Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/532

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

Insanity as a
Consequence of
Persecution, etc.

The story of insanity has much, to do with the victimizing of Uranians, with their dread of the blackmailer, of the.State's Attorney, of the policeman, of the detection by society of their natures. The nerve-breaking results of forced chastity on the part of Uranians also is a terrible argument for their rescue from present-day legal and social martyrdom. The suppression of natural, wholesome, harmless desires, the terror of punishment, drives many of the finest-natured Uranians to mania. In a later chapter will be found some considerations of good or evil for the Uranian in marriage, that are not aloof from his tendency, to end violently his predicament, Frequently a married homosexual takes his own life just to break a contract that he cannot support; or to avoid entering into marital obligations—as we shall observe.

Other factors that classify homosexual suicides will be noticed in the same succeeding chapter.

SeparatorSeparatorSeparator

Mysterious
Disappearances,
Monastic Retre-
ats, Philantropic
Self-Sacrifices, etc.

So much for the Uranian as a suicide. But there are other withdrawals from battles with social prejudices, from the daily fight, from the grave mishaps more or less tragic to the philarrene. The ranks of the secular priesthood of the Catholic Church, the cells of monks, the severest Orders, incessantly enclose homosexual fugitives; those refugees who wish to forget; to vanish otherwise than in the 'foreign legions' of armies, or lower social descents. They have fled the world to avoid their daily homosexual temptations, to stifle or to root out their emotions as uranians. Let us be glad that for types of Uranians adapted to such a step it often has proved peace; an atrophy of homosexualism just as for heterosexualism. Contemplative, imaginative moral natures can succeed in such an effort. But too often we must believe that it has no good result; that on the contrary it brings more unbroken in-

— 514 —