behavior), more especially in cases of homosexuality, he is concerned not only with

a sex

act. The problem reaches the whole personality of the subject. Affectively the homosexual lives not in a world of men and women, but only in a world of men." (p. 226) Such a limitation is, actually, quite untypical of homophiles. By the same token one should say that, "affectively, the heterosexual male lives not in a world of men and women, but only in a world of women," which of course is absurdly uncharacteristic. The first statement illustrates very well indeed how erroneous can be a generalization derived from special cases, yet how acceptable it can be made to appear when speciously introduced.

Much less adroit techniques are evident when Dr. Cavanagh discusses the "objective" morality of inversion. A reasoned judgment as to the morality of an act is usually based upon its value and outcome for the individuals concerned -but not in Dr. Cavanagh's view. As criteria of "objective" morality, he cites: (1) the Old and New Testaments of the Bible; (2) the Teachings of the Fathers of the Church; (3) The Councils of the Church; and (4) the Teachings on the Natural Law. His inclusion of the N. T. is scarcely surprising. However, the reader is doubtless aware that the actual disciples of Jesus who wrote the four Gospels nowhere suggest any antihomosexual bias in the teachings or attitudes of Jesus. It was left for a neo-Christian, a one-time persecutor of Christians and Jewish legalist, to fulminate about "effeminacy," "lustful acts between men," etc. The epistles of Paul have indeed furnished modern antihomosexuals with powerful ammunition but Paul's antecedents, and his general antisexual bias, cast serious doubt on the Christian validity of his opinions. The last, and most astonishing criterion of "objectivity" cited by Dr. Cavanagh -about on a par with the Medieval teaching that the earth is flat is that homosexual acts are condemned "in the opinion of all men through

recorded history." "All men" is elsewhere qualified as "all moralists and thinking men, 80 that we are not forced to believe, as in the first case that the author knows nothing beyond the limits of his medical books, and others sanctioned by the Index, but merely that his smaller category of "moralists and thinkers" does not extend far beyond an ecclesiastical elite, typified by St. Paul, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aqui-

nas.

In his subsequent discussion of the "moral responsibility of the homosexual," Dr. Cavanagh concedes that "the genuine homosexual is not is not responsible for being what he is." But one notes here, as elsewhere, his use of "homosexual" to categorize persons rather than sexual inclinations, an unscientific practice reinforced by his reference to the "homosexual personality," a term which can only suggest that sexual orientation necessarily colors or characterizes the entire individual. This is an error easily recognizable by observing that individual sex orientation determines nothing whatever in the purely intellectual sphere, and very little in the moral and esthetic spheres. The notion that the mathematics of a Newton, the philosophy of a Plato, the theories of a Darwin, or the artistic gifts of a Rembrandt, or Mozart, depend on or reflect these persons' sexual idiosyncrasies seems unworthy of attention.

On the subject of "culpability" for being an invert, and "culpability" for adult (deliberate or intentional) homosexual acts, Dr. Cavanagh begins by saying that "The state of being homosexual under practically all circumstances has in itself no more moral responsibility than the state of being heterosexual." But, as regards acts, he has already stated as a priori (1.e., as church dogma) that homosexual acts are immoral and sinful, so immoral and immoral and sinful they must remain. How two different states of being of being can be described as morally neutral when one is productive of moral

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