The Scented Garden

31 Yes, we are a goodly company, the blest ; our lives are spent in sunny gardens and yours in sub- terranean sewers ; we are so blissful that we rarely notice you ; when we do, it is to say : God have mercy upon these blind and miserable slaves, and bring them out into His light and joy and liberty ! Wherefore I pray Him (Oh thou all-loving, all transcending God !) that should this essay fall (as seed by the wayside) into the hands of the young that they may dwell with us in the Heaven which is Here and Now, and (after) in the Palace which of His lovingkindness He hath prepared for us in that Garden of Gardens which is approached only through the narrow postern gate of Death. 1. There is of course not the most shadowy rea- son in ethics for the attitude of the law. The most confirmed sodomite (bimetallist) may beget quite as many children as another, while monogamy is the fashion. If man were expected to fertilize some do- zens of women every night, like a stud ram, I don’t say : but he is not. But on the positive side, a strict adherence to sodomy, except for the practical purpose of begetting children, or for pacifying women, an object which a parallel development of Sapphism would more rationally fulfil, would avoid the numberless crimes and calamities inseparable from sexual intercourse — venereal diseases (al- most entirely), seduction, abortion, concealment of birth, child-murder, social tyranny, — et omnis horrida cohors malorum. As few people seem to know the fons et origo le- gis, I may here be permitted to sketch it in out- line. When the power of the Crescent menaced that of the Cross, sodomy was put down with Dra- conic rigour because the Turks believed that the