A Problem in Modern Ethics: Being an Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Sexual Inversion, Addressed Especially to Medical Psychologists and JuristsSymonds, John Addington
Philosophy
A Problem in Modern Ethics: Being an Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Sexual Inversion, Addressed Especially to Medical Psychologists and Jurists
Symonds, John Addington
Homosexuality
to be congenital, and Uraniasters, in whom it has been acquired or
deliberately adopted. And it would be very difficult to frame laws which
should take cognisance of these two classes. The Code Napoleon
legalises the position of both, theoretically at any rate. The English
code treats both as criminal, doing thereby, it must be admitted, marked
injustice to recognised Urnings, who at the worst are morbid or insane,
or sexually deformed, through no fault of their own.
In the present state of things, adds Ulrichs, the men who yield their
bodies to abnormal lovers, do not merely do so out of compliance,
sympathy, or the desire for reasonable reward. Too often they speculate
upon the illegality of the connection, and have their main object in the
extortion of money by threats of exposure. Thus the very basest of all
trades, that of _chantage_, is encouraged by the law. Alter the law, and
instead of increasing vice, you will diminish it; for a man who should
then meet the advances of an Urning, would do so out of compliance, or,
as is the case with female prostitutes, upon the expectation of a
reasonable gain. The temptation to ply a disgraceful profession with the
object of extorting money would be removed. Moreover, as regards
individuals alike abnormally constituted, voluntary and mutually
satisfying relations, free from degrading risks, and possibly permanent,
might be formed between responsible agents. Finally, if it be feared
that the removal of legal disabilities would turn the whole male
population into Urnings, consider whether London is now so much purer in
this respect than Paris?
One serious objection to recognising and tolerating sexual inversion has
always been that it tends to check the population. This was a sound
political and social argument in the time of Moses, when a small and
militant tribe needed to multiply to the full extent of its procreative
capacity. It is by no means so valid in our age, when the habitable
portions of the globe are rapidly becoming overcrowded.[62] Moreover, we
must bear in mind that society, under the existing order, sanctions
female prostitution, whereby men and women, the normally procreative,
are sterilised to an indefinite extent. Logic, in these circumstances,
renders it equitable and ridiculous to deny a sterile exercise of sex to
abnormal men and women, who are by instinct and congenital diathesis
non-procreative.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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