crystallizing and codifying this contradiction, the Church
not only solidified its own power over men but reduced women to the most
abject and prostrate slavery. It was essentially a morality that would
not "work." The sex instinct in the human race is too strong to be bound
by the dictates of any church. The church's failure, its century after
century of failure, is now evident on every side: for, having convinced
men and women that only in its baldly propagative phase is sexual
expression legitimate, the teachings of the Church have driven sex
under-ground, into secret channels, strengthened the conspiracy of
silence, concentrated men's thoughts upon the "lusts of the body," have
sown, cultivated and reaped a crop of bodily and mental diseases, and
developed a society congenitally and almost hopelessly unbalanced. How
is any progress to be made, how is any human expression or education
possible when women and men are taught to combat and resist their
natural impulses and to despise their bodily functions?

Humanity, we are glad to realize, is rapidly freeing itself from this
"morality" imposed upon it by its self-appointed and self-perpetuating
masters. From a hundred different points the imposing edifice of this
"morality" has been and is being attacked. Sincere and thoughtful
defenders and exponents of the teachings of Christ now acknowledge the
falsity of the traditional codes and their malignant influence upon the
moral and physical well-being of humanity.

Ecclesiastical opposition to Birth Control on the part of certain
representatives of the Protestant churches, based usually on quotations
from the Bible, is equally invalid, and for the same reason. The
attitude of the more intelligent and enlightened clergy has been well
and succinctly expressed by Dean Inge, who, referring to the ethics of
Birth Control, writes: "THIS IS EMPHATICALLY A MATTER IN WHICH EVERY
MAN AND WOMAN MUST JUDGE FOR THEMSELVES, AND MUST REFRAIN FROM JUDGING
OTHERS." We must not neglect the important fact that it is not merely
in the practical results of such a decision, not in the small number of
children, not even in the healthier and better cared for children, not
in the possibility of elevating the living conditions of the individual
family, that the ethical value of Birth Control alone lies. Precisely
because the practice of Birth Control does demand the exercise of
decision, the making of choice, the use of the reasoning powers, is