To the majority of people in Anglo-Saxon countries, homosexuality – which in most people’s minds means male homosexuality – causes feelings of disgust or fear. This reaction is not found in many non-Judaeo-Christian non-white societies, where homosexuality is accepted, at least within certain limits.
Why homosexuality should provoke these feelings in our type of society is not entirely understood, but what is known indicates that the response is emotional rather than rational. But then the attitude of many people to heterosexuality is not entirely rational. In spite of today’s more open discussion of human sexuality, many people continue to consider sex a ‘delicate’ matter which, in general, should not be talked about. Many people continue to lament today’s sexual permissiveness, hoping for a return to a time when premarital chastity (for women) was a supreme virtue and sex was never mentioned. The period which is taken as the epitome of moral sexual restraint appears to be the last decades of the nineteenth century. Yet the surface respectability of those years hid a sewer of depravity. Child brothels were common, every kind of perversion was catered for, abortion was performed in dangerous circumstances, and ‘baby farming’ (with a mortality of over 80 per cent in the first year of life) was used to get rid of unwanted children. Puritanism, on the surface, hid sado-masochism, exploitation, and a sexual double standard of obscene dimensions.
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