Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/538

 hold absolute and personal objections to the removal of a law that does his subjects no good; a law that is the cause of infinite disgraces and harm to to them.

Thus much space in this study has been given to Germany's even hesitant advance toward recognizing some human and natural rights of the homosexual, and toward freeing him from unintelligent persecution, undeserved shame and agony, because, the attitude of distinctively Anglo-Saxon social civilizations is so clearly in contrast. Hardly a shadow of any legal change in those legislations—severest of all—is manifest. Public sentiments and public ignorances in England, in her dependent States and Colonies, as in the United States of America, are against any leniences. Lawmakers will not tolerate the thought of even a legal silence as to phases of homosexualism that do not offend public morality, nor deprave innocent youth, nor exhibit other aspects always meriting legal provision. That there is any scientific view of the problem is largely unknown in Great Britain and in America. In those large dominions, with their multitudes of homosexuals, the Uranian seems likely to remain a social and a legal victim for an indefinite time to come.

To the Uraniad Intersex, the law to-day has almost nothing to say. Statutes are tacit, as in ages past. Respectable, discreet Uraniads are not in any really unhappy case before the world. Feminosexual relationships may be known or suspected, right and left, in all societies, in all countries. But they seldom excite open comment now-a-days, any more than of old. If a whispered and smiling contempt is shown, it does not usually much injure the social prestige of the objects. While certain crimes quite naturally are in uraniadistic ambients, the blackmailer, robber or assassin are only exceptionally met. Uraniad amours thrive and prosper,