Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/470

 groom dispersed with much gayety, but with entire decorum. Nevertheless it has been found needful to enter special charges against the American originator of the proceedings; who, by the by, looks completely a handsome, manly young fellow in his male attire, and has worn a fine moustache, which he sacrificed to the solemn occasion described."

Possibly the famous marriages of the Emperor Nero with his favourites Sporus and Doryphorus, extravagantly costly solemnities that scandalized Rome, meant not so much a sacrilegious orgie as Nero's vivid idealism and his intersexual enthusiasm. Toward Sporus, Nero appears to have been, the "activist"—the husband; to Doryphorus the Emperor was obviously "passivist", considering himself the wife. The femininized boy, Sporus, loved Nero to his last hour. The late Ludwig II of Bavaria, in the long line of his homosexual escapades, was with difficulty prevented, toward the end of his melancholy career, from solemnizing a marriage with another similisexual. He planned a sumptuous private ceremony, in the seclusion of one of his costly retreats. The certainty of such proceedings being known checked them abruptly.

In the foregoing summary of marriages and Uranianism, of course we are not touching on normal wedlock for homosexual men who are seeking sexual relief, if possible a "cure" for their nature. Another chapter of our study presents that grave subject by itself. Some unfavourable aspects of it have already been indicated.

In reviewing so far homosexual prostitution, uranian decadents, the similisexual as déclassé, we have not yet descended to the many strata of its robust criminality. Just as in the feminine harlotry, we mnstmust [sic] penetrate to darker, profounder levels; to a brutally vicious male similisexuality. We have traversed only those clearer avenues out of which open truly infernal alleys.