Offences Against One's Self: Paederasty
Jeremy Bentham
Abstract
by Editor Louis Crompton: This is the first publication of Jeremy
Bentham's essay on "Paederasty," written about 1785.* The essay which
runs to over 60 manuscript pages, is the first known argument for
homosexual law reform in England. Bentham advocates the
decriminalization of sodomy, which in his day was punished by hanging.
He argues that homosexual acts do not "weaken" men, or threaten
population or marriage, and documents their prevalence in ancient
Greece and Rome. Bentham opposes punishment on utilitarian grounds and
attacks ascetic sexual morality. In the preceding article the
editor's introduction discussed the essay in the light of 18th-century
legal opinion and quoted Bentham's manuscript notes that reveal his
anxieties about expressing his views.
To
what class of offences shall we refer these irregularities of the
venereal appetite which are stiled unnatural? When hidden from the
public eye there could be no colour for placing them any where else:
could they find a place any where it would be here. I have been
tormenting myself for years to find if possible a sufficient ground for
treating them with the severity with which they are treated at this
time of day by all European nations: but upon the principle utility I
can find none.
Offences of impurity — their varietys
The
abominations that come under this heading have this property in common,
in this respect, that they consist in procuring certain sensations by
means of an improper object. The impropriety then may consist either in
making use of an object
1. Of the proper species but at an improper time: for instance, after death.
2. Of an object of the proper species and sex, and at a proper time, but in an improper part.
3. Of an object of the proper species but the wrong sex. This is distinguished from the rest by the name of paederasty.
4. Of a wrong species.
5. In procuring this sensation by one's self without the help of any other sensitive object.
Paederasty makes the greatest figure
The
third being that which makes the most figure in the world it will be
proper to give that the principal share of our attention. In settling
the nature and tendency of this offence we shall for the most part have
settled the nature and tendency of all the other offences that come
under this disgusting catalogue.
Whether they produce any primary mischief
1.
As to any primary mischief, it is evident that it produces no pain in
anyone. On the contrary it produces pleasure, and that a pleasure
which, by their perverted taste, is by this supposition preferred to
that pleasure which is in general reputed the greatest. The partners
are both willing. If either of them be unwilling, the act is not that
which we have here in view: it is an offence totally different in its
nature of effects: it is a personal injury; it is a kind of rape.
As a secondary mischief whether they produce any alarm in the community
2.
As to any secondary mischief, it produces not any pain of apprehension.
For what is there in it for any body to be afraid of? By the
supposition, those only are the objects of it who choose to be so, who
find a pleasure, for so it seems they do, in being so.
Whether any danger
3.
As to any danger exclusive of pain, the danger, if any, must consist in
the tendency of the example. But what is the tendency of this example?
To dispose others to engage in the same practises: but this practise
for anything that has yet appeared produces not pain of any kind to any
one.
Reasons that have commonly been assigned
Hitherto
we have found no reason for punishing it at all: much less for
punishing it with the degree of severity with which it has been
commonly punished. Let us see what force there is in the reasons that
have been commonly assigned for punishing it.
The
whole tribe of writers on English law, who none of them knows any more
what they mean by the word “peace” than they do by many
other of the expressions that are most familiar to them, reckon this
among offences against the peace. It is accordingly treated in all
respects as an offence against the peace. They likewise reckon forgery,
coining, and all sorts of frauds among offences against the peace.
According to the same writers it is doubted whether adultery be not a
breach of the peace. It is certain however that whenever a gallant
accepts an invitation of another man's wife he does it with force and
arms. This needs no comment.
Whether against the security of the individual
Sir
W. Blackstone is more particular. According to him it is not only an
offence against the peace, but it is of that division of offences
against the peace which are offences against security. According to the
same writer, if a man is guilty of this kind of filthiness, for
instance, with a cow, as some men have been known to be, it is an
offence against somebody's security. He does not say whose security,
for the law makes no distinction in its ordinances, so neither does
this lawyer or any other English lawyer in his comments make any
distinction between this kind of filthiness when committed with the
consent of the patient and the same kind of filthiness when committed
against his consent and by violence. It is just as if a man were to
make no distinction between concubinage and rape.
Whether it debilitates — Montesquieu
The
reason that Montesquieu gives for reprobating it is the weakness which
he seems to suppose it to have a tendency to bring upon those who
practice it. (Esp. des Loix, L. 12, ch. 6. “Il faudroit le
proscrire quand il ne feroit que donner a un sexe les faiblesses de
l'autre et preparer a une vieillesse infame par une jeunesse
honteuse.” (“It ought to be proscribed were it only for its
giving to the one sex the weaknesses of the other and paving the way by
a scandalous youth for an infamous old age.” J.B.) This, if it be
true in fact, is a reason of a very different complexion from any of
the preceding and it is on the ground of this reason as being the most
plausible one that I have ranked the offence under its present head. As
far as it is true in fact, the act ought to be regarded in the first
place as coming within the list of offences against one's self, of
offences of imprudence: in the next place, as an offence against the
state, an offence the tendency of which is to diminish the public
force.
If however it tends to weaken a man it
is not any single act that can in any sensible degree have that effect.
It can only be the habit: the act thus will become obnoxious as
evidencing the existence, in probability, of the habit. This enervating
tendency, be it what it may, if it is to be taken as a ground for
treating the [192] practise in question with a degree of severity which
is not bestowed upon the regular way of gratifying the venereal
appetite, must be greater in the former case than in the latter. Is it
so? If the affirmative can be shewn it must be either by arguments a
priori drawn from considerations of the nature of the human frame or
from experience. Are there any such arguments from physiology? I have
never heard of any: I can think of none.
What says history?
What
says historical experience? The result of this can be measured only
upon a large scale or upon a very general survey. Among the modern
nations it is comparatively but rare. In modern Rome it is perhaps not
very uncommon; in Paris probably not quite so common; in London still
less frequent; in Edinburgh or Amsterdam you scarce hear of it two or
three times in a century. In Athens and in antient Rome in the most
flourishing periods of the history of those capitals, regular
intercourse between the sexes was scarcely much more common. It was
upon the same footing throughout Greece: everybody practised it; nobody
was ashamed of it. They might be ashamed of what they looked upon as an
excess in it, or they might be ashamed of it as a weakness, as a
propensity that had a tendency to distract men from more worthy and
important occupations, just as a man with us might be ashamed of excess
or weakness in his love for women. In itself one may be sure they were
not ashamed of it. Agesilaus, upon somebody's taking notice of the care
he took to avoid taking any familiarities with a youth who passed for
being handsome acknowledges it, indeed, but upon what ground? Not on
account of the turpitude but the danger. Xenophon in his retreat of the
ten thousand gives an anecdote of himself in which he mentions himself
as particularly addicted to this practise without seeming to entertain
the least suspicion that any apology was necessary. In his account of
Socrates's conversation he introduces that philosopher censuring or
rather making merry with a young man for his attachment to the same
practise. But in what light does he consider it? As a weakness
unbecoming to a philosopher, not as a turpitude or a crime unbecoming
to a man. It is not because an object of the one sex more than one of
the other is improper game: but on account of the time that must be
spent and the humiliation submitted to in the pursuit.
What is remarkable is that there is scarce a striking character in
antiquity, nor one that in other respects men are in use to cite as
virtuous, of whom it does not appear by one circumstance or another,
that he was infected with this inconceivable propensity. It makes a
conspicuous figure in the very opening of Thucydides's history, and by
an odd accident it was to the spirit of two young men kindled and
supported by this passion that Athens according to that historian stood
indebted on a trying occasion for the recovery of its liberty. The
firmness and spirit of the Theban band — the band of lovers as it
was called — is famous in history; and the principle by which the
union among the members of it was commonly supposed to be cemented is
well known. (Plutarch, in vita Pelopidae. Esp. des Loix, L. 4, ch. 8.
J.B.) Many moderns, and among others Mr. Voltaire, dispute the fact,
but that intelligent philosopher sufficiently intimates the ground of
his incredulity — if he does not believe it, it is because he
likes not to believe it. What the antients called love in such a case
was what we call Platonic, that is, was not love but friendship. But
the Greeks knew the difference between love and friendship as well as
we — they had distinct terms to signify them by: it seems
reasonable therefore to suppose that when they say love they mean love,
and that when they say friendship only they mean friendship only. And
with regard to Xenophon and his master, Socrates, and his
fellow-scholar Plato, it seems more reasonable to believe them to have
been addicted to this taste when they or any of them tell us so in
express terms than to trust to the interpretations, however ingenious
and however well-intended, of any men who write at this time of day,
when they tell us it was no such thing. Not to insist upon Agesilaus
and Xenophon, it appears by one circumstance or another that
Themistocles, Aristides, Epaminondus, Alcibiades, Alexander and perhaps
the greatest number of the heroes of Greece were infected with this
taste. Not that the historians are at the pains of informing us so
expressly, for it was not extraordinary enough to make it worth their
while, but it comes out collaterally in the course of the transactions
they have occasion to relate.
