to establish a lie.

Or take the case from another point of view. I have two in my mind at this
moment, who for some reason (a reason not very far to seek if you read our
English marriage laws) came to the conclusion that it is not right to place
oneself in such a position as a married woman is in under English law. I am
not discussing whether they were right or wrong; I say that quite sincere
and moral people do come to that conclusion sometimes, and so did these
two. They lived together, therefore, without being legally married. They
were absolutely faithful to each other; their love was as responsible, as
dignified, as true as any such relation could be. It lacked to my mind one
thing--the sense of a wider responsibility--but then it had very much that
many legal marriages have not. Those two people are put outside society;
it is made almost impossible for them to earn their living; and at last
in despair they go to the registry office, and sign their names in a book.
What difference has been made in their relation to each other? Absolutely
none. They are no more convinced of the right and duty of the community
to be concerned with marriage than they were before. They have yielded
to coercion. Their moral standard, good or bad, is precisely what it was;
their relation to each other wholly unchanged. But in the eyes of the world
they have become respectable, they are "moral," they can be received
back into the bosom of society. And why? Because they have gone through a
ceremony in which they do not believe!

Every marriage in the world probably lacks something of perfection. There
are no perfect human beings, and, therefore, hardly, perhaps, a perfect
marriage; and to my mind those who do not admit the concern of the
community in their marriage do lack something. But to suppose that those
people are immoral, when others who live together, legally licensed to do
so, in selfishness, in infidelity, for financial reasons, or for social
reasons, are moral is fundamentally dishonest. When a woman sells her body
for money, do you think that it makes it moral that she does it in a church
or in a registry office? Is there one whit of difference, morally, between
the prostitution that has no legal recognition and the prostitution that
has? Is it anything but prostitution to sell yourself for money, whether
you are a man or a woman? Do you imagine that because you have a contract
to protect you while you do it, you are doing what