ABSTRACT
Radicals have gone on the offensive: they insist on society’s moral approval of homosexuality: they want all those who enjoy homosexual acts to ‘come out’ as homosexual, to bring home to society both the size of the homosexual community, and to question society’s sexual values, to negate its norms. If generalizations are possible on the multifarious approaches to homosexuality, in terms of its aetiology, one points to a shift from a nineteenth-century emphasis on the innate to a twentieth-century on the acquired, though possibly modern endocrinology and genetics. The evidence for France certainly indicates that for many majority homosexuals the gratification of sexual needs through homosexual acts is the main imperative where only a minority see friendship, or lasting relationships, as the primary objective. This has, however, been more a study of attitudes than of behaviour, and also a historian, with a different focus would turn up evidence pointing to different conclusions.
