I believe that this symposium on sex morality is unique in the English language. It should help to a clarification of our views and opinions on this extremely vital subject. It is interesting to note that while all the men contributors to the symposium belong to the class of radicals and free thinkers, and hold advanced views on politics, religion, and social economics, their ideas on sex morality are far from being identical. In fact, on one point that of sexual abstinence or "illicit" sexual relations the contributors express diametrically opposite views. It is probably true that many years will pass before we will attain unanimity on the sex question. In the meantime we must think, study, investigate; think, study, investigate; and again think, study and investigate. And we must do it without fear or mental reservation.
SPECIAL PREFACE
"In the matter of public writing and speaking I listen to no remonstrance, I acknowledge
no decision, save that of the divine monitor within me. My conscience is my adviser, my
audience and my judge. It bids me write and speak as I write and speak, without evasion,
without disguise; it bids me to go on as I have begun, whatever the result may be. If my
opinions should be condemned, without a single exception, by every one of my readers, it will
not make me regret having expressed them, and it will not prevent me from expressing them
again. It is my earnest and sincere conviction that those opinions are not only true, but also
that they tend to elevate and purify the mind. One thing, at all events, I know: that it has
done me good to write this essay; and therefore I do not think that it can injure those by
whom it will be read".
The above is a paraphrase of some sentences from Winwood Reade's preface to his
"Martyrdom of Man". I always loved that passage, and I take it as my own to serve as a
preface to my essay on Sex Morality.
It will be noticed that in the entire paper I have not referred to venereal disease as a
factor in or cause for sex morality. To do so seems to me to confuse the issue. To preach
continence because non-continence may lead to venereal infection is not a moral argument.
Burglary is wrong irrespective of whether the burglar gets or does not get caught. If illicit
sexual relations are wrong they are wrong irrespective of the danger of infection.
What I replied in the CRITIC AND GUIDE to a contributor who advocated complete
abstinence in the male on account of the risk of venereal infection may be repeated here:
It is the same old argument of fear, of trying to make people good by threats. "Do not
steal or you may get caught and go to prison" is an argument of the same character. And
supposing the man is absolutely sure that his female companion is perfectly healthy and pure
and there is no possibility of getting any venereal disease what argument would you use
then to keep him chaste?
And extending individual instances to a larger sphere, assuming
that humane sanitation and the universal intelligent use of venereal prophylactics has
abolished venereal disease entirely a thing not altogether outside the bounds of possibility,
or even probability what then? Evidently, the argument, be chaste or you will catch a
disease which you may transmit to your wife and children, will then not hold good. What
other argument will we then present to our boys and men?
Let us once forever bear in mind that fear and threats are losing their power as
arguments. Disregarding the fact that the man who is "good" simply because he is afraid is
really not moral, only a coward, people begin to find out that the threats are exaggerated and
having once found it so they are apt to go to extremes, and let all caution go to the winds,
thinking that the threats were just grand mother's tales in order to keep them in the straight
path. No, if a certain line of conduct is enjoined upon an advanced independent thinker, you
must be able to prove to him that that line of conduct is for the benefit of the individual and
of the race, that a contrary line of conduct is to the detriment of both. If you cannot prove
it, you have no case.
W. J. R.