It were hardly
worth while after this to take up much time in proving the same thing
with regard to the Romans, in naming distinguished persons of
consequence whom history has mentioned as partakers in this
abomination, or in bringing passages to shew that the same depraved
taste prevailed generally among the people. Not to mention notorious
profligates such as the Antonies, the Clodius's, the Pisos, the
Gabinius's of the age, Cicero, if we may believe either his enemy
Sallust or his admirer Pliny neither avoided this propensity nor
thought proper to dissemble it. That austere philosopher, after writing
books to prove that pleasure was no good and that pain was no evil and
that virtue could make a man happy upon the rack, that affectionate
husband, in the midst of all his tenderness for his wife Terentia,
could play at blindman's buff with his secretary (i.e. Marcus Tullius
Tiro. Pliny, Letters, VII, 4. Ed.) for pipes and make verses upon this
notable exploit of gallantry. [193]
With regard to
the people in general it may be presumed that if the Gods amused
themselves in this way — if Apollo loved Hyacinthus, if Hercules
could be in a frenzy for the loss of Hylas, and the father of Gods and
men could solace himself with Ganymede, it was neither an odious nor an
unfrequent thing for mortal men to do so. The Gods we make, it has been
well and often said, we make always after our own image. In times much
anterior to those of Cicero and in which according to the common
prejudice the morals of the people are supposed to have been
proportionately more pure, when certain festivals were suppressed on
account of their furnishing opportunities for debauchery,
irregularities of this kind were observed according to Livy to be more
abundant than ordinary intrigues. This circumstance would scarcely
perhaps have been thought worth mentioning, had not the idea of excess
in this, as it is apt to do on all occasions, struck the imagination of
the historian as well as of the magistrate whose administration he is
recording.
This much will probably be thought
enough: if more proofs were necessary, it were easy to collect
materials enough to fill a huge, a tedious and a very disgusting volume.
It appears then that this propensity was universally predominant among
the antient Greeks and Romans, among the military as much as any. The
antient Greeks and Romans, however, are commonly reputed as a much
stouter as well as a much braver people than the stoutest and bravest
of any of the modern nations of Europe. They appear to have been
stouter at least in a very considerable degree than the French in whom
this propensity is not very common and still more than the Scotch in
whom it is still less common, and this although the climate even of
Greece was a great deal warmer and in that respect more enervating than
that of modern Scotland.
If then this practise
was in those antient warm countries attended with any enervating
effects, they were much more than counteracted by the superiority of
[illegible] in the exertions which were then required by the military
education over and above those which are now called forth by ordinary
labour. But if there be any ground derived from history for attributing
to it any such enervating effects it is more than I can find.
Whether it enervates the patient more than the agent
Montesquieu
however seems to make a distinction — he seems to suppose these
enervating effects to be exerted principally upon the person who is the
patient in such a business. This distinction does not seem very
satisfactory in any point of view. Is there any reason for supposing it
to be a fixed one? Between persons of the same age actuated by the same
incomprehensible desires would not the parts they took in the business
be convertible? Would not the patient be the agent in his turn? If it
were not so, the person on whom he supposes these effects to be the
greatest is precisely the person with regard to whom it is most
difficult to conceive whence those consequences should result. In the
one case there is exhaustion which when carried to excess may be
followed by debility: in the other case there is no such thing.
What says history?
In
regard to this point too in particular, what says history? As the two
parts that a man may take in this business are so naturally convertible
however frequently he may have taken a passive part, it will not
ordinarily appear. According to the notions of the antients there was
something degrading in the passive part which was not in the active. It
was ministring to the pleasure, for so we are obliged to call it, of
another without participation, it was making one's self the property of
another man, it was playing the woman's part: it was therefore unmanly.
(Paedicabo vos et irrumabo, Antoni [sic] pathice et cinaede Furi.
[Carm. 16] Catullus. J.B.) On the other hand, to take the active part
was to make use of another for one's pleasure, it was making another
man one's property, it was preserving the manly, the commanding
character. Accordingly, Solon in his laws prohibits slaves from bearing
an active part where the passive is borne by a freeman. In the few
instances in which we happen to hear of a person's taking the passive
part there is nothing to favour the above-mentioned hypothesis. The
beautiful Alcibiades, who in his youth, says Cornelius Nepos, after the
manner of the Greeks, was beloved by many, was not remarkable either
for weakness or for cowardice: at least, [blank] did not find it so.
The Clodius whom Cicero scoffs at for his servile obsequiousness to the
appetite of Curio was one of the most daring and turbulent spirits in
all Rome. Julius Caesar was looked upon as a man of tolerable courage
in his day, notwithstanding the complaisance he showed in his youth to
the King of Bithynia, Nicomedes. Aristotle, the inquisitive and
observing Aristotle, whose physiological disquisitions are looked upon
as some of the best of his works — Aristotle, who if there had
been anything in this notion had every opportunity and inducement to
notice and confirm it — gives no intimation of any such thing. On
the contrary he sits down very soberly to distribute the male half of
the species under two classes: one class having a natural propensity,
he says, to bear a passive part in such a business, as the other have
to take an active part. (Probl. Sect. 4 art. 27: The former of these
propensities he attributes to a peculiarity of organization, analogous
to that of women. The whole passage is abundantly obscure and shows in
how imperfect a state of anatomical knowledge was his time. J.B.) This
observation it must be confessed is not much more satisfactory than
that other of the same philosopher when he speaks of two sorts of
men--the one born to be masters, the other to be slaves. If however
there had appeared any reason for supposing this practise, either with
regard to the passive or the active part of it, to have had any
remarkable effects in the way of debilitation upon those who were
addicted to it, he would have hardly said so much [194] upon the
subject without taking notice of that circumstance.
Whether it hurts population?
A
notion more obvious, but perhaps not much better founded than the
former is that of its being prejudicial to population. Mr. Voltaire
appears inclined in one part of his works to give some countenance to
this opinion. He speaks of it as a vice which would be destructive to
the human race if it were general. “How did it come about that a
vice which would destroy mankind if it were general, that an infamous
outrage against nature...?” (Questions sur l'Encyclop.
“Amour Socratique.” J.B.)
A little
further on, speaking of Sextus Empiricus who would have us believe that
this practise was “recommended” in Persia by the laws, he
insists that the effect of such a law would be to annihilate the human
race if it were literally observed. “No”, says he,
“it is not in human nature to make a law that contradicts and
outrages nature, a law that would annihilate mankind if it were
observed to the letter.” This consequence however is far enough
from being a necessary one. For a law of the purport he represents to
be observed, it is sufficient that this unprolific kind of venery be
practised; it is not necessary that it should be practised to the
exclusion of that which is prolific. Now that there should ever be
wanting such a measure of the regular and ordinary inclination of
desire for the proper object as is necessary for keeping up the numbers
of mankind upon their present footing is a notion that stands warranted
by nothing that I can find in history. To consider the matter a priori
[?], if we consult Mr. Hume and Dr. Smith, we shall find that it is not
the strength of the inclination of the one sex for the other that is
the measure of the numbers of mankind, but the quantity of subsistence
which they can find or raise upon a given spot. With regard to the mere
object of population, if we consider the time of gestation in the
female sex we shall find that much less than a hundredth part of the
activity a man is capable of exerting in this way is sufficient to
produce all the effect that can be produced by ever so much more.
Population therefore cannot suffer till the inclination of the male sex
for the female be considerably less than a hundredth part as strong as
for their own. Is there the least probability that [this] should ever
be the case? I must confess I see not any thing that should lead us to
suppose it. Before this can happen the nature of the human composition
must receive a total change and that propensity which is commonly
regarded as the only one of the two that is natural must have become
altogether an unnatural one.
I have already
observed that I can find nothing in history to countenance the notion I
am examining. On the contrary the country in which the prevalence of
this practise is most conspicuous happens to have been remarkable for
its populousness. The bent of popular prejudice has been to exaggerate
this populousness: but after all deductions [are] made, still it will
appear to have been remarkable. It was such as, notwithstanding the
drain of continual wars in a country parcelled out into paltry states
as to be all of it frontier, gave occasion to the continued necessity
of emigration.
This reason however well
grounded soever it were in itself could not with any degree of
consistency be urged in a country where celibacy was permitted, much
less where it was encouraged. The proposition which (as will be shewn
more fully by and by) is not at all true with respect to paederasty, I
mean that were it to prevail universally it would put an end to the
human race, is most evidently and strictly true with regard to
celibacy. If then merely out of regard to population it were right that
paederasts should be burnt alive monks ought to be roasted alive by a
slow fire. If a paederast, according to the monkish canonist Bermondus,
destroys the whole human race Bermondus destroyed it I don't know how
many thousand times over. The crime of Bermondus is I don't know how
many times worse than paederasty.
That there
should be the least colour for supposing of this practise that in any
situation of things whatever it could have the least possible tendency
to favour population is what nobody I suppose would easily have
suspected. Since, however, we are embarked on this discussion, it is
fit that everything that can contribute to our forming a right judgment
on the question should be mentioned. Women who submit to promiscuous
embraces are almost universally unprolific. In all great towns a great
multitude of women will always be in this case. In Paris, for instance,
the number of these women has been computed to amount to at least
10,000. These women, were no more than a certain quantity of prolific
vigour to be applied to them, might all of them stand in as good a way
of being prolific as other women: they would have indeed rather a
better chance since the women who came to be reduced to the necessity
of embracing this profession are always those who by their beauty are
more apt than an equal number of women taken at random to engage the
attention of the other sex. If then all the vigour that is over and
above this quantity were to be diverted into another channel, it is
evident that in the case above supposed the state would be a gainer to
the amount of all the population that could be expected from 40,000
women, and in proportion as any woman was less prolific by the
diverting of any part of this superfluous [195] vigour, in the same
proportion would population be promoted.
