worthy in all the ordinary relations of life, to be condemned at law as criminals because they cannot feel sexually as the majority feel, because they find some satisfaction for their inborn want in ways which the majority dislike?
Seeking a solution of the difficulty stated in the foregoing paragraph, Ulrichs finds it in fact and history. His answer is that if society leaves nature to take her course, with the abnormal as well as with the normal subjects of sexual inclination, society will not suffer. In countries where legal penalties have been removed from inverted sexuality, where this is placed upon the same footing as the normal—in France, Bavaria (?), the Netherlands (?)—no inconvenience has hitherto arisen.[1] There has ensued no sudden and flagrant outburst of a depraved habit, no dissemination of a spreading moral poison. On the other hand, in countries where these penalties exist and are enforced—in England, for example, and in the metropolis of England, London—inverted sexuality runs riot, despite of legal prohibitions, despite of threats of prison, dread of exposure, and the intolerable pest of organised chantage. In the eyes of Ulrichs, society is engaged in sitting on a safety-valve, which if nature were allowed to operate unhindered would do society no harm, but rather good. The majority, he thinks, are not going to become Urnings, for the simple reason that they have not the
- ↑ Since Ulrichs left off writing, Italy (by the "Nuovo Codice Penale" of 1889) has adopted the principles of the Code Napoleon, and has placed sexual inversion under the same legal limitations as the normal sexual instinct.
