Safe Marriage | Page 3

the primary ones. A
marriage may be legal--and miserable; religious--and diseased. The law
pays no heed to the suitability of the partners, and the Church takes no
regard for their health. Nevertheless, the basis of marriage is obviously
mating, or sexual intercourse. Without that there is no marriage, and
with it come not merely health and 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