No one
I hope will take occasion to suppose that from any thing here said I
mean to infer the propriety of affording any encouragement to this
miserable taste for the sake of population. Such an inference would be
as ill founded as it would be cruel. (I leave anyone to imagine what
such a writer as Swift, for instance, might make upon this theme,
“A project for promoting population by the encouragement of
paederasty.” J.B.) The truth is, the sovereign, if he will but
conduct himself with tolerable attention with respect to the happiness
of his subjects need never be in any pain about the number of them. He
has no need to be ever at the expense of any efforts levelled in a
direct line at the purpose of increasing it. Nature will do her own
work fast enough without his assistance if he will but refrain from
giving her disturbance. Such infamous expedients would be improper as
any coercive ones are unnecessary. Even monks in the countries that are
most infested with them are not near so pernicious by the deductions
they make from the sum of population, as by the miseries which they
produce and suffer, and by the prejudices of all kinds of which they
are the perpetrators and the dupes.
Whether it robs women
A
more serious imputation for punishing this practise [is] that the
effect of it is to produce in the male sex an indifference to the
female, and thereby defraud the latter of their rights. This, as far as
it holds good in point of fact, is in truth a serious imputation. The
interest of the female part of the species claim just as much
attention, and not a whit more, on the part of the legislator, as those
of the male. A complaint of this sort, it is true, would not come with
a very good grace from a modest woman; but should the women be estopped
from making complaint in such a case it is the business of the men to
make it for them. This then as far as it holds good in point of fact is
in truth a very serious imputation: how far it does it will be proper
to enquire. In the first place the female sex is
always able and commonly disposed to receive a greater quantity of
venereal tribute than the male sex is able to bestow. If then the state
of manners be such in any country as left the exertion of this faculty
entirely unrestrained, it is evident that (except in particular cases
when no object of the female sex happened to be within reach) any
effort of this kind that was exerted by a male upon a male would be so
much lost to the community of females. Upon this footing the business
of venereal enjoyment seems actually to stand in some few parts of the
world, for instance at Otaheite. It seems therefore that at Otaheite
paederasty could hardly have footing, but the female part of that
community must in proportion be defrauded of their rights. If then
paederasty were to be justified in Otaheite it could only be upon this
absurd and improbable supposition-that the male sex were gainers by
such a perversion to a greater amount than the female sex were losers.
But in all European countries and such others on which we bestow the
title of civilized, the case is widely different. In these countries
this propensity, which in the male sex is under a considerable degree
of restraint, is under an incomparably greater restraint in the female.
While each is alike prohibited from partaking of these enjoyments but
on the terms of marriage by the fluctuating and inefficacious influence
of religion, the censure of the world denies it [to] the female part of
the species under the severest penalties while the male sex is left
free. (In speaking on this occasion of the precepts of religion I
consider not what they are in themselves but what they may happen to be
in the opinion and discourse [?] of those whose office it is to
interpret them. J.B.) No sooner is a woman known to have infringed this
prohibition than either she is secluded from all means of repeating the
offence, or upon her escaping from that vigilance she throws herself
into that degraded class whom the want of company of their own sex
render unhappy, and the abundance of it on the part of the male sex
unprolific. This being the case, it appears the contribution which the
male part of the species are willing as well as able to bestow is
beyond all comparison greater than what the female part are permitted
to receive. If a woman has a husband she is permitted to receive it
only from her husband: if she has no husband she is not permitted to
receive it from any man without being degraded into the class of
prostitutes. When she is in that unhappy class she has not indeed less
than she would wish, but what is often as bad to her — she has
more.
It appears then that if the female sex
are losers by the prevalence of this practise it can only be on this
supposition — that the force with which it tends to divert men
from entering into connection with the other sex is greater than the
force with which the censure of the world tends to prevent those
connections by its operation on the women. [196]
In countries where, as in Otaheite, no restraint is laid on the
gratification of the amorous appetite, whatever part of the activity of
that appetite in the male sex were exercised upon the same sex would be
so much loss in point of enjoyment to the female. But in countries
where it is kept under restraint, as in Europe, for example, this is
not by any means the case. As long as things are upon that footing
there are many cases in which the women can be no sufferers for the
want of sollicitation on the part of the men. If the institution of the
marriage contract be a beneficial one, and if it be expedient that the
observance of it should be maintained inviolate, we must in the first
place deduct from the number of the women who would be sufferers by the
prevalence of this taste all married women whose husbands were not
infected with it. In the next place, upon the supposition that a state
of prostitution is not a happier state than a state of virginity, we
must deduct all those women who by means of this prevalence would have
escaped being debauched. The women who would be sufferers by it ab
initio are those only who, were it not for the prevalence of it, would
have got husbands. (I say ab initio
for when a woman has been once
reduced to take up the trade of prostitution, she also would be of the
number of those who are sufferers by the prevalence of this taste, in
case the effect of it were to deprive her of any quantity of
this commerce beyond that which she would rather be without. It is
not in
this business as in most other businesses, where the quantity of the
object in demand is in proportion to the demand. The occupations with
respect to which that rule holds good are those only which are engaged
in through character, reflection, and upon choice. But in this
profession scarce any woman engages for the[se] purposes. The motive
that induces a woman to engage in it is not any such circumstance as
the consideration of the probability of getting custom. She has no
intention of engaging in it when she takes the step that eventually
proves a means of her engaging in it. The immediate cause of her
engaging in it is the accident of a discovery which deprives her of
every other source of livelihood. Upon the supposition then that a
given number have been debauched there would be the same number ready
to comply with sollicitation whenever so little was offered as whenever
so much was offered. It is a conceivable case therefore that upon the
increased prevalence of this taste there might be the same numbers of
women debauched as at present, and yet all the prostitutes in the place
might be starving for want of customers. J.B.)
The question then is reduced to this. What are the number of women who
by the prevalence of this taste would, it is probable, be prevented
from getting husbands? These and these only are they who would be
sufferers by it. Upon the following considerations it does not seem
likely that the prejudice sustained by the sex in this way could ever
rise to any considerable amount. Were the prevalence of this taste to
rise to ever so great a height the most considerable part of the
motives to marriage would remain entire. In the first place, the desire
of having children, in the next place the desire of forming alliances
between families, thirdly the convenience of having a domestic
companion whose company will continue to be I agreeable throughout
life, fourthly the convenience of gratifying the appetite in question
at any time when the want occurs and without the expense and trouble of
concealing it or the danger of a discovery.
Were a man's taste even so far corrupted as to make him prefer the
embraces of a person of his own sex to those of a female, a connection
of that preposterous kind would therefore be far enough from answering
to him the purposes of a marriage. A connection with a woman may by
accident be followed with disgust, but a connection of the other kind,
a man must know, will for certain come in time to be followed by
disgust. All the documents we have from the antients relative to this
matter, and we have a great abundance, agree in this, that it is only
for a very few years of his life that a male continues an object of
desire even to those in whom the infection of this taste is at the
strongest. The very name it went by among the Greeks may stand instead
of all other proofs, of which the works of Lucian and Martial alone
will furnish any abundance that can be required. Among the Greeks it
was called Paederastia, the love of boys, not Andrerastia, the love of
men. Among the Romans the act was called Paedicare because the object
of it was a boy. There was a particular name for those who had past the
short period beyond which no man hoped to be an object of desire to his
own sex. They were called exoleti. No male therefore who was passed
this short period of life could expect to find in this way any
reciprocity of affection; he must be as odious to the boy from the
beginning as in a short time the boy would be to him. The objects of
this kind of sensuality would therefore come only in the place of
common prostitutes; they could never even to a person of this depraved
taste answer the purposes of a virtuous woman.
What says history?
Upon
this footing stands the question when considered a priori: the evidence
of facts seems to be still more conclusive on the same side. There
seems no reason to doubt, as I have already observed but that
population went on altogether as fast and that the men were altogether
as well inclined to marriage among the Grecians in whom this vitious
propensity was most prevalent as in any modern people in whom it is
least prevalent. In Rome, indeed, about the time of the extinction of
liberty we find great complaints of the decline of population: but the
state of it does not appear to have been at all dependent on or at all
influenced by the measures that were taken from time to time to
restrain the love of boys: it was with the Romans, as with us, what
kept a man from marriage was not the preferring boys to women but the
preferring the convenience of a transient connection to the expense and
hazard of a lasting one. (See Pilati, Traite des Loix Civiles, ch. du
marriage. J.B.)
How is it at Otaheite?
To judge how
far the regular intercourse between the sexes is probably affected by
this contraband intercourse in countries where, as in Europe, the
gratification of the venereal appetite is kept upon a footing of
restraint, it may help us a good deal if we observe in what degree it
is affected by the latter in countries where the gratification of that
appetite is under no restraint. If in those countries paederasty
prevailed to so considerable a degree as to occasion a visible
diminution of the regard that was shewn to women, this phaenomenon,
unless it [197] could be accounted for from other causes, would afford
a strong argument to prove that prevalence of it might have the effect
of diminishing the regard that might otherwise be paid to them in other
countries and that the prevalence of it in those countries was owing
not to the comparative difficulty of getting women but to a comparative
indifference, such as might turn to the prejudice of the women in any
state of things: and in short that what was transferred to boys was so
much clear loss to women. But the fact is that in Otaheite it does not
appear that this propensity is at all prevalent.
If it were more frequent than the regular connection in what sense could it be termed unnatural?
The
nature of the question admits of great latitude of opinion: for my own
part I must confess I can not bring myself to entertain so high a
notion of the alluringness of this preposterous propensity as some men
appear to entertain. I can not suppose it to [be] possible it should
ever get to such a heighth as that the interests of the female part of
the species should be materially affected by it: or that it could ever
happen that were they to contend upon equal ground the eccentric and
unnatural propensity should ever get the better of the regular and
natural one. Could we for a moment suppose this to be the case, I would
wish it to be considered what meaning a man would have to annex to the
expression, when he I bestows on the propensity under consideration the
epithet of unnatural. If contrary to all appearance the case really
were that if all men were left perfectly free to choose, as many men
would make choice of their own sex as of the opposite one, I see not
what reason there would be for applying the word natural to the one
rather than to the other. All the difference would be that the one was
both natural and necessary whereas the other was natural but not
necessary. If the mere circumstance of its not being necessary were
sufficient to warrant the terming it unnatural it might as well be said
that the taste a man has for music is unnatural.
