CHAPTER XXXVII

PROSTITUTION

We have talked over many of the problems of boys and young men. You are now sixteen and new problems are constantly coming up in your life for solution. I would like to speak with you on this occasion about the very vital problem of illicit intercourse with women. By this expression is meant all sexual intercourse with women outside of holy wedlock.

=Men are as fallen as women.=--When this sin occurs among single people it is fornication, when among the married, it is adultery. Whether this occurs among the single or the married, it is prostitution. In this sin there is no difference, in character, between the male and the female, the married and the single prostitute; in either case, the priceless gem of virtue has been forfeited.

=Men think less of their virtue than women.=--Partly due to a bad heredity and largely due to a false training and the existence of a double standard of morals, boys and men are more willing to sacrifice their virtue than are girls and women. There are a few degenerate girls and some who have been reared in immoral homes who willingly sacrifice their virtue. But these represent only a very small part of the girls who annually fall. Most of those who are known as fallen women were induced to fall by designing men. Many methods are used to accomplish the fall of girls. Lady clerks, stenographers and servants in homes and hotels receive such meager wages that they are often unable to meet their necessary expenses. Men have taken advantage of their financial need and by skillful advances, artful entreaties and by offering to supplement their income for special favors, they succeed in ruining many girls.

=Few women go wrong from choice.=--Some men use the dance, the theater, alcoholic drinks, certain stimulating drugs, buggy rides and late hours at night as means of accomplishing their fiendish purposes. Victory once won, clandestine relations are continued until the girl finds that she is to be a mother, or her guilt becoming known, being often forced from her own home, ostracized by society, shunned by professing Christians, she now becomes an outcast. Few girls ever go wrong from choice. Great as her sin is, it is small compared with his. There is not greater sin and crime than his. Possessed of one spark of manhood, he would marry the girl; instead, he is more likely to boast of his achievement.

=No less a sin because the fallen woman accepts a “price.”=--Young men often ask, “What harm can there be in seeking sexual gratification with a woman who voluntarily gives her consent for a price?” There are many reasons why this is wrong. The Bible condemns it as a very great sin. Civil law condemns adultery as a crime. By both civil and divine law it is considered as great a crime as stealing, murder or drunkenness. If men controlled their passions, there would be no fallen women. If men would not visit them, they would reform or become Christians. Thus men are not only largely responsible for the fall of women, but they are largely responsible for their remaining