Social control

The best available evidence to date suggests that some homosexuals can be treated in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and behaviour therapy. But the outcome is variable and depends much upon the motivation, intelligence, degree of sexual involvement, financial status, the social advantages that patients would have from undergoing such self examination, and the availability and skill of the clinicians who set out to help them.

I remind you of the carefully documented statement that was prepared by D. L. Mathieson, of the Law Faculty of Victoria University in which the various legal and moral issues are disentangled and in which conclusion have been drawn that might appeal to many.

Beyond that statement, we often forget that the law is only one form of social control and there is every reason for regarding the Statutes as setting the lower limit below which no man may fall without fear of penalty, rather than setting the highest goals of human endeavour.

There will be no dire consequences from extending what I consider to be justice to consenting adult homosexual males who share their affections in private.

Society has a right to endorse heterosexuality, but not at the expense of making scapegoats of that substantial minority of its members who by nature of their upbringing are unable to share the heterosexual ideal.