148
i nit i a I tactless governmental
whim of coupling queers to–
gether, as criminal curiosities,
with the harlots (not that the
whores liked this much either) .
The queer therefore finds him–
self a built-in member of the
criminal population: even more
so, really, than the "profession–
al" criminal who often, round
about his middle years, under–
goes a sort of menopause and
abandons his culpable activity
-a thing a queer is not likely
ever to do. True, in this pre–
carious situation the queer's
spirit may be sustained by re–
flecting there is one sense in
which the criminal laws are not
applied: namely that there has
not yet been, and probably
never will be, a total campaign
to track down each and every
person thought to be guilty of
homosexual acts. Against those
detected, the law is enforced
with fearsome rigor; but there
has been no attempt to unmask
all potential victims in the land.
I
t is this that makes English
criminal practice on homo–
sexuality logically as well as
legally bizarre: for there is no
other crime one can imagine
which thousands of people well
known to the police commit
nightly that would not be at
once investigated and arraigned
in
every suspected instance.
The chief difficulty
in
com–
puting the overall number of
English homosexuals is to agree
precisely what one is, since
marginal and versatile sub-spe–
cies are so various. Statistically,
there is no reliable estimate
(the Wolfenden report sighs for
an English Kinsey), and per–
sonal assessments are subjective:
queers tend for evident reasons
to inflate their numbers, while
queer-haters either do the same
(to underline the "menace") or
else reduce it (to show queers
are a merely despicable fringe).
My own guess is that while
those who are excl\lsively homo–
sexual may number at most
some hundreds of thousands,
tho s e Englishmen, including
large numbers of bisexuals, who
have had some homosexual ex–
perience probably amount to
millions.
If
this is so it may
partly explain the duality of a;–
titude whereby many who lam–
bast queers in public tolerate
them privately, albeit with a
condescending leer. Class at–
titudes, still potent here (as the
reiteration by all politicians that
our society is now "classless"
will bear witness), play their
part. One may say that the
upper classes accept queers–
and gossip bitchily about them;
the middle classes find the
whole thing distasteful (as they
do any ill-bred reality) , but
believe they should be "civil–
ized" about it; the working
classes are contemptuous but
