SEX OUTSIDE THE LAW

New Zealand Listener, Volume 39, Issue 1006, 28 November 1958, Page 11

SEX OUTSIDE THE LAW

Sir-yYour correspondent HI. of Lower Hutt (Listener, October 10) adds his share of slings and arrows to the unChristian and un-Godly persecution of the homosexual. He can be forgiven since he is no more responsible for his ignorance than is the homosexual for his homosexuality. H.I. is in good company; he quoted Viscount Samuel and Judges Streatfield and Lynskey, which served to show that ignorance is no respector of I.Q. The next time -H.I. reads of the hounding and exposure of some unfortunate homosexual, let him _ reflect: "There, but for the grace of God, go I’ -for he could easily have been one himself. It is a terrible affliction, and one which is unhappily incurable. The homosexual usually realises his condition in his late teens or early twenties. It is simply described: he finds that he is physically attracted by members of his own sex, not by members of the opposite sex. That is all. He did not wish to be like that. He cannot change it. Yet it means a life of fear. Fear of being "found out." Fear of the social stigma attached to the abnormality for which he is not. to blame. Fear, above all, of giving way to his sexual impulse -the drive which leads a more fortunate person to love, marriage and the security of a Christian family life. Can H.I. (who seems to claim the title of Christian) really feel no compassion for a man denied the ability to marry and raise a family? Or does he persist in the perverted belief that homosexuality and homosexual relations are vices, deliberately acquired for the thrill of it- like opium smoking or drugs? What rot! The homosexual longs, above all things, to be normal; but until science or God can perform this miracle the best the homosexual can hope for

is a short life or the courage to end it himself (while the balance of mind is disturbed, of course). The persecutors of the homosexuals are close kin to the Jew-baiters and gaschamber operators of Nazi Germany.

A.J.

P.

(Christchurch)_

Sir-Your correspondent D.S. said my views on homosexuality are out of date. They are as out of date as the Scriptures themselves, where that lust is mentioned and condemned not less than 26 times, from Genesis to Revelation. It is a sin that filled St Paul with such loathing that he declared it qa shame even to speak of it. D.S. also told us he himself is a homosexual but not a practising one. What that means only he could explain. A man might as well say he is a drunkard but does not drink; and he goes on to say, quoting Ezekiel, that "pride, fulness of bread and abundance of idleness’ was the cause of Sodom’s destruction and not homosexuality. But he overlooked the fact that it was just those conditions that led

to the vice that destroyed Sodom, and’ it is having the same result today. The Welfare State has given us "fulness of bread and abundance of idleness," and with it homosexuality and juvenile delinquency. The real tragedy of these times is the loss of the sense of "the exceeding sinfulness of sin," for "He that committeth sin is of the Devil."

H.

I.

(Upper Hutt).