similisexual intercourse between males is punished by imprisonment for a term of from one day to live years, according to circumstances, and loss of civic rights can be added. A tendency to a liberal construction of offences under the Paragraph mentioned is noticeable, in spite of the foregoing severe attitude. The continual occurence of blackmailing-scandals has made something like a tacit friendliness of judges and jury a plain necessity. But the similisexual is still a felon under German law. An important deduction from its rigours is however to be noticed. In Germany, in spite of Paragraph 175, a merely mutual onanism, manually performed, between two adults particularly, uncoerced, under private circumstances, as in an hotel, or in one's own dwelling, is not punishable. This curious construction of the law, which the reader will at once perceive to be ridiculously inconsistent with the express intention of it, holds good, and enables many a similisexual to rout some blackmailer. But the reader must understand that any other manner of homosexual acts between males (such as pen. in anum, pen. in os, coitus inter femora, etc.) is more or less severely punishable. Any sexual acts with any minor, however depraved the minor, are felonious. A more absurd interpretation of a statute is not easily found; but it can be one of service to victimized and respectable similisexuals in Germany.
In Austria-Hungary by the Laws of 1852, including a special paragraph (159), the similisexualist is punished with imprisonment from one year to five years, according to the nature of his offence. But in districts of the Dual Monarchy-as in Germany-is shown a disposition to construe the law favourably toward an offender whose inborn and constitutional homosexualism can be clearly shown by expert examination of him by medical psychologists. Also, the blackmailer, in Austria-Hungary as a rule, is the sufferer in cases where that element appears clearly. A tendency toward milder construction of the statutes is
— 67 —
