sion is no subject for legislation, and that the
example of France and Italy might well be followed by other nations. The
problem ought to be left to the physician, the moralist, the educator,
and finally to the operation of social opinion.

X.

SUGGESTIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF SEXUAL INVERSION IN RELATION TO LAW AND
EDUCATION.

I.

The laws in force against what are called unnatural offences derive from
an edict of Justinian, A.D. 538. The Emperor treated these offences as
criminal, on the ground that they brought plagues, famines, earthquakes,
and the destruction of whole cities, together with their inhabitants,
upon the nations who tolerated them.

II.

A belief that sexual inversion is a crime against God, nature, and the
State pervades all subsequent legislation on the subject. This belief
rests on (1) theological conceptions derived from the Scriptures; (2) a
dread of decreasing the population; (3) the antipathy of the majority
for the tastes of the minority; (4) the vulgar error that antiphysical
desires are invariably voluntary, and the result either of inordinate
lust or of satiated appetites.

III.

Scientific investigation has proved in recent years that a very large
proportion of persons in whom abnormal sexual inclinations are
manifested possess them from their earliest childhood, that they cannot
divert them into normal channels, and that they are powerless to get rid
of them. In these cases, then, legislation is interfering with the
liberty of individuals, under a certain misconception regarding the
nature of their offence.

IV.

Those who support the present laws are therefore bound to prove that the
coercion, punishment, and defamation of such persons are justified
either (1) by any injury which these persons suffer in health of body or
mind, or (2) by any serious danger arising from them to the social
organism.

V.

Experience, confirmed by scientific observation, proves that the
temperate indulgence of abnormal sexuality is no more injurious to the
individual than a similar indulgence of normal sexuality.

VI.

In the present state of over-population, it is not to be apprehended
that a small minority of men exercising sterile and abnormal sexual
inclinations should seriously injure society by limiting the increase of
the human race.

VII.

Legislation does not interfere with various forms of sterile intercourse
between men and women: (1) prostitution, (2) coha