My wonder is how any man who is at all acquainted with the most amiable
part of the species should ever entertain any serious apprehensions of
their yielding the ascendant to such unworthy rivals.
Among the antients — whether it excluded not the regular taste
A
circumstance that contributes considerably to the alarms entertained by
some people on this score is the common prejudice which supposes that
the one propensity is exclusive of the other. This notion is for the
most part founded on prejudice as may be seen in the works of a
multitude of antient authors in which we continually see the same
person at one time stepping aside in pursuit of this eccentric kind of
pleasure but at other times diverting his inclination to the proper
object. Horace, in speaking of the means of satisfying the venereal
appetite, proposes to himself as a matter of indifference a prostitute
of either sex: and the same poet, who forgetting himself now and then
says a little here and there about boys, says a great deal everywhere
about women. The same observation will hold good with respect to every
other personage of antiquity who either by his own account or that of
another is represented to us as being infected with this taste. It is
so in all the poets who in any of their works have occasion to say
anything about themselves. Some few appear to have had no appetite for
boys, as is the case for instance with Ovid, who takes express notice
of it and gives a reason for it. But it is a neverfailing rule wherever
you see any thing about boys, you see a great deal more about women.
Virgil has one Alexis, but he has Galateas [blank] in abundance. Let us
be unjust to no man: not even to a paederast. In all antiquity there is
not a single instance of an author nor scarce an explicit account of
any other man who was addicted exclusively to this taste. Even in
modern times the real womenhaters are to be found not so much among
paederasts, as among monks and catholic priests, such of them, be they
more or fewer, who think and act in consistency with their profession.
Reason why it might he expected so to do
I
say even in modern times; for there is one circumstance which should
make this taste where it does prevail much more likely to be exclusive
at present than it was formerly. I mean the severity with which it is
now treated by the laws and the contempt and abhorrence with which it
is regarded by the generality of the people. If we may so call it, the
persecution they meet with from all quarters, whether deservedly or
not, has the effect in this instance which persecution has and must
have more or less in all instances, the effect of rendering those
persons who are the objects of it more attached than they would
otherwise be to the practise it proscribes. It renders them the more
attached to one another, sympathy of itself having a powerful tendency,
independent of all other motives, to attach a man to his own companions
in misfortune. This sympathy has at the same time a powerful tendency
to beget a proportionable antipathy even towards all such persons as
appear to be involuntary, much more to such as appear to be the
voluntary, authors of such misfortune. When a man is made to suffer it
is enough on all other occasions to beget in him a prejudice against
those by whose means or even for whose sake he is made to suffer. When
the hand of every man is against a person, his hand, or his heart at
least, will naturally be against every man. It would therefore be
rather singular if under the present system of manners these outcasts
of society should be altogether so well disposed towards women as in
antient times when they were left unmolested. The Helotes had no great
regard, as we may suppose, for the Lacedaemonians; Negroes, we may
suppose, have not now any violent affection for Negro-drivers; the
Russian boors for the Boyards that are their masters; native Peruvians
[198a is blank] [I98b follows] for Spaniards; Hallashores [?] for
Bramins, Bice and Chehterees; thieves for justices and hangmen; nor
insolvent debtors for bum-bailiffs. It would not be wonderful if a
miserable paederast of modern times should look upon every woman as a
merciless creditor at whose suit he is in continual danger of being
consigned not to a prison only but either to the gallows or to the
flames. The reason which there may be in point of utility or on any
other account for treating these people with such severity makes no
difference in the sentiments which such severity is calculated to
inspire; for whatever reason there may be, they, one may be certain, do
not see it. Spite of such powerful incentives it does not appear that
the effect of this propensity is in general even under the present
system to inspire in those who are infected with it an aversion or even
an indifference to the other sex: a proof how powerful the force of
nature is and how little reason the sex whose dominion is supported by
the influence of pleasure have for being apprehensive of any permanent
alienation in the affections of those fugitive vassals, were no harsh
measure taken to drive them into rebellion.
The notion that it does has sometimes operated by accident in favor of persons under prosecution
The
popular notion that all paederasts are in proportion women haters is
the ground of a medium of exculpation which we see commonly adopted in
the few instances that occur in England of a man's being prosecuted for
this offence. It is common in any such case for those who are concerned
in behalf of the defendant to produce as many presumptions as they can
collect of his propensity to women. Such evidence may have some weight
with those who are under the influence of this prejudice, although the
many instances in which it has been opposed by the clearest positive
evidence of the fact are sufficient of themselves to shew the weakness
of it. It may be of use to mention this to the end that, if it should
be thought expedient to punish this offence, those who are to judge it
may be put on their guard against a medium of exculpation which appears
to be fallacious.
As it excludes not the regular taste, it is liable to disturb marriage
This
circumstance, however, which in one set of circumstances tends to the
exculpation of the practise in question, in another situation of
things, and, in another point of view, operates to the commination of
it. I have already given the considerations which seem to render it
probable that this propensity does not in any considerable degree stand
in the way of marriage: on that occasion we took it for granted for the
time that if it did not hinder a man from engaging in matrimonial
connection, it was of no prejudice to the other sex at all. When a
man was once lodged within the pale of matrimony, we took no notice of
any danger there might be of his deviating afterwards into such
extravagances. This how ever is an event which, from the two
propensities not appearing to be exclusive of one another, we have
reason a priori to suppose not to be in itself absolutely improbable,
and which from occasional observation, but particularly from antient
history, we find not to be uncommon. The wretches who are prosecuted
for this offence often turn out to be married men. The poet Martial, we
find, has a wife with whom he is every now and then jarring on the
score of the complaints she makes of his being unfaithful to her in
this way. It is to be considered however that it is [not] to the amount
of the whole sum of the infidelities the husband is guilty of in this
way that a wife is a sufferer by this propensity but only to the
surplus, whatever it may be, over and above what, were it not for this
propensity, the same man would be guilty of in the natural way. A woman
would not be a sufferer by this propensity any further than as it
betrays her husband into an act of infidelity to which he would not
have been betrayed by the allurements of any female rival. Supposing
the degree of infidelity in both cases to be equal, there seems reason
to think that a woman would not be so much hurt by an infidelity of
this sort as by an infidelity into [199] which her husband had been
betrayed by a person of her own sex. An attachment of the former kind
could not be lasting, that is confined for any length of time to the
same individual; of the other she might not be satisfied but that it
might be lasting. It is for the same reason that a woman's affection
would not be so much wounded, however her pride might, by her husband's
intriguing with a servant wench or other woman of a condition very much
her inferior as by his intriguing with a woman of a condition near
about the level of her own. It is indeed a general observation that in
all cases of rivalry the jealousy is the greater the nearer in all
respects the condition of the rival is to your own. It is on the same
principle that in matters of religion Jansenists and Molinists are
often apt to be more averse to one another than either are to
Protestants; Methodists and regular Church of England men than either
are to Presbyterians; Protestants and Catholics than either are to
Jews; and in general Schismatics in any church than either are to
Heretics or to persons of a different religion.
This at least would seem likely to have been the case in times in which
the propensity was not held in the abhorrence in which it is held at
present, and where consequently the wife would [not] have as at present
to add to her other motives of concern the infamy with which under the
present system it is one effect of such behavior to cast upon any man
who is guilty of it.
Causes of this taste
I have
already intimated how little reason there seems to be to apprehend that
the preference of the improper to the proper object should ever be
constant or general. A very extraordinary circumstance it undoubtedly
is that it should ever have arrived at the heighth at which we find it
to have arrived. The circumstance is already an extraordinary one as it
is: it would be much more so if it were common under equal
importunities for the improper object to meet with a decided
preference. But such an incident there is every reason, as I have
already observ[ed], for not looking upon as likely to become otherwise
than rare. Its prevalence, wherever it prevails to a considerable
degree, seems always to be owing to some circumstance relative to the
education of youth. It is the constraint in which the venereal appetite
is kept under the system of manners established in all civilized
nations that seems to be the principal cause of its deviating every now
and then into these improper channels. When the desire is importunate
and no proper object is at hand it will sometimes unavoidably seek
relief in an improper way. In the antient as well as the modern plans
of education young persons of the male sex are kept as much as possible
together: they are kept as much at a distance as possible from the
female. They are in a way to use all sorts of familiarities with each
other: they are kept as much as possible from using any sorts of
familiarities with females. Among the antients they used to be brought
together in circumstances favourable to the giving birth to such
desires by the custom of exercising themselves naked. (See Esp. des
Loix, L. 8, ch. ii. Plut. Morals. J.B.) On the present plan they are
often forced together under circumstances still more favourable to it
by the custom of lying naked together in feather beds, implements of
indulgence and incentives to the venereal appetite with which the
antients were unacquainted. When a propensity of this sort is once
acquired it is easier to conceive how it should continue than how it
should be at first acquired. It is no great wonder if the sensation be
regarded as if it were naturally connected with the object, whatever it
be, by means of which it came to be first experienced. That this
practise is the result not of indifference to the proper object but of
the difficulty of coming at the proper object, the offspring not of
wantonness but of necessity, the consequence of the want of
opportunity with the proper object, and the abundance of opportunity
with such as are improper is a notion that seems warranted by the joint
opinions of Montesquieu and Voltaire. “The crime against
nature,” says the former, “will never make any great
progress in society unless people are prompted to it by some particular
custom, as among the Greeks, where the youths of that country performed
all their exercises naked; as amongst us, where domestic education is
disused; as amongst the Asiatics, where particular persons have a great
number of women whom they despise, while others can have none at
all.” (Esp. des Loix, L. 12, ch. 6. J.B.)
