BOOKS

Notices and reviews of books, articles, plays and poetry dealing with homosexuality and the sex variant. Readers are invited to send in reviews or printed matter for review.

FORD

3.: ་." ་་

THE THIRD SEX Edited by Isadore Aubin, New Books Company, New York, 1961, 112 pp. We have here another book obviously inspired by the Wolfenden Report on Homosexual Offenses and Prostitution to the British Parliament and, although that institution was not moved to action by it, perhaps the Report is serving a useful purpose in stimulating much wider discussion of homosexuality especially in its legal aspects. The present volume is a compilation of some thirtytwo articles by thirteen distinguished authors published previously in Sexology magazine. Just about every aspect of the subject is covered thus giving a view which is up-to-date and as thorough as the non-specialist reader would need. Conflicts in interpretation are not glossed over and there is a frank recognition of the yet unsolved problems. As might be expected, the legal side is made much of and the necessity of reform in that area emphasized, although it is recognized that a change in public attitude seems to be a prerequisite to legal changes.

The question of etiology or causes of homosexuality, relating to the perennial problem of heredity vs. vironment, is discussed from both sides without a dogmatic conclusion. In all probability the causation is multiple, but certainly it is neither an illness nor an abnormality. As some authors do not accept this con-

clusion, there is a discussion of possible "cure" or change to heterosexuality. Since any mental function may become disordered, cure may be appropriate if the homosexual is also a neurotic, but it seems to be now a consensus of opinion that the uncomplicated homosexual is not amenable to change.

The desirability or undesirability of change opens another question which now seems to be emerging in the minds of various thinkers on the subject and which is not dealt with in this book. The so-called population explosion of our times, noted by many anthropologists, raises the question as to whether homosexuality may not be a wise provision of Nature to offset too prolific reproduction. In India, for example, increased food production is cancelled out by the increase of population which more than keeps pace. In the Kruger Park in Africa, an attempt to protect the herbivores from the carnivores. had to be abandoned in favor of Nature's balance when the former reproduced out of all proportion. At least one authority thinks that homosexuality should and perhaps will be cultivated as a check on unlimited reproduction. Of course bitter opposition may be expected from the moralists who reject all manifestations of sex and from those churches which depend upon large families, as well as parochial schools, for their recruitment of membership in the ab-

21