct. It is impossible to trace an exact line between the inherent nature and the effect which outside influences have had upon it. We must, and we do in fact, regard the permanent and fundamental traits, however derived, as “natural.”

Moreover psycho-analysis definitely indicates that there is a homosexual period through which all individuals inevitably pass.

The State theory that the temperament is “unnatural” cannot therefore be supported on any grounds, except in the cases where it is deliberately assumed by normal persons. In most cases it is natural to the individual’s nature, and not “unnatural,” but “abnormal.”

Once this simple scientific truth is grasped the legal attitude is seen to crumble in all directions. The case for criminal prosecution rests logically on the assumption that unless homosexual practices are rigidly suppressed they will spread. And since their increase would seriously diminish the birth-rate the State is necessarily anxious to avert this danger. But it is an odd perversion which imagines that sober respectable citizens are only restrained from indulging in homosexual vice by the threat of penal servitude! Once the scientific truth is grasped and homosexuality is seen to be, except in a small number of cases, the natural temperament of a small minority, it will be realized that normal persons are not likely to wish to commit unnatural acts, whether there is or there is not a penal law; nor can any Act of Parliament prevent homosexuals from being homosexual.

And in practice this theoretical conclusion is found to hold true. For in the countries, such as France, where the Code NapolÉon does not cover these prosecutions, homosexuality is far less rife than in England, or in Germany, where until the Revolution the penal law was rigidly enforced.

It is well that we should face these facts unreservedly, however strong may be our personal antipathy to the practices.

The second attitude may be described generally as that of society. Public opinion must necessarily be too vague to admit of succinct definition. But generally its attitude towards this question may be defined as that of an ordinary man towards a freak; he has no sympathy with freaks and indeed dislikes them—but they are so very rare that he can afford to ignore them.

The problem of the homosexual cannot however be avoided in this way, for the simple reason that the invert forms so comparatively large and permanent a part of the community. It is difficult to attempt an accurate estimate, partly because many homosexuals are so afraid of incurring the odium of public opinion that they successfully disguise their true nature and are unsuspected even by their most intimate friends. But there is a more fundamental difficulty. It appears to be undeniable that a large number of normal people possess to some extent a strain of the homosexual temperament. We have, in fact, as in almost all classifications, not a naturally dividing gulf but a gradually ascending scale. Some individuals may have only 5 per cent. inverted and 95 per cent. hetero-sexual tendencies, while others are only 10 per cent. normal. There are a large and increasing number of persons who are almost equally balanced on either side. These bisexuals often marry happily and at the same time enjoy homogenic experiences.

When we remember that, according to psycho-analysis, everyone about the age of puberty passes through a homosexual stage, it is probably not an exaggeration to state that few people fail to preserve a stratum of this nature, however small the percentage and however deeply such tendencies may be buried in the unconsciousness.

If however we decide to draw an arbitrary distinction and to define persons with less than 30 per cent. inverted nature as normal, persons from 30 to 60 per cent. as bisexual, and the remainder as homosexual, we are left with a considerable number of the last variety. Havelock Ellis has reckoned the percentage of homosexuals among the professional middle classes in England as 5 per cent. and among women as 10 per cent.[17] In any case the popular view that the proportion is so small as to be negligible is quite impossible, and is due to the fact that most men are so unobservant of psychological evidence that their opinion is of little serious value.

However undesirable, then, this species of temperament may be, it cannot be described as unnatural in the sense of artificial or unusual. The third or current scientific attitude does seem at first to avoid these superstitions and to rest on a reasonable basis. This attitude may be described as that of regarding homosexuality as a disease, which should neither be punished nor ignored, but treated. The theory that we all pass through a homosexual period at a comparatively early stage, lends support to this conclusion. The hero-age of boys and girls, it is urged, is almost always directed towards the child’s own sex. Therefore it can fairly be argued that where the sex development has been restricted to these lines it denotes some strange dislocation which has prevented natural growth. The fact that in some cases this cause can actually be traced—such as a disappointment in an early love affair with the opposite sex, or to artificial circumstances which have made for celibacy—confirm many students of sex-science in this opinion.

But as if nature deliberately intends to thwart all easily attained explanations, she sets out certain facts, in practice, which entirely invalidate the theory. It is true that many homosexuals, both men and women, portray in general mental efficiency that peculiar want of proportion in some direction which is the inevitable symptom of mental abnormality; the male may be obviously effeminate, or, male or female, eccentric or hysterical. But this is distinctly the exception. So far as my personal experience goes, the majority of homosexuals are indistinguishable from normal men, except by some psychic or intuitional sense, in physical or mental appearance; and I observe that this experience is shared by all those scientists who have written on the subject. The undeniable facts are that among this minority of the race a majority of men have, in all ages and races, held a pre-eminent and honourable position in society, revealing the brilliance of sanity rather than the abnormality of genius. The homosexual has succeeded not only as might have been expected in the arts. It is true that, in general, he possesses certain feminine attributes, such as a gentler and more emotional positivity than the normal. But he has excelled in such masculine paths as soldiering, statesmanship, and engineering. It is almost irritating, where one wishes to find support for the scientific explanation, to turn to history and discover that the homosexual section of the Greeks were magnificent warriors as well as philosophers; that not only Shakespeare, who wrote many of his sonnets to a boy, or Michael Angelo, but Alexander the Great, Charles XII of Sweden, Frederick II of Prussia, and William III of England, had their homosexual tendencies. Indeed, were it permissible to do so, it would be possible to instance some of our most famous generals and politicians of modern times as possessing this unmistakable temperament.