“When the young males of our species,” says Voltaire,
“brought up together, feel the force which nature begins to.
unfold in them, and fail to find the natural object of their instinct,
they fall back on what resembles it. Often, for two or three years, a
young man resembles a beautiful girl, with the freshness of his
complexion, the brilliance of his coloring, and the sweetness of his
eyes; if he is loved, it's because nature makes a mistake; homage is
paid to the fair sex by attachment to one who owns its beauties, and
when the years have made this resemblance disappear, the mistake
ends.”
And this is the way:
Pluck the brief Spring, the first flowers of youth.
[Ovid, Metamorphoses, X, 84-85. Ed]
“It is well known that this mistake of nature is much more common
in mild climates than in the icy north, because the blood is more
inflamed there and opportunity more also, what seems only a weakness in
young Alcibiades is a disgusting abomination in a Dutch sailor or a
Muscovite subtler.” [Philosophical Dictionary. Ed.]
“Pederasty,” says Beccaria, “so severely punished by
law and so freely subjected to tortures which triumph over innocence,
is based less on man's needs when he lives in freedom and on his own,
than on his passions when he lives with others in slavery. It draws its
strength, not so much from a surfeit of every other pleasure, as from
that education which begins by making men useless to themselves in
order to make them useful to others. In those institutions packed with
hot-blooded youth, natural vigour, as it develops, is faced with
insurmountable obstacles to every other kind of relationship and wears
itself out in an activity useless to humanity, and which brings on
premature old age.” [Of Crimes and Punishments, ch. 36. Ed.]
Whether, if it robbed women, it ought at all events to be punished?
The
result of the whole is that there appears not any great reason to
conclude that, by the utmost increase of which this vice is
susceptible, the female part of the species could be sufferers to any
very material amount. If however there was any danger of their being
sufferers to any amount at all this would of itself be ample reason for
wishing to restrain the practise. It would not however follow
absolutely that it were right to make use of punishment for that
purpose, much less that it were right to employ any of those very
severe punishments which are commonly in use. It will not be right to
employ any punishment, 1. if the mischief resulting from the punishment
be equal or superior to the mischief of the offence, nor 2. if there be
any means of compassing the same end without the expense of punishment.
Punishment, says M. Beccaria, is never just so long as any means remain
untried by which the end of punishment may be accomplished at a cheaper
rate. [200c and 200d are blank] [201]
Inducements for punishing it not justified on the ground of mischievousness
When
the punishment [is] so severe, while the mischief of the offence is so
remote and even so problematical, one cannot but suspect that the
inducements which govern are not the same with those which are avowed.
When the idea of the mischievousness of an offence is the ground of
punishing it, those of which the mischief is most immediate and obvious
are punished first: afterwards little by little the legislator becomes
sensible of the necessity of punishing those of which the mis- chief is
less and less obvious. But in England this offence was punished with
death before ever the malicious destruction or fraudulent obtainment or
embezzlement of property was punished at all, unless the obligation of
making pecuniary amends is to be called a punishment; before even the
mutilation of or the perpetual disablement of a man was made punishable
otherwise than by simple imprisonment and fine. (It was the custom to
punish it with death so early as the reign of Ed. 1st. See Miroir des
Justices, ch. 4, 14. Fleta. J.B.)
But on the ground of antipathy
In
this case, in short, as in so many other cases the disposition to
punish seems to have had no other ground than the antipathy with which
persons who had punishment at their disposal regarded the offender. The
circumstances from which this antipathy may have taken its rise may be
worth enquiring to. 1. One is the physical antipathy to the offence.
This circumstance indeed, were we to think and act consistently, would
of itself be nothing to the purpose. The act is to the highest degree
odious and disgusting, that is, not to the man who does it, for he does
it only because it gives him pleasure, but to one who thinks [?] of it.
Be it so, but what is that to him? He has the same reason for doing it
that I have for avoiding it. A man loves carrion — this is very
extraordinary — much good may it do him. But what is this to me
so long as I can indulge myself with fresh meat? But such reasoning,
however just, few persons have calmness to attend to. This propensity
is much stronger than it is to be wished it were to confound physical
impurity with moral. (I pass without examination from the literal use
of the word impunity [to] the figurative. J.B.) From a man's possessing
a thorough aversion to a practice himself, the transition is but too
natural to his wishing to see all others punished who give into it. Any
pretence, however slight, which promises to warrant him in giving way
to this intolerant propensity is eagerly embraced. Look the world over,
we shall find that differences in point of taste and opinion are
grounds of animosity as frequent and as violent as any opposition in
point of interest. To disagree with our taste [and] to oppose our
opinions is to wound our sympathetic feelings and to affront our pride.
James the 1st of England, a man [more] remarkable for weakness than for
cruelty, conceived a violent antipathy against certain persons who were
called Anabaptists on account of their differing from him in regard to
certain speculative points of religion. As the circumstances of the
times were favourable to [the] gratification of antipathy arising from
such causes, he found means to give himself the satisfaction of
committing one of them to the flames. The same king happened to have,
an antipathy to the use of tobacco. But as the circumstances of the
times did not afford the same pretences nor the same facility for
burning tobacco- smokers as for burning Anabaptists, he was forced to
content himself with writing a flaming book against it. The same king,
if he be the author of that first article of the works which bear his
name, and which indeed were owned by him, reckons this practise among
the few offences which no Sovereign ever ought to pardon. This must
needs seem rather extraordinary to those who have a notion that a
pardon in this case is what he himself, had he been a subject, might
have stood in need of.
Philosophical pride
This
transition from the idea of physical to that of moral antipathy is the
more ready when the idea of pleasure, especially of intense pleasure,
is connected with that of the act by which the antipathy is excited.
Philosophical pride, to say nothing at present of superstition, has
hitherto employed itself with effect in setting people a-quarrelling
with whatever is pleasurable even to themselves, and envy will always
be disposing them to quarrel with what appears to be pleasurable to
others. In the notions of a certain class of moralists we ought, not
for any reason they are disposed to give for it, but merely because we
ought, to set ourselves against every thing that recommends itself to
us under the form of pleasure. Objects, it is true, the nature of which
it is to afford us the highest pleasures we are susceptible of are apt
in certain circumstances to occasion us still greater pains. But that
is not the grievance: for if it were, the censure which is bestowed on
the use of any such object would be proportioned to the probability
that could be shewn in each case of its producing such greater pains.
But that is not the case: it is not the pain that angers them but the
pleasure.
Religion
We need not consider at any
length [the length] to which the rigour of such philosophy may be
carried when reinforced by notions of religion. Such as we are
ourselves, such and in many respects worse it is common for us to make
God to be: for fear blackens every object that it looks upon. It is
almost as common for men to conceive of God as a being of worse than
human malevolence in their hearts, as to stile [?] him a being of
infinite benevolence with their lips. This act is one amongst others
which some men and luckily not we ourselves have a strong propensity to
commit. In some persons it produces it seems, for there is no disputing
a pleasure: there needs no more to prove that it is God's pleasure they
should abstain from it. For it is God's pleasure that in the present
life we should give up all manner of pleasure, whether it stands in the
way of another's happiness or not, which is the sure sign and earnest
of the pleasure he will take in bestowing on us all imaginable
happiness hereafter ; that is, in a life of the futurity of which he
has given us no other proofs than these. [202]
This is so true that, according to the notions of these moralists and
these religionists, that is, of the bulk of moralists and religionists
who write, pleasures that are allowed of, are never allowed of for
their own sake but for the sake of something else which though termed
an advantage or a good presents not to any one so obviously and to them
perhaps not at all, the idea of pleasure. When the advantage ceases the
pleasure is condemned. Eating and drinking by good luck are necessary
for the preservation of the individual: therefore eating and drinking
are tolerated, and so is the pleasure that attends the course of these
functions in so far as it is necessary to that end; but if you eat or
if you drink otherwise than or beyond what is thus necessary, if you
eat or drink for the sake of pleasure, says the philosopher, “It
is shameful”; says the religionist, “It is sinful.”
The gratification of the venereal appetite is also by good luck
necessary to the preservation of the species: therefore it is tolerated
in as far as it is necessary to that end, not otherwise. Accordingly it
has been a question seriously debated whether a man ought to permit
himself the partaking of this enjoyment with his wife when from age or
any other circumstance there is no hope of children: and it has often
been decided in the negative. For the same reason or some other which
is not apparent, for a man to enjoy his wife at unseasonable times in
certain systems of laws has been made a capital offence. Under the
above restriction however it has been tolerated. It has been tolerated,
but as the pleasure appeared great, with great reluctance and at any
rate not encouraged; it has been permitted not as a good but as a
lesser evil. It has indeed been discouraged and great rewards offered
in a future life for those who will forego it in the present.
It may be asked indeed, if pleasure is not a good, what is life good
for, and what is the purpose of preserving it? But the most obvious and
immediate consequences of a proposition may become invisible when a
screen has been set before by the prejudices of false philosophy or the
terrors of a false religion.
