If we are modest about sex in our conversation to the extent of placing a taboo on sex, and allowing sexual problems to remain unsolved, or in letting our children confuse innocence with ignorance, we are on indefensible ground; indefensible, I think, because our modesty is based on the Puritan doctrine that sex is at heart an unclean thing. I wish especially to defend modesty because sex is so clean. We do not want to vulgarize by public reference our most spiritual experiences, our sense of love, our feeling of exaltation in the presence of what is beautiful and divine. We speak of these things only at more sacred moments, if at all. We must be careful, too, lest in a reaction from taboo we allow science to rob sex of its romantic and divine character. We have carefully to preserve the centre of gravitation between two extremes. We should look askance at a man who collected in a glass bottle, and analysed, his mother's tears.
In this connexion it may be well to call attention to the inconsistency of the male in making the sex-act a subject for humour. Whatever our religious belief, we know that the sex-act is the means of procreation, and is, for this reason alone, a sacred function. It seems inconsistent, therefore, that we should so persistently treat it as a mark for ridicule.
The second general attitude is that of the State, or legislature. Here we find ourselves in the presence of a consistent motive. The State is concerned only with the preservation of the birth-rate; any sex behaviour which defeats this object it regards as immoral and punishable. The State cannot interfere so far with individual privacy as to punish masturbation or artificial means of restraint; but it does go to the extent of punishing "unnatural" acts between husband and wife,[2] and in America, the State has even penalized the activities of the neo-Malthusian propaganda. All sex abnormalities are rigidly punished, whereas the procreation of children outside wedlock is not a legal offence.[3]
This is a consistent attitude, but it suggests one serious flaw. Whatever may have been the case in early days when an increase of population was essential, there can be little doubt that to-day that necessity has diminished. Indeed, without entering into the Malthusian controversy, it is almost impossible to deny that at the moment we are suffering largely from over-population. Consequently, whatever opportunist policy may dictate, we cannot poise our estimate of morality on so shifting a basis as the needs of population. Instinctively we cannot associate morality in anything with the legal attitude. There are many acts even outside the sex sphere which most of us would consider immoral, but which are unpunished by law, and others which are illegal but are not immoral; it is immoral to lie, but unless we lie on oath there is no State offence; it is punishable to ride a bicycle without lights after dark, but we are conscious of no moral delinquency in so doing.