males, and treat their younger school-fellows
in ways which would consign an adult to penal servitude. They are
Uraniasters by necessity and _faute de mieux_. But no sooner are they
let loose upon the world than the majority revert to normal channels.
They pick up women in the streets, and form connections, as the phrase
goes. Some undoubtedly, in this fiery furnace through which they have
been passed, discover their inborn sexual inversion. Then, when they
cannot resist the ply of their proclivity, you condemn them as criminals
in their later years. Is that just? Would it not be better to revert
from our civilisation to the manners of the savage man--to initiate
youths into the mysteries of sex, and to give each in his turn the
chance of developing a normal instinct by putting him during his time of
puberty freely and frankly to the female? If you abhor Urnings, as you
surely do, you are at least responsible for their mishap by the
extraordinary way in which you bring them up. At all events, when they
develop into the eccentric beings which they are, you are the last
people in the world who have any right to punish them with legal
penalties and social obloquy.

Considering the present state of the law in most countries to be
inequitable toward a respectable minority of citizens, Ulrichs proposes
that Urnings should be placed upon the same footing as other men. That
is to say, sexual relations between males and males should not be
treated as criminal, unless they be attended with violence (as in the
case of rape), or be carried on in such a way as to offend the public
sense of decency (in places of general resort or on the open street), or
thirdly be entertained between an adult and a boy under age (the
protected age to be decided as in the case of girls). What he demands is
that when an adult male, freely and of his own consent, complies with
the proposals of an adult person of his own sex, and their intercourse
takes place with due regard for public decency, neither party shall be
liable to prosecution and punishment at law. In fact he would be
satisfied with the same conditions as those prevalent in France, and
since June, 1889, in Italy.

If so much were conceded by the majority of normal people to the
abnormal minority, continues Ulrichs, an immense amount of misery and
furtive vice would be at once abolished. And it is difficult to conceive
what evil results would follow. A defender of the present laws of
Engla