Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/79

 The German, Austrian, Keltic and Scandinavian and Slavic races have always been instinctively similisexual. The Christian system, and its codes of law, secular and spiritual, took special notice in Teutonic and Gallic lands of an impulse that seemed so perverse as to be a social horror for punishment by axe and stake. Under the Karolingian Codes, Germany denounced similisexual love between men, in 289 A. D., as punishable with death, unless the criminal was peculiarly repentant. Later, the invasions of the Saracens and the plague were laid to its secret existence in Central Europe; to the direct visitation of the anger of God, as "on Sodom". The German Canon-Law took the offence under its care. So did early French codes. In some cases the offence between women is part of the legislation, but for the most part not particularized. It was visited with excommunication, confiscation of estate, castration, beheading, fire, and so on, according to the circumstances. Benefit of the clergy was sometimes given to the unfortunate offender, sometimes not allowed him. In France, nevertheless there was a milder attitude even if in many instances we find the accused man castrated, decapitated, or burned; or all three. In Scandinavia, Denmark and their vicinage, similisexualism was a rooted passion, alluded-to by the literature of the races; the attribute of their deities. It was regarded popularly according to one or another degree of aversion, or toleration, or legal reprehension, before the Christian epoch in the Northlands. With the acceptance of Christianity and of the Canon and Civil laws on that basis, such relations between men were, of course, defined as capital sins against God and natural instincts, and were made felonies to be punished with death; a penalty frequently paid.

In England, Ireland and Scotland, through all Great Britain with its complex blend of Teutonic, Keltic, Anglo-Saxon and other psychologic traits, along with a