inverts, possessing the most delicate sentiments,
who had become pessimists owing to the shame and grief of a state of
mind which they hid from the world.

Inverts of this class often commit suicide, after having carried on in
silence a desperate struggle against their morbid appetite, because
they prefer death to defeat, which they consider a dishonor. The
victims of these tragedies deserve all our pity, and sometimes our
respect. Such individuals generally hold aloof from the brotherhood of
inverts which they look upon with fear or disgust.

In the picture of homosexuals there are two lamentable shadows, which
are largely due to the severity with which most legislations track and
condemn these unfortunate beings.

(1). As soon as an invert realizes his abnormal and dangerous
situation in society, in which he feels a pariah, he often makes up
his mind to follow the advice of ignorant friends, and even, alas, of
ignorant doctors, and try and cure himself by marriage. Sometimes he
begins by visiting a brothel to see if he is capable of normal coitus
with a woman. In this he often succeeds, if he is able to picture to
himself a man in the person of the prostitute. He tries to persuade
himself that the disgust which he felt at this experimental coitus was
due to the fact that the "love" was bought; and he then decides to
enter into conjugal life. This is at the same time the greatest
absurdity and the worst action possible for him to commit, for his
wife becomes a martyr and soon feels herself deceived, abandoned and
despised. The invert treats her as a servant; he rarely has sexual
intercourse with her, sometimes not at all, and only performs it with
repugnance with a view to the procreation of young inverts, who will
rise to his ideal. He invites his male lovers to his house and they
indulge in orgies, especially when the wife, despised and neglected,
has separated from him. Such marriages, which are fortunately less
common since this question has been better understood, generally end
in divorce, preceded by bitter and mutual deceptions. It is really
criminal to favor them when we know what they lead to. (_It is against
such unions, and against sexual indulgence of this nature, that the
law ought to exert itself._)

(2). A second very grave result of homosexual love is the continual
blackmail which is levied on inverts by all kinds of scamps. Public
urinals are common meeting places for inverts. The blackmailers, wh