The Law is for All

Chapter I k Verse 51 51 Such acts as rape, and the assault or seduction of infants, may therefore be justly regarded as offences against the Law of Liberty, and repressed in the interests of that Law. It is also excluded from “as ye will” to compromise the liberty of another person indirectly, as by taking advantage of the igno­ rance or good faith of another person to expose that person to the constraint of sickness, poverty, social detriment, or childbearing, unless with the well-informed and uninfluenced free will of that person. One must moreover avoid doing another injury by deforming his nature; for instance, to flog children at or near puberty may distort the sensitive nascent sexual character, and impress it with the stamp of masochism. Again, homosexual practices between boys may in certain cases actually rob them of their virility, psychically or even physically. Trying to frighten adolescents about sex by the bogeys of Hell, Disease, and Insanity, may warp the moral nature permanently, and produce hypochondria or other mental maladies, with per­ versions of the enervated and thwarted instinct. Repression of the natural satisfaction may result in addiction to secret and dangerous vices which destroy their victim because they are artificial and unnatural aberrations. Such moral cripples resemble those manufactured by beggars by compressing one part of the body so that it is compensated by a monstrous exaggera­ tion in another part. But on the other hand we have no right to interfere with any type of manifestation of the sexual impulse on a priori grounds. We must recognize that the Lesbian leanings of idle and volup­ tuous women whose refinement finds the grossness of the average male repugnant, are as inexpugnably entrenched in Righteousness as the parallel pleasures of the English Aristocracy and Clergy whose aesthetics find women disgusting, and whose self-respect demands that love should transcend animal impulse, excite intel­ lectual intimacy, and inspire spirituality by directing it towards an object whose attainment cannot inflict the degradation of domes­ ticity, and the bestiality of gestation.