not decide your destiny." It is no more "wicked" to have
the temperament of a homosexual than to have the weakness of an invalid. It
is difficult for the spirit to dominate and to bring into a healthy harmony
a body predisposed to illness and disorder. The greater the glory to those
who succeed! Let us confess with shame that in this other and far harder
case we have not only ignored the difficulty and despised the struggler,
but--God forgive us--have, so far as in us lay, made impossible the
victory.

VIII

MISUNDERSTANDINGS

"If there is one result or conclusion that we may pick out from
the science of sex which has developed so rapidly of recent
years, as thoroughly established and permanently accepted, it
is that the old notion of the sinfulness of the sex process,
_in se_, is superstitious, not religious; and must be discarded
before ethical religion can assert its full sway over
humanity's sex life. And, most assuredly, the conception
narratives [of the New Testament], by retaining the sex process
to the important extent of normal pregnancy and parturition,
foreshadowed and hallowed this development of ethical thought.
They make it clear that the Spirit of God and the spirit of
woman, in conscious union, refuse to justify superstitious and
paralyzing fears, refuse to allow that the sex process is
irredeemable; they render possible and imperative the working
out of the ethical problems directly concerned with sex."

_Northcute: Christianity and Sex Problems_, _pp._ 415, 416.

During the course of these addresses I have more than once, and with more
than common urgency, pleaded for the light of knowledge, that we may
in future not make so many disastrous mistakes from sheer ignorance
and misunderstanding. I have been asked to say more definitely what
"misunderstandings" I had in mind, and to discuss them with at least as
much courage as I have so pressingly demanded from others.

The demand is just; and I feel the less able to disregard it because I have
discussed these very difficulties with people whose lives have been wrecked
by the ignorance in which they were brought up, or saved by knowledge
wisely imparted before the difficulties arose. Knowledge cannot save us
from hardship or difficulty; it cannot make us invulnerable to attack, or
lift us above the ordinary temptations of ordinary mortals; but it can show
us w