Hatred of pleasure
Nero
I think it was, or some other of the Roman tyrants, who is said to have
offered a reward to any one who should discover a new pleasure. That
is, in fact, no more than what is done by those who offer rewards for
new poems, for new mechanical contrivances, for improvements in
agriculture and in the arts; which are all but so many means of
producing new pleasures, or what comes to the same thing, of producing
a greater quantity of the old ones. The object however that in these
cases is advertised for is not advertised for under the name of
pleasure, so that the ears of these moralists are not offended with
that detested sound. In the case abovementioned, from the character of
the person who offered the reward it is natural enough to presume that
the sort of pleasure he had in view in offering it was sensual and
probably venereal, in which way no new discoveries would be endured. It
is an observation of Helvetius and, I believe, of Mr. Voltaire's, that
if a person were born with a particular source of enjoyment, in
addition to the 5 or 6 senses we have at present, he would be hunted
out of the world as a monster not fit to live. Accordingly nothing is
more frequent than for those who could bear with tolerable composure
the acts of tyranny by which all Rome was filled with terror and
desolation to lose all patience when they come to the account of those
miserable devices of lasciviousness which had no other effect than that
of giving surfeit and disgust to the contemptible inventor.
How far the antipathy is a just ground
Meanwhile
the antipathy, whatever it may arise from, produces in persons how many
soever they be in whom it manifests itself, a particular kind of pain
as often as the object by which the antipathy is excited presents
itself to their thoughts. This pain, whenever it appears, is
unquestionably to be placed to the account of the mischief of the
offence, and this is one reason for the punishing of it. More than this
— upon the view of any pain which these obnoxious persons are
made to suffer, a pleasure results to those by whom the antipathy is
entertained, and this pleasure affords an additional reason for the
punishing of it. There remain however two reasons against punishing it.
The antipathy in question (and the appetite of malevolence that results
from it) as far as it is not warranted by the essential
mischieviousness of the offence is grounded only in prejudice. It may
therefore be assuaged and reduced to such a measure as to be no longer
painful only in bringing to view the considerations which shew it to be
ill-grounded. The case is that of the accidental existence of an
antipathy which [would have] no foundation [if] the principle of
utility were to be admitted as a sufficient reason for gratifying it by
the punishment of the object; in a word, if the propensity to punish
were admitted in this or any case as a sufficient ground for punishing,
one should never know where to stop. Upon monarchical principles, the
Sovereign would be in the right to punish any man he did not like; upon
popular principles, every man, or at least the majority of each
community, would be in the right to punish every man upon no better
reason.
If it were, so would heresy
If this were
admitted we should be forced to admit the propriety of applying
punishment, and that to any amount, to any offence for instance which
the government should find a pleasure in comprising under the name of
heresy. I see not, I must confess, how a Protestant, or any person who
should be for looking upon this ground as a sufficient ground for [203]
burning paederasts, could with consistency condemn the Spaniards for
burning Moors or the Portuguese for burning Jews: for no paederast can
be more odious to a person of unpolluted taste than a Moor is to a
Spaniard or a Jew to an orthodox Portuguese.
The antipathy itself a punishment
Besides
this, the antipathy in question, so long as it subsists, draws with it
in course, and without having recourse to the political magistrate, a
very galling punishment, and this punishment is the heavier the greater
the number of persons is by whom the antipathy is entertained and the
more intense it is in each person: it increases therefore in proportion
to the demand there is for punishment on this ground. Although the
punishing it by the hands of the magistrate were not productive of the
ill consequences just stated, it would seem hard to punish it in this
way upon the ground of that circumstance which necessarily occasions it
to be punished another way; its being already punished beyond what is
enough is but an indifferent reason to give for punishing it more.
Punishment however not an incentive
Some
writers have mentioned as an objection to the punishing of practises of
the obscene kind, that the punishment is a means of putting men in mind
to make experiment of the practise: the investigation of the offence
and the publicity of the punishment being the means of conveying the
practise to the notice of a multitude of persons who otherwise would
never have thought of any such thing. From the circumstance of its
being punished they learn of its being practised, from the circumstance
of its being practised they conclude that there is a pleasure in it;
from the circumstance of its being punished so severely they conclude
that the pleasure is a great one, since it overcomes the dread of so
great a punishment. That this must often happen is not to be denied,
and in so far as it does happen and occasions the offence to be
repeated it weighs against the benefit of the punishment. This is
indeed the most popular argument of any that can be urged against the
punishment of such practises; but it does not appear to be
well-grounded. It proves nothing unless the punishment tends as
strongly in the one way to spread the practise as it does in the other
to repress it. This, however, does not appear to be the case. We should
not suppose it a priori for at the same time that it brings to view the
idea of the offence it brings to view in connection with that idea the
idea not only of punishment but of infamy; not only of the punishment
which should prevent men's committing it in the face of the public, but
of the infamy which should prevent their discovering any inclination to
commit it to the nearest and most trusty of their friends. It does not
appear to be the case in point of experience. In former times, when it
was not punished, it prevailed to a very great degree; in modern times
in the very same countries since it has been punished it has prevailed
in a much less degree. Besides this, the mischief produced by the
punishment in this way may be lessened in a considerable degree by
making the trial and all the other proceedings private, which may be
done without any danger of abuse by means of the expedient suggested in
the book relative to procedure.
Danger of false prosecutions greater in this case than others
A
very serious objection, however, to the punishment of this offence is
the opening it makes for false and malicious prosecutions. This danger
in every case weighs something against the reasons for applying
punishment, but in this case it weighs much more considerably than
perhaps in any other. Almost every other offence affords some
particular tests of guilt, the absence of which constitutes so in any
criterions of innocence. The evidence of persons will be in some way or
other confirmed by the evidence of things: in the ordinary offences
against property the circumstance of the articles being missing or seen
in undue place, in offences against persons the marks of violence upon
the person. In these and, in short, in all other or almost all other
cases where the offence has really been committed, some circumstances
will take place relative to the appearance of things, and will
therefore be expected to be proved. In any offences which have hatred
for their motive the progress of the quarrel will afford a number of
characteristic circumstances to fix the imputation upon the person who
is guilty. In the case of rape, for instance, where committed on a
virgin, particular characteristic appearances will not fail to have
been produced, and even where the object has been a married woman or a
person of the same sex marks of violence will have been produced by the
resistance. But when a filthiness of this sort is committed between two
persons, both willing, no such circumstances need have been exhibited;
no proof therefore of such circumstances will be required. Wherever,
therefore, two men are together, a third person may alledge himself to
have seen them thus employing themselves without fear of having the
truth of his story disproved. With regard to a bare proposal of this
sort the danger is still greater: one man may charge it upon any other
man without the least danger of being detected. For a man to bring a
charge of this sort against any other man without the possibility of
its being disproved there needs no more than for them to have been
alone together for a few moments.
Used as an instrument of extortion
This
mischief is often very severely felt. In England the severity of the
punishment and what is supported by it, the moral antipathy to the
offence, is frequently made use of as a means of extorting money. It is
the most terrible weapon that a robber can take in hand; and a number
of robberies that one hears of, which probably are much fewer than the
ones which one does not hear of, are committed by this means. If a man
has resolution and the incidental circumstances are favourable, he may
stand the brunt and meet his accuser in the face of justice; but the
danger to his reputation will at any rate be considerable. Men of timid
natures have often been almost ruined in their fortunes ere they can
summon up resolution to commit their reputations to the hazard of a
trial. A man's innocence can never be his security; knowing this it
must be an undaunted man to whom it can give confidence; a
well-seasoned perjurer will have finally the advantage over him.
Whether a man be thought to have actually been guilty of this practise
or only to be disposed to it, his reputation suffers equal ruin. [204]
After so much has been said on the abomination of paederasty, little
need be said of the other irregularities of the venereal appetite. If
it be problematical whether it be expedient upon the whole to punish
the former, it seems next to certain that there can be no use in
punishing any of the latter.
Between women
Where women
contrive to procure themselves the sensation by means of women, the
ordinary course of nature is as much departed from as when the like
abomination is practised by men with men. The former offence however is
not as generally punished as the latter. It appears to have been
punished in France but the law knows nothing of it in England. (Code
penal, Tit. 35, p 238. J.B.)
Whether worse between men and women than between men
It
seems to be more common for men to apply themselves to a wrong part in
women and in this case grave authors have found more enormity than when
the sex as well as the part of the object is mistaken. Those who go
after the principle of the affront, which they say in affairs of any
such sort is to God Almighty, assure us that the former contrivance is
a more insolent affront than the latter. (See Fort. Rep. qua supra.
J.B. [i.e., 187b, in “Notes.” Ed.]) The affront should be
the same if from necessity or caprice a person of the female sex should
make use of a wrong part in one of the male. If there be one idea more
ridiculous than another, it is that of a legislator who, when a man and
a woman are agreed about a business of this sort, thrusts himself in
between them, examining situations, regulating times and prescribing
modes and postures. The grave physician who, as soon as he saw Governor
Sancho take a fancy to a dish, ordered it away is the model, though but
an imperfect one, of such a legislator.
Thus
far his business goes on smoothly: he may hang or burn the parties
according as he fancies without difficulty. But he will probably be a
little at a loss when he comes to enquire with the Jesuit Sanchez (De
Matrimonio) how the case stands when the man for example, having to do
with a woman, begins in one part and consummates in another; thinks of
one person or of one part while he is employing himself with another;
begins with a woman and leaves her in the lurch. Without calling in the
principle of utility such questions may be multiplied and remain
undecided for evermore; consult the principle of utility, and such
questions never will be started.
