Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/64

44 he never expects to be overmastered. But later in life many a one of these sexual cripples who have put on "the cloth" disgrace it notwithstanding his prior unparalleled mental struggles against Nature's behests.

Or if coming out victor in the lifelong struggle, the pitiable woman-man lives down to death under the obsession (due to misinterpreted biblical texts) that the gratification of his unusual instinct is the most heinous of sins, and spends all his days, in which God meant that he should rejoice, in mourning over his sexual ardor (for which he does not realize he is irresponsible), in crucifying his body continuously, with its affections and lusts (as commanded by the anaphrodite, St. Paul), and is thereby, throughout adult life, en the borderline of insanity. I have heard sermons from such clergymen and was moved to pity as they were shedding tears in the pulpit and rendering themselves unpopular, both with their fellow preachers who are sexually full-fledged and with the laity, because their aspect was always that of tragedy. I advise that all such melancholiacs immediately ask that they be honorably deposed from the ministry. As a result their lives would be happy and satisfying.

The vast majority of preachers are manly. I have a higher respect for that profession than for any other. If it had not been for my androgynism, I would have myself entered it. It would be well for the Church authorities to question, as to their sexuality, all candidates for beginning a theological course, and in the kindest manner advise adolescents in the least bisexual to choose some other profession because of the public's misunderstanding of this phenomenon.