Religion: Sex Before Marriage

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In the continuing war between science and religion, the issue last week was sex. From Science's corner, Anthropologist George Peter Murdock of Yale threw out the challenge. Said he: "There is . . . nothing in man's social experience to indicate that the ideal of premarital chastity has any scientific value."

Out of 250 human societies he had studied, 70% permit "sexual experimentation" before marriage, Professor Murdock told the 37th annual meeting of the American Social Hygiene Association, in Manhattan. Anthropologist Murdock wished more power to "socially controlled premarital experimentation." Said he: "The sexual laxity current among our own youth is admittedly an unlovely phenomenon from an esthetic point of view. I see no grounds, however, for regarding it as socially dangerous. It is probably here to stay, since the principal props of the older morality have disappeared with the advent of contraception and the scientific mastery of venereal infection."

Approved Outlet. Murdock saw five advantages in encouraging the young folks (with "social control") to let their glands be their guides: 1) less guilt, hence less psychoneurosis; 2) an approved outlet for sexual vigor when it is at its height; 3) establishment of normal heterosexual habits; 4) understanding of the role of sex—"Relief from sexual frustration is a very inadequate motive for marriage"; 5) prevention of marriage between sexual incompatibles.

Since all this is a moral problem, said Murdock, he thought that his views should be dealt with by society's moral leaders, the clergy. "No doubt it seems absurd to think of the clergy as leading a movement to relax a standard of sexual morality ... I remind you, however, that it was the Protestant clergy who brought about the first great sexual reform of modern times by attacking and reversing the restrictive taboo of ecclesiastical celibacy. There is no inherent reason why they could not lead a second reform of equal magnitude and importance, especially with the cooperation of their Jewish and Mormon colleagues . . ." If they did so, said Scientist Murdock, "the youth of this country might flock to the churches that now repel them, and religion might even be restored to that position of central world significance which it enjoys in most societies but has lost in our own."

Short of Ideal. Scientist Murdock's challenge got a quick answer. The Rev. William J. Gibbons, of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference, rose to the defense of premarital chastity. "Man," said Jesuit Gibbons, "is a moral being . . . Man's reason, properly used, can still tell him what ought to be, even if his concrete behavior falls short of the ideal . . . Sex, like any other tendency in man, must be regulated by reason. Man, not being governed by the detailed instincts of lesser animals, would find his tendencies running wild were he not to regulate them by reason."