It is well then freely to admit that the scientific theory simply does not square with the full facts of the case.

The fourth attitude is that of religion. The Church’s official position is mainly indistinguishable from that of the State, although the atmosphere of the Church has tended largely to be congenial to this development. It is evident that Christianity was influenced in its early days by the appalling condition of vice in Roman society, and it is not to be wondered at that a severe legacy of prejudice has been inherited in the light of this indescribable experience. But this brings us conveniently to a point where we must admit a fallacy underlying almost all considerations of the homogenic sex nature. And unless we are able to dispose of the fallacy in our minds, further investigation is useless.

The fallacy consists of the assumption that homosexuality means only the perpetration of the physical sex-act. In reality this is as untrue as to suppose that the normal man is necessarily a patron of prostitutes. Such a confusion of thought is obviously ludicrous. But not less inaccurate is this prevailing idea regarding the homosexual. Not only is the particular sex-act, popularly associated with this subject, an extremely rare occurence, even as among the physical sex-expressions of this temperament, but probably a vast majority of homosexuals are deliberately celibate. Homosexuality is a romantic cult rather than a physical vice. Nine-tenths of its energy is directed purely in the realm of ideals. The old misconception of sex as a rather disreputable physical function again dogs our steps. But sex is almost entirely emotional; sex-love, and especially homosexual love, is not lust. Its desire is romantic and idealistic, and when physical incidents occur, they are usually the unintentional outlets of the purely emotional passion.

The literature of homosexuality is almost entirely romantic, and small though it is forced to be, in quality and ideal its average must rank as extraordinarily noble.

It is noticeable, indeed, that in a large proportion of the unpleasant cases which are tried in police-courts, the offenders are admittedly normal men who have deliberately perpetrated homosexual acts for various causes, such as a neurotic desire for novelty, or the desire to avoid disease. There are also the considerable class of perverted normals whose deviation from their natural path as the result of some such influence as heterosexual disappointment or repression, has been so emphasized as to render their perversion distinct from natural developments, and who refuse, or are unable, to deny themselves physical gratification.If we dissociate the true homosexual from this class, and concentrate our attention only on the “celibate” species of such attachments, it is evident that we are in the presence, not merely of something which is not criminal, but of an ideal which is sacred in character. Pure love, especially so intense a love as the homogenic attachment, is not profane but divine. And though the Church may be unable to recognize it by her sacramental benediction, because, unlike marriage, it cannot effect physical procreation, she possesses such Biblical precedents as the story of David and Jonathan—an episode which is obviously homosexual in the sense that it describes not a platonic companionship but a romantic passion.

In the social sphere also, the place of this aspect of homosexuality is obvious. The homosexual must, and does in fact, exist in the most honoured offices of the community. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to declare that few men can be successful in educational or philanthropic work unless they have some homogenic temperament in their nature. Without this they may compel discipline but they are powerless to attract sympathetic co-operation. The testimony in favour of this assertion is overwhelming.

But when we admit that sex tends to find a physical expression, and we come therefore face to face with the physical problem, the difficulty I admit to be considerable. And I can only re-emphasize that this feature is numerically and potentially the least important, but that there can be no religious countenance for any physical sex-act outside the sacrament of matrimony.

Rape, and seduction without consent, are obviously evils calling for legal prosecution, as being an infringement of personal liberty. And in this connexion it must be remembered that homosexual practices tend to seduction, inasmuch as the attraction is frequently towards those who have not attained intellectual manhood. For the rest, I am inclined only to re-affirm the general principle which I have already attempted to define—namely, that sex becomes a sin where the main objective becomes the physical gratification. Once the proportion is weighed on the side of physical expression, love is prostituted. The purity of true love is known by the fact that its face is turned not to mere physical functions, but beyond the emotional and even mental, to the spiritual ideal. Indeed, a lover, whatever his temperament happens to be, loves even if his beloved is removed from all physical reach. That is the test.

I do not look for salvation to the arms of mere criminal legislation. This seems to me to be almost powerless as a moral force, and indeed, to encourage the hideous apparatus of blackmail.[18] Gradual and unsensational as it may be, I believe that morals can only be improved by educational and religious influences.

And so far as theoretical solutions are concerned I believe that Mr. Edward Carpenter[19] comes nearest to the truth. Nature is deliberate in creating not uniformity but variety, and I doubt if the world would continue if there were only normal men in it. The homosexual has his place, within restrictions, as has the celibate or the sexless type. The real truth, I feel to be, is that few men are wholly masculine or women feminine, and that somewhere, in comparative degrees, homosexuality is in us all. It may become so excessive as to be a disease, or so feeble as to create that unÆsthetic, bourgeoise type, which is an unpleasant symptom of super-normality.

We enter the realm of pure conjecture if we attempt to inquire the purpose for which this type has been deliberately created. And I can only record my own entirely unproveable, but definite opinion, that the human race, in the far ages ahead, will return, by a spiral process, to the bisexual species from which I believe it has come. If this is so, the homosexual is apparently a prototype, a preliminary attempt of nature to combine both sex-natures in one individual. And with all his present imperfections, I believe that there are evidences which go strongly to support this conjecture.