Moral indignation is no substitute for moral information, not least on the subject of homosexuality, and therefore two recent books are recommended. The first, which is free from preoccupations with the circumstances of criminal proceedings or clinical treatment, is an examination of the family background, social behaviour, and activities of one hundred and twenty-seven cases; that they amount to a representative sample is not claimed, yet they do help to dispose of some popular misconceptions, for instance, that male homosexuality spells effeminacy or that seduction has any appreciable effect on the perpetuation or development of the condition. The second is a revised edition of a summary account of the modern evidence, mainly anthropological, biological, and physiological, together with suggestions for treatment.

Yet among the items in the bibliographies, 134 and 203 respectively, only two are directly concerned with morals, and through no fault of the authors. Have, then, the English theologians failed to fill a gap which affects perhaps one Englishman in every twenty-five? Or have they good reason?

Let us reflect that however much a misfit a homosexual may appear to some systems of reference, to an interior theology devoted to the growth of friendship with God and our neighbour he is not a queer or an odd man out, but one with the rest of us, heir to the same original sin and the same promise, beset by temptations and fortified by the graces which arc fundamentally the same for him and for us.