Bestiality
An
abomination which meets with as little quarter as any of the preceding
is that where a human creature makes use in this way of a beast or
other sensitive creature of a different species. A legislator who
should take Sanchez for his guide might here repeat the same string of
distinctions about the vas proprium and improprium, the imaginations
and the simultaneity and so forth. Accidents of this sort will
sometimes happen; for distress will force a man upon strange
expedients. But one might venture to affirm that if all the sovereigns
in Europe were to join in issuing proclamations inviting their subjects
to this exercise in the warmest terms, it would never get to such a
heighth as to be productive of the smallest degree of political
mischief. The more of these sorts of prosecutions are permitted the
more scope there is given for malice or extortion to make use of them
to effect its purpose upon the innocent, and the more public they are
the more of that mischief is incurred which consists in shocking the
imaginations of persons of delicacy with a very painful sentiment.
Burning the animal
Some
persons have been for burning the poor animal with great ceremony under
the notion of burning the remembrance of the affair. (See Puffendorf,
Bks. 2, Ch. 3, 5. 3. Bacon's Abridg. Title Sodomy. J.B.) A more simple
and as it should seem a more effectual course to take would be not to
meddle or make smoke [?] about the matter.
Masturbation
Of
all irregularities of the venereal appetite, that which is the most
incontestably pernicious is one which no legislator seems ever to have
made an attempt to punish. I mean the sort of impurity which a person
of either sex may be guilty of by themselves. This is often of the most
serious consequence to the health and lasting happiness of those who
are led to practise it. Its enervating influence is much greater than
that of any other exertion of the venereal faculty, and that on three
different accounts: 1) Any single act of this kind is beyond comparison
more enervating than any single act of any of those other kinds. The
reason of this is not clear; but the fact is certain. Physicians are
all agreed about it. 2) Persons [are] in a way to give into this
practise at an earlier age than that in which they are in a way to give
in to any of those other practises, that is, at an age when the
influence of any enervating cause is greater. As the violence to
modesty is rather less in this case than in any of these others, a
person will with less difficulty yield to the impulse whether of nature
or example. 3) In all those other cases the propensity may be kept
within bounds by the want of opportunities; in this case there can
scarce ever be any want of opportunities.
Physicians are also agreed that this is not an infrequent cause of
indifference in each of the sexes to the other, and in the male sex it
often ends in impotence.
It is not only more
mischievous to each person than any of those other impurities, but it
appears everywhere to be much more frequent.
In
popular estimation however the guilt of it is looked upon as much less
than that of any of them; and yet the real mischief we see is
incomparably greater, and yet it has never been punished by any law.
Would it then be right to appoint [205] punishment for it? By no means;
and for this plain reason, because no punishment could ever have any
effect. It can always be committed without any danger or at least
without any apparent danger of a discovery.
Domestic discipline the proper remedy against impurities
With
regard to all the abuses of the venereal appetite while the party is
under age, they seem to be the proper objects of domestic discipline;
after he is come to be out of that jurisdiction, or even while he is
yet under it, these or any other indecencies committed in the face of
the public will be proper objects of the coercion of the laws; while
they are covered with the veil of secrecy the less that is said about
them and particularly by the law the better.
Notes Relative to
Bentham's Essay on Paederasty
[The
following notes were written by Bentham immediately before the above
essay, but their substance, though closely related to the essay, was
not incorporated into it except for the first three sentences. Ed.]
[187] Distinction between physical impurity and moral
The
propensity is stronger than there is reason to wish it should be, to
confound moral impurity and turpitude with physical impurity and
turpitude; from observing the latter in any case, especially when
combined with pleasure, to impute the [former]. From a man's being
thoroughly averse to a practise himself the transition is but too
natural to his wishing to see all others punished who give in to it.
Any pretense, however slight, which promises to warrant him in giving
way to this propensity is eagerly embraced. It is this cause which more
perhaps than any other, more even than pecuniary interest, has
contributed to produce the persecutions that hath been raised upon the
ground of heresy.
Different men will have
different opinions but, for my own part, I must confess I can not bring
myself to entertain so mean an opinion of the charms of the better part
of the species or of the taste of the other as to suppose it can ever
be necessary to send a man to make love with a halter about his neck.
Antipathy no sufficient warrant
Non
amo te, Sabidi & c. [Martial, I, 32, Ed.] may be quite enough when
all the question only is whether one shall see Sabidius or not see him:
but when the question is whether Sabidius shall be burnt alive or let
alone the reasons which a man should give for burning him alive may be
expected to be of a cast somewhat more substantial.
Whether it is an affront to God?
According
to some there are two sorts of High Treason, High Treason against God,
the Heavenly King, and High treason against the earthly king: and this
is High Treason against God. (See a book of old English Law entitled
Miroir des Justices, Ch. 1, Sect. 4; Ch. 4, Sect. 13; Ch. 2, Sect.
11.J.B.) According to this account of the matter it is an offence
scarce distinguishable from that which the Titans were guilty of when
they revolted against Jupiter. Judge Fortescue, an Earl of
Macclesfield, Chancellor of England, and other sages of the English law
seem to have given into this idea. (Fortescue's Reports for the case of
the King against Wiseman. J.B.). His Lordship shews how it comes to be
High Treason against the King of Heaven. It is of the nature of a
challenge of which that Sovereign is the object — “a direct
affront to the Author of Nature and insolent expression of contempt of
his wisdom, condemning the provision made by him and defying both it
and him.” According to this account of the matter, the offence
should fall indifferently either within our first class, under the
title, offences against the persons of individuals (reckoning God as an
individual), or within the fourth class under the title of High
Treason. But this account of the matter however ingenious seems hardly
to be just.
Whether it hurts population — Bermondus
Bermondus,
a canonist cited with approbation by the two great English lawyers
above mentioned says that in this point of view it is worse than
murder. For a murderer destroys but one man whereas a Sodomite puts to
death “every man that lives.” “Apud Deum tale
peccatum reputatur gravius homicidio, eo quia unum homicida unum
hominem tantum, Sodomita autem totum genus humanum delere
videtur.” This, he assures us, is God's way of taking the
account. If this be the case it must be confessed that God's arithmetic
is a little different from man's arithmetic.
The
author of the article Sodomy in the law abridgement that goes by the
name of Bacon's is more moderate. “If any crime,” says he,
“deserve to be punished in a more exemplary manner this does.
Other crimes are prejudicial to society, but this strikes at the being
thereof; for it is seldom known that a person who has been once guilty
of so unnatural an abuse of his generative faculties has afterwards a
proper regard for women.”
God's burning Sodom — whether a sufficient warrant?
It
has been observed with regard to this offence that God himself punished
it with fire; and this has been given as a reason, not only for its
being punished but for its being punished with fire.
1. If God
according to supposition has punished any practise, it was either on
account of the mischievousness of the practise to society or on some
other account. If the practise be of the number of those which are
prejudicial to society, it will already be punished on that ground;
there is no occasion to mention any other. If it be not prejudicial for
society, there can be no other reason for society to meddle with it.
2.
If it be for any other reason than being prejudicial to society that
God has punished the act in question, this can be no reason at all for
man's punishing it. For there can be no reason but this to man. If then
God punished it, it was for a reason which men can not know.
3.
When it is clear that in any individual instance God has punished an
act, in that individual instance the very circumstance of its being he
who punished it ought with us to be a sufficient reason for his having
done so.
But when we can find no [188]
other reason, if, in any other individual instance of the same sort of
act, God does not punish it, there is no reason at all for punishing
it. The circumstance of his not punishing it in the latter instance
proves as much that it ought not to be punished in that case as the
circumstance of his having punished it in the former case proves that
it was right to punish it in that former case.
For these or other reasons it is an opinion that seems to spread more
and more among divines of all persuasions, that the miraculous and
occasional dispensations of an extraordinary providence afford no fit
rule to govern the ordinary and settled institutions of human
legislators. If they were, simple fornication, sparing enemies taken in
battle (the offence of Korah, Dathan and Abiram and their partizans,
for which 15,000 of the people suffered death. Numbers ch. 16. J.B.),
murmuring against authority, and making mock at old age (the offence
for which two and forty children were torn to pieces by bears, at the
intercession of Elijah. 2 Kings ch. 2. J.B.), to mention those cases
only among a vast number, had need to be made capital offences. If any
man, under the notion of its being agreeable to God, would do any act
that is prejudicial to society, he should produce a particular
commission from God given him in that individual instance. If a man
without a special commission from God is to be justified in doing any
violent act that has ever been done by a special commission from God, a
man might as well kill his son because God commissioned Abraham to kill
Isaac.
1. With regard to the offence in question if it had
been God's pleasure that it should be punished throughout the earth
with the punishment of fire, it seems reasonable to conclude that he
would at least have provided for its being punished in that manner
among his own people, the Jews. But in the Jewish laws it is only
provided that such offenders shall be “put to death”
generally, just as several kinds of incest and the offence of
performing conjugal duty at an unseasonable conjuncture are to be
punished. As a proof that burning was not particularly intended, but
rather was meant to be excluded, in the next verse a particular kind of
incest is mentioned, that of him who has knowledge of a mother and her
daughter: and for this the punishment of burning to death is specially
appointed (Levit. ch. 20.J.B.) [The punishment in the Talmud is
stoning. Ed.].
2. Even with regard to the cities in question, it
is not said that this was the only one nor even the greatest of the
offences for which those cities were destroy'd. The offences imputed to
them are in the English translation termed by the general names of
“wickedness” (Genesis, ch. 18.J.B.), and
“iniquity” (Ibid., ch. 19, v. 15, J.B.), and their conduct
opposed to “righteousness.” In this particular respect the
Canaanites in question could not be more culpable than the antient
Greeks in that which is deemed the most virtuous period of their
history. Yet it appears not that this punishment was ever inflicted by
heaven for such a cause upon the antient Greeks.
