In Kinsey we find that extra-marital intercourse is most frequent in the 21-25 years age group i.e. a maximum frequency of about eighteen times a week. Homosexual activity, coitus with prostitutes, petting to climax, marital intercourse are also high for this group. Younger people seemingly do better at masturbation and nocturnal emissions.

Surprisingly, amongst the 331 female inscriptions there were no references to heterosexual dating (homosexual dating scored one per cent). There were no homosexual references to anal contacts, and only one per cent heterosexual reference to anal activity. Oral contacts scores two per cent (heterosexual) and one per cent (homosexual); "other erotic items" also scored two per cent (both heterosexual and homosexual). Most frequent sexual references by males

The investigators found 1048 sexual and non-sexual inscriptions in male toilets, of which

This brothel was opened by a certain Charles Hammond around 1884 in a house off the Tottenham Court Road.

It was soon doing well and included a number of aristocratic and well-to-do homosexuals. It was suspected that one of the clients was the 25-year-old Prince Eddy, later Duke of Clarence, eldest son of the Prince of Wales.

Sodomy is one of those ambiguous words. In American law, for instance, it can mean anything - from oral sex to anal intercourse. Generally sodomy is a synonym for homosexuality, implying the commonplace homosexual act of anal intercourse. The first recorded instance of sodomy in Chinese history, figuratively 2 described by the literati as "sharing the peach" occurred in the State of Wei. Thus Duke Ling committed sodomy with a young court official, Mi Tzu-hsia, who had a face "as pretty as that of a blooming maiden."

The word was first employed in 1925 in the American theatrical periodical called Variety. Other words soon followed, e.g. "gay" "camp" (from the Italian campeggiare, meaning to stand out from a background), "minny", "fairy", "queen", "fag", etc.

If marriage is desirable in any way that does not hinge upon procreation then there can be no reason in logic why the homosexual marriage should not exist as a social counterpart to the more frequent heterosexual equivalent.

Some groups have urged such a course, and some societies have been prepared to tolerate such an arrangement. California has recently seen a homosexual marriage between two men, and not long ago - in 1969 - a priest in a Rotterdam church conducted a marriage service for two homosexuals.

This is "The Wolfenden Report", which dealt also with prostitution. The committee, chaired by Sir John Wolfenden, was appointed on 24 August 1954 to consider the law and practice relating to homosexual offences, the treatment of offenders by the courts, and the law and practice of prostitution.

Laws against homosexual behaviour have varied from the severe (e.g. mutilation and execution) to the ridiculous and ineffectual.

From the time of Henry VIII to that of Queen Victoria, those convicted of the "abominable crime" of buggery or sodomy were liable to be executed. In 1861 in England and 1889 in Scotland the maximum penalty for homosexual acts was changed to life imprisonment. In the 1885 Criminal Law Amendment Act, acts of "gross indecency" not amounting to buggery, hitherto not regarded as a crime, were made subject to two years hard labour: it was under this act that Oscar Wilde was prosecuted.