This is naturally a defence mechanism. By demanding extremely high qualification from the women, homosexuals have a ready excuse for consorting with men exclusively.
Famous Homosexuals. Homosexuals are fond of mentioning all the men famous in art and letters whose sexual life was inverted: the Greek philosophers, poets and playwrights of the classic age, Julius Cæsar, Alexander the Great, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Frederick of Prussia, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Nietzsche, etc.
The Nietzsche-Wagner Feud should be rewritten from a psychiatrist's point of view. Wagner was to young Nietzsche an attractive, heroic, father-image. The philosopher never had any real affair of the heart with a woman. He only indulged in very ephemeral relationships which, by their disastrous results, drove him further away from women. (Dr. W. H. White of Washington received the assurance while in Europe that Nietzsche died of syphilis.) Nietzsche made himself obnoxious to Wagner by trying to be his press agent. As Wagner, however, a shrewd business man in his old days, objected to Nietzsche's agnosticism and to his friendship with certain Jews, Nietzsche, disappointed in his love, abandoned Wagner and hated him fiercely. He attacked him on every occasion, his hatred being made the fiercer by the fact that he himself considered himself as a greater composer, one line in Nietzsche's letters throws a strange light upon the poor paretic's feelings. Wagner's "feminine traits" he wrote, finally disgusted him.
Shall Perverse Love Be Recognized? Efforts are being made in various directions at the present day to have homosexual love legally recognised and given perfect equality with heterosexual love. In Germany, a number of writers, Von Kupfer, Friedlander and others have boldly championed that futile attempt.
A cinema film was produced last year (1921) in Berlin depicting the plight of the homosexual who is unable to control his cravings and falls a victim to the wiles of a blackmailer. Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld agreed to impersonate in that production the scientist who attempts to enlighten the public as to the nature of homosexualism, so as to bring about a modification of the statute punishing perverts.
Man's Emancipation. In 1900, Elizar von Kupfer called upon the men to proclaim their "independence" from women. "The man who lives in bondage to women," he wrote, "and who humors her whims, has lost his manhood. Since woman is emancipating herself, why should not men follow the same road?"
Illogically enough, Von Kupfer defends the mothers and wives, "flowers who should not be rooted out of the garden of love." In Schopenhauer's silly outbursts against woman, however, Von Kupfer sees "a test of manhood revolting against man's humiliation" and he adds that "it is only from the closest relation of man to man, adolescent to man, and adolescent to adolescent, that government and civilisation will derive real power."
Blüher considers homosexualism as an "essential human trait which must be granted an outlet with certain restrictions (setting the age of consent at fourteen and forbidding the use of violence)."
Benedikt Friedlander, in his "Renaissance des Eros Uranios" suggests "bringing ancient and modern culture into harmony with each other by reviving the Greek Eros and overthrowing the monopoly which woman has, of being loved and beautiful."
Removing the legal penalties which punish overt homosexual acts is one thing. Recognising homosexualism is an entirely different proposition. Punishing a typhoid fever patient would be absurd, but typhoid fever sufferers should not be allowed to remain at large without treatment. Homosexualism is a neurotic trait which should be eradicated, if possible, by analytic treatment. Hopeless cases, on the other hand should be protected against their instincts by a form of confinement which would be neither punitive nor more humiliating than the confinement imposed upon sufferers from contagious diseases.