Slowly but surely we are breaking down the taboos that surround sex; but we are breaking them down out of sheer necessity.  The codes that have surrounded sexual behavior in the so-called Christian communities, the teachings of the churches concerning chastity and sexual purity, the prohibitions of the laws, and the hypocritical conventions of society, have all demonstrated their failure as safeguards against the chaos produced and the havoc wrought by the failure to recognize sex as a driving force in human nature,—­as great as, if indeed not greater than, hunger.  Its dynamic energy is indestructible.  It may be transmuted, refined, directed, even sublimated, but to ignore, to neglect, to refuse to recognize this great elemental force is nothing less than foolhardy.

Out of the unchallenged policies of continence, abstinence, “chastity” and “purity,” we have reaped the harvests of prostitution, venereal scourges and innumerable other evils.  Traditional moralists have failed to recognize that chastity and purity must be the outward symptoms of awakened intelligence, of satisfied desires, and fulfilled love.  They cannot be taught by “sex education.”  They cannot be imposed from without by a denial of the might and the right of sexual expression.  Nevertheless, even in the contemporary teaching of sex hygiene and social prophylaxis, nothing constructive is offered to young men and young women who seek aid through the trying period of adolescence.

At the Lambeth Conference of 1920, the Bishops of the Church of England stated in their report on their considerations of sexual morality:  “Men should regard all women as they do their mothers, sisters, and daughters; and women should dress only in such a manner as to command respect from every man.  All right-minded persons should unite in the suppression of pernicious literature, plays and films....”  Could lack of psychological insight and understanding be more completely indicated?  Yet, like these bishops, most of those who are undertaking the education of the young are as ignorant themselves of psychology and physiology.  Indeed, those who are speaking belatedly of the need of “sexual hygiene” seem to be unaware that they themselves are most in need of it.  “We must give up the futile attempt to keep young people in the dark,” cries Rev. James Marchant in “Birth-Rate and Empire,” “and the assumption that they are ignorant of notorious facts.  We cannot, if we would, stop the spread of sexual knowledge; and if we could do so, we would only make matters infinitely worse.  This is the second decade of the twentieth century, not the early Victorian period....  It is no longer a question of knowing or not knowing.  We have to disabuse our middle-aged minds of that fond delusion.  Our young people know more than we did when we began our married lives, and sometimes as much as we know, ourselves, even now.  So that we need not continue to shake our few remaining hairs in simulating feelings