will crucify those whose vices are much less harmful, because they are vices for which this pharisaical pulchritude has no taste, which therefore it cannot understand, and not understanding them, cannot condone.
This is to be no brief in defense of homosexuality, although, were I to try to find redeeming features for homosexual practices in certain cases and under certain circumstances, I would not have to cudgel my brain overly to do so.
This is not intended as a defense of all those who indulge in homosexual practices.
Such a defense might be attempted and successfully carried out, were it possible to bring this question before a jury of unbiased, open-minded and independent thinkers, who would decide the question upon the platform of equal justice to all, weighing the relative harmfulness of all sexual crimes and excesses, and who would not punish those indulging in homosexual practices, if they refuse to punish those indulging in sexual crimes and excesses vastly more injurious to the human race and to society.
This book is published in an endeavor to obtain justice and humane treatment for the Androgynes, that class of homosexualists in whom homosexuality is not an acquired vice but in whom it is congenital.
In pleading a case in Court, even before the highest tribunals, it is good practice not to take it for granted that the judge knows the law, or even facts, which might appear to the pleader to be matters of common knowledge; and so I may be excused if I state to the reader matters which to him may be already familiar.
