It denies that the sole purpose
of sexual activity is procreation; it also denies that sex should
be reduced to the level of sensual lust, or that woman should permit
herself to be the instrument of its satisfaction. In increasing and
differentiating her love demands, woman must elevate sex into another
sphere, whereby it may subserve and enhance the possibility of
individual and human expression. Man will gain in this no less than
woman; for in the age-old enslavement of woman he has enslaved himself;
and in the liberation of womankind, all of humanity will experience the
joys of a new and fuller freedom.
On this great fundamental and pivotal point new light has been thrown
by Lord Bertrand Dawson, the physician of the King of England. In the
remarkable and epoch-making address at the Birmingham Church Congress
(referred to in my introduction), he spoke of the supreme morality of
the mutual and reciprocal joy in the most intimate relation between man
and woman. Without this reciprocity there can be no civilization worthy
of the name. Lord Dawson suggested that there should be added to the
clauses of marriage in the Prayer Book "the complete realization of the
love of this man and this woman one for another," and in support of his
contention declared that sex love between husband and wife--apart from
parenthood--was something to prize and cherish for its own sake. The
Lambeth Conference, he remarked, "envisaged a love invertebrate and
joyless," whereas, in his view, natural passion in wedlock was not a
thing to be ashamed of or unduly repressed.
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