Safe Marriage | Page 3

happiness but life itself. Cut out sexual intercourse, and society becomes extinct in one generation. Every generation must, of necessity, pass through the bodies of its women; there is no other way of obtaining entry into the world. Hence, it is clearly the duty of women to understand precisely the processes involved, from beginning to end.
With the lower animals sexual intercourse is desired only seasonally, and only for the purpose of reproduction. With the higher animals--man and women--sexual intercourse is desired more or less continuously throughout adult life, and desired much more for romantic than for reproductive considerations--that is, for the sake of health and happiness rather than for the sake of procreation only. A few women, and still fewer men, have no sexual desires. To them sexual abstinence seems more natural than sexual satisfaction. But for the majority of mankind and womankind--for all normally healthy men and women--there is this continuous desire to be happily mated.
For the sake of health and happiness there is everything to be said for early marriage, but better late than never.[A] The chief obstacles to early and happy marriage are financial, and these would largely disappear if women were able to control fecundity. The chief obstacles to healthy marriage are the venereal diseases, and these could be extirpated in two or three generations if sexual cleanliness was properly taught to all adults, and if promiscuous intercourse was properly regulated during the same period. Unfortunately most women's idea of regulating promiscuous intercourse is to have none of it. This is impossible in the present stage of moral evolution, but it will become increasingly possible as we succeed in extirpating the venereal diseases, particularly syphilis. Syphilis is the one great cause of immorality, because persons born with a syphilitic taint (and what family is entirely free from this hereditary disease?) are apt to be mentally and morally deficient; hence, tend to indulge in anti-social and unnatural practices, such as engaging in promiscuous intercourse.
[Footnote A: Marriage, whether early or late, cannot of course benefit and elevate society until the present mischievous and archaic Divorce Laws are simplified and reformed in accordance with modern sociology and ethics. Unhappy and unsuitable marriages necessarily foster immorality and promote disease, and the community as a whole gains by their being dissolved in a ready but responsible and dignified manner. The refusal of the Church to marry diseased persons would greatly benefit the nation, whereas its refusal to marry healthy divorced persons not only injures the nation but dishonours the Church.--E.A.R.]
The normally healthy man is a highly selective creature, and the normally healthy woman still more fastidiously selective in romantic relationship. Neither man nor woman is naturally in the least attracted by promiscuous intercourse. On the contrary, it is repugnant to both. Both regard the elements of romance, reciprocity and permanence as essential. These elements are present in marriage and absent in prostitution. Therefore, it is beneath the dignity of any decent, intelligent woman to suppose that promiscuous relationship can ever be as happy and satisfying and attractive as marriage. This, apart altogether from the fact that marriage is fertile and prostitution infertile. No, both man and woman desire love-relationship, not loveless-relationship; and they are really quite fit to be trusted with the evolution of the race through passionate love and the worship of beauty, as soon as society makes harmonious provision for their normal sexual needs. Until society does make early marriage practicable for all healthy adult men and women, say between twenty and twenty-five years of age, extra-marital relationship, however undesirable, is inevitable, because there are many men to whom, at times, any woman is better than no woman.
But extra-marital relationship is never even safe, because of its promiscuity and impermanence, except in properly conducted and effectively supervised tolerated houses. The tolerated house is absolutely necessary at present to protect women from disease and immorality, by confining this kind of intercourse as far as possible in certain definite channels. The abolition of the tolerated house spreads both disease and immorality into classes of women who would otherwise be immune, and enormously increases the dangers of promiscuous intercourse. Separated from their toilet equipment the women cannot make and keep themselves clean; on the streets they are not taught to refuse intercourse with diseased men; thus their occupation becomes more and more dangerous as medical supervision is removed. They inevitably become diseased; sometimes contract mixed infections, which they pass on to their clients--the future husbands and fathers of the nation--and "The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children even unto the third and fourth generation." All this would be impossible if women generally would recognise the primary fact that because a man is immoral that it is no reason why he should become syphilitic. We all want to abolish sin,