3. True it is
that the only offence which is mentioned as having been committed by
them on any individual occasion is an offence of a sort which appears
to have originated in the depraved appetite in question. It is not,
however, the same offence precisely which in England is punished with
simple death, and in France with burning, but one of a very different
complexion and of a much deeper die. The offence attempted by the
profligate Canaanites carried with it two enormous aggravations: 1.
Personal violence, by which circumstance alone it stands raised as much
above the level of the offence which under the name in question men
ordinarily have in view as rape does above that of simple fornication.
2. A violation of hospitality, an aggravation of much greater odium and
indeed of much greater mischief in a rude than in a civilized state of
society.
Zeal shewn against it in the English Marine Law
In
the Articles of War established for the government of the English Navy,
in Art. 32, after providing with respect to this offence and other
species of impurity that they “shall be punished with
death” it is added “without mercy”. (By Stat. 13. Car. 2. Stat. 1.
Ch. 9. J.B.) Of all the offences of which a man in the maritime service
can be guilty, burning a fleet, betraying it to the enemy and so forth,
this is the only one which it was thought proper to exclude from mercy.
The safety of the fleet and of the Empire were in the eyes of the
legislator objects of inferior account in comparison with the
preservation of a sailor's chastity. [188d follows; see my
introduction. Ed.] [189]
Horror of singularity
In
persons of weak minds, anything which is unusual and at the same time
physically disgustful is apt to excite the passion of hate. Hatred when
once excited naturally seeks its gratification in the tormenting or
destruction of the object that excited it. Many are the innocent
animals who are punished in this way for the crime of being ugly. To
this head we may refer the propensity persons of weak and irritable
temperament, particularly women, have to the killing of toads and
spiders. The offspring of a woman when it has had any singularity
whereby it has been distinguished in a remarkable degree from the
ordinary race of human beings under the name of monster has often met
with the same treatment — hermaphrodites [for example] who, not
knowing what sex they were, have performed the functions of both. Envy
has here joined with antipathy in letting loose against these
unfortunate people the fury of the dissocial appetite.
Any desire to hurt any sensitive object which in any way has happened
to become a cause of pain to us, nay even insensitive objects, is the
natural instantaneous consequence of such pain and it always breaks out
into evil, unless where reason and reflection interfere and check it.
But in these cases, reason, far from checking has appeared from some
cause or other to dictate such behaviour.
Mischief to population reparable by fine
If
population were the only object, the mischief that a rich batchelor did
by giving him[self] up to improlific venery might be amply repaired by
obliging him to give a marriage portion to two or three couples who
wish for nothing but a in order to engage in marriage.
Athenians wanted but permission to marry two wives
When
among the Athenians the number of the people had received a dangerous
reduction by an unsuccessful war, what was the step taken to repair it?
All that was done was to permit to every man that chose it to take two
wives. This shews that it was plain enough at that time of day there
was no want of inclination on the part of the male sex toward [women]
and that there wanted nothing but permission to dispose a man to extend
his connections with the other sex. And yet at no time and among no
people was the irregular appetite in question more predominant.
How came scratching not to be held abominable?
It
is wonderful that nobody has ever yet fancied it to be sinful to
scratch where it itches, and that it has never been determined that the
only natural way of scratching is with such or such a finger and that
it is unnatural to scratch with any other. (As in Russia the only way
of making the sign of the cross is with two fingers and it is heterodox
to make it with three. J.B.) in antient Persia it was infamous to have
a cold and to take those measures which nature dictates for relieving
oneself from the inconvenience of such an indisposition. (Xenophon,
cyropaedia. J.B.)
Happily for the Persians
under the clear and steady atmosphere of that country colds were not
altogether so endemical as under the humid and changeable atmosphere of
England. But in all countries it is a practise that more or less has
always been too frequent to confound misfortune with criminality.
Punishment not necessary for the sake of women
By
the mild ordinances of nature the fair sex enjoy already a monopoly as
perfect as other monopolies are, and more perfect than they ought to
be, of the affections of the other and this monopoly is too well
secured by the means that established it to need the support of the
harsh constitutions of penal laws. A ribbon or ringlet is a much more
suitable and not less powerful tie to bind a lover than the hangman's
rope of the executioner. The man may be their friend, but it should
seem not a very judicious friend,who would advise them to conciliate
affection by horror and by force.
* Bentham's essay and
notes, with Louis Crompton's Introduction, were first published in the
1978 summer and fall issues of Journal of Homosexuality.
Afterword by John Lauritsen
Not much needs to be added to what Louis Crompton has written in the
above Abstract and in his Introduction to Bentham's essay. The main thing is that the essay is positive.
Bentham's first paragraph, despite its labored syntax, gives his
position: the “irregularities of the venereal appetite” are
not unnatural, but merely styled so; there is no reason why they should
be punished, let alone treated with the severity of the time, which
meant the death penalty.
The ostensibly
pejorative words that follow (“abominations”,
“disgusting catalog”, etc.) are merely mock condemnation,
camouflage. These words should not be taken literally; they are thrown
in only to mislead potential censors.
Bentham's
long section, “What says history”, is entirely, even
enthusiastically positive. Invoking the glory of Ancient Greece he
writes:
It may be presumed that if the Gods
amused themselves in this way — if Apollo loved Hyacinthus, if
Hercules could be in a frenzy for the loss of Hylas, and the father of
Gods and men could solace himself with Ganymede, it was neither an
odious nor an unfrequent thing for mortal men to do so. The Gods we
make, it has been well and often said, we make always after our own
image.
In sum: Bentham examines every
conceivable reason why sex between males should be punished, and he
rejects all of them. This is the thrust of his essay: Sex between males
should not be punished.
In his magnum opus
Crompton writes: “[Bentham] tried to create a neutral vocabulary,
coining such expressions as ‘the improlific appetite’ and
(echoing Beccaria) ‘the Attic mode’.” (Homosexuality
& Civilization, 2003) This is significant because Percy Bysshe
Shelley and his two good friends, Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas
Jefferson Hogg, used the expression, noctes atticae (“attic
nights”) in personal correspondence. This use of coded language
similar to Bentham's “attic mode” suggests that Shelley and
his friends had a kind of “gay consciousness”, and might
also have been interested in repeal of the sodomy statute. There was
overlap between the Bentham and the Shelley circles. Peacock knew
Bentham personally, and Bentham's protégé and life-long bachelor,
Walter Coulson, was a friend of Shelley, Hogg and Peacock.
One may speculate that there existed — and had for centuries,
perhaps from at least the time of Christopher Marlowe — not only
a gay subculture, but also underground gay scholarship and knowledge. The unlikely alternative is to regard
Bentham as an isolated case, acquiring his extensive knowledge of
all-male amours in Ancient Greece entirely on his own.
Four years after Bentham's death, the first major polemic for the
emancipation of male love appeared, when a Swiss, Heinrich Hössli,
published the first volume of a two-volume work, Eros: The Male Love of
the Greeks (1836). Using a wealth of classical and Persian literature,
Hössli argued that Male Love (Männerliebe) was not a
phantasy, a monstrosity, or rare exception, but rather a universal
human desire. In 1837 a major article on Greek pederasty by M.H.E.
Meier appeared in the encyclopedia published by Ersch and Gruber in
Leipzig. Beginning in 1864 a German, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, utilizing a
wealth of classical knowledge, published a series of polemics on the
“riddle of love between men”. Towards the end of the 19th
century two Englishmen made contributions: John Addington Symonds, a
friend and pupil of the classicist Benjamin Jowett, privately published
A Problem in Greek Ethics (1883) and A Problem in Modern Ethics (1891).
In 1885 the explorer, orientalist and polymath, Sir Richard Francis
Burton, published an essay on
“Pederasty” as
part of a “Terminal Essay” to his translation of the
Arabian Nights. Did these men work entirely on their own, or did they
tap into pooled resources, an international underground of gay
scholarship? We can only speculate.
A weakness of
Bentham's essay is that he only touches on the theological basis of
condemnation, and never mentions the Holiness Code of Leviticus, which
decrees the death penalty for sex between males. In an older monograph
I wrote: “For analytical purposes, the taboo is easier to see in
historical perspective than is homosexuality itself. Whereas homosexual
love has been practised in all societies of which we have record, the
taboo on homosexuality is a historical variable.” (John
Lauritsen, Religious Roots of the Taboo on Homosexuality, 1974).
My current thinking is as follows:
When males have sex with each other, they are expressing an ordinary,
healthy componen of male sexuality — something phylogenetically
inherent in the sexual repertoire of the human male, and thus a product
of evolution. What needs to be explained is not
“homosexuality”, but rather its condemnation. (John
Lauritsen, A Freethinker's Primer of Male Love, 1998)
A colleague of
mine, the late Arthur Warner, once referred to reform of sodomy statutes as part of the
“unfinished business of the Enlightenment”. That goal was
finally accomplished for the United States in 2003, when the Supreme
Court struck down all sodomy statutes (the generic term for laws that
criminalize sex between males). Before that, in many states gay men
were committing felonies every time that they had sex with each other.
The continuing struggle to vindicate male love is nothing less than the
struggle between reason and superstition — the struggle between
life-affirming humanism and a morbid and hateful taboo.
For
information on Pagan Press books, including A Freethinker's Primer of
Male Love and Shelley's translation of Plato's The Banquet.
