5. It will curtail opportunities for deep and emotionally fulfilling friendships between members of the same sex, opportunities that are already few and strained. This is particularly true of men.We in America now use the word “friend” to denote a passing acquaintance of whose company we may be rather fond. But modern life has necessarily driven us apart, even as in appearance we seem to be thrust together. For modern life has brought men and women, married and unmarried, into superficial contact with one another, constantly, at work—where most of our contacts are made.

That environment makes almost impossible the depth of friendship described by Cicero, when he said that a friend was another self, or one before whom you could utter your thoughts aloud. Indeed, how many of us can understand the passion of friendship in David’s lament for Jonathan, or Gilgamesh’s lament for Enkidu, without coloring it with the suspicion of homosexuality?

Our sexual customs constitute a language, one that we must all use, whether we like it or not. If, all at once, clothing becomes optional on a certain beach, then that beach is a nude beach. If you wear your suit to that beach, your action has a meaning it did not have before. At the very least it means that you do not approve of public nudity. It may mean that you are ashamed of your body. It may mean that your religion forbids it. It may mean you are a prude. But you cannot say, “It means nothing to me,” simply because language is public and communal.

Suppose the incest taboo were removed. You might say, “I will hug and kiss my niece in any case,” but your actions would have a significance they did not have before. The shadow of the thought must cross any beholder’s mind; it might cross the niece’s mind. If you were considerate of her feelings, you would hesitate before you did it.

The incest taboo is not irrational; it allows members of a family the freedom to share each other’s company in what otherwise might often be embarrassing circumstances, and to touch in ways that would mean something, were it not a brother or an aunt giving the kiss. On pain of expulsion from the group, that taboo must be upheld, so that the deep feelings and intimacy of a family may develop freely and sanely.

If homosexuality is at the least not publicly condoned, that may clear sufficient ground for men to forge the emotionally fulfilling friendships they once enjoyed in the past. Such friendships have been at the base of many a cultural renaissance: the men of France who assisted Louis Pasteur in his work; the Founding Fathers of the United States; the explorers and pioneers of the American West; the friars and monks who built the first universities.

I know quite well that, no matter what the prohibition is, there will always be a few who will violate it. But the point is that the prohibition is public, and so it helps constitute the meaning, to oneself and to others, of one’s attachment to a member of the same sex. One of my students related to me an incident that happened to him in a bar. His closest buddy had been abandoned by his girlfriend, and was weeping freely as the young man cradled his head in his arms. A young lady walked up to them and chirpily asked them if they were gay.

Boys in particular now suffer a pincers attack. The sexual revolution rouses them to interest, or to the pretense of interest, in girls long before they or the girls are emotionally or intellectually ready for it; and now the condoning of homosexuality prevents them from publicly preferring the company of their own sex. This is simply inarguable. If a George Gershwin nowadays shows up at Maxie Rosenzweig’s house all the time, while his pals are outside on the streets playing stickball, then there must be something up with George and Maxie.

If you do not think that this is the way teens and even children now talk, then you are not paying attention. What was once innocent, or what both Maxie and George need never have worried about, now means something. Unless they are comfortable with the meaning, they will shy away from one another; the friendship will not deepen. Confess, reader: if you come upon two teenage boys in a pond skinny-dipping, it is the first thing you will think, and you will think it despite the fact that before bathing suits were invented, it was the only way two boys could ever be found swimming.