"There are two equally unfortunate attitudes toward love which perhaps
grow out of each other. The one is the puritan attitude and the other
is the vulgar one. The puritan attitude is that sex impulses are
somehow vile and so, altho they give pleasure, must be denied. The
vulgar attitude takes it for granted that sex impulses are vile but as
they are pleasant are to be accepted. The one tends to deny physical
values to love. This is suppression. The other tends to deny tender
values to love. That is suppression also. They have neither one known
love. And finally the puritan becomes incapable of tenderness and the
vulgar becomes equally incapable of physical expression. It is not a
beautiful picture.
"The healthy attitude is this: The sex impulse is not degrading any
more than any other impulse is. It is a force as gravity is a force.
Those human beings achieve beauty and harmony who correlate sexual
impulses harmoniously with all their other impulses."[3]
"In spite of the age-long teachings that sex life in itself is
unclean," Margaret Sanger writes in "Woman and the New Race," the
world has been moving to a realization that A GREAT LOVE BETWEEN A MAN
AND A WOMAN IS A HOLY THING freighted with great responsibilities for
spiritual growth. The fear of unwanted children removed, the assurance
that she will have a sufficient amount of time in which to develop
her love life to its greatest beauty, with its comradeship in many
fields--these will lift woman by the very soaring quality of her
innermost self to spiritual heights that few have attained. Then the
coming of the eagerly desired children will but enrich life in all its
avenues, rather than enslave and impoverish it as do unwanted ones
to-day.
"What healthier grounds for the growth of sound morals could possibly
exist than the ample spiritual life of the woman just depicted? Free
to follow the feminine spirit, which dwells in the sanctuary of her
nature, she will, in her daily life, give expression to that high
idealism which is the fruit of that spirit when it is unhampered and
unviolated.
"The love for her mate will flower in beauty of deeds that are pure
because they are the natural expression of her physical, mental and
spiritual being. The love for desired children will come to blossom in
a spirituality that is high because it is free to reach the heights.
"=The Moral Force of Woman's Nature Will be Unchained=, and of its own
dynamic power will uplift her to a plane unimagined by those holding
fast to the old standards of church morality. Love is the greatest
force of the universe; freed of its bonds of submission and unwanted
progeny, it will formulate and compel of its own nature observance to
standards of purity far beyond the highest conception of the average
moralist."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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