“How is it then that in our age reputed so philanthropic, whole classes of men, on account of inborn mental abnormalities, are marked down and banned, frantically persecuted, publicly branded, and threatened with the severest legal penalties? Any one would hardly believe what gross cases of justiciary murder, morally speaking, still take place in this matter even at the end of the nineteenth century. To the pitiful ignorance of the judges, to the thousand inherited prejudices of public opinion, as well as to the mental slavery of legislative bodies, must it be ascribed that the penal code of most civilised states is still in great measure formulated in the gloomy spirit of the Middle Ages.”--O. de JOUX, “Die Enterbten des Liebesglückes,” p. 16. “Up till now homosexual humanity has found itself in a peculiar position. Its mouth was closed, it could not speak. It was bound hand and foot and could not move. But now there has come an important change. Science has taken the part of these folk and defended their honour … I protest therefore earnestly that these men, whether by means of the Law or any other means, should no longer be branded in the name of Christianity.”--From a letter written by a Catholic priest in reply to a circular sent by the Humane-Science Committee of Berlin. (See “Jahrbuch der Sexuellen Zwischenstufen,” vol. ii., p. 177.) “Thus the very basest of all trades, that of _chantage_ [blackmailing] is encouraged by the law.… The miserable persecuted wretch, placed between the alternative of paying money down or of becoming socially impossible, losing a valued position, and seeing dishonour burst upon himself and family, pays; and still the more he pays the greedier becomes the vampire who sucks his life-blood, until at last there lies nothing else before him except total financial ruin or disgrace. Who will be astonished if the nerves of an individual in this position are not equal to the horrid strain? In some cases the nerves give way altogether.… Alter the law and instead of increasing vice you will diminish it. The temptation to ply a disgraceful profession with the object of extorting money would be removed.”--“A Problem in Modern Ethics,” pp. 56 and 86. “You will rightly infer that it is difficult for me to say exactly how I regard (morally) the homosexual tendency. Of this much, however, I am certain that even if it were possible I would not exchange my inverted nature for a normal one. I suspect that the sexual emotions and even inverted ones have a more subtle significance than is generally attributed to them; but modern moralists either fight shy of transcendental interpretations or see none, and I am ignorant and unable to solve the mystery these feelings seem to imply.”--HAVELOCK ELLIS, _op. cit._, p. 65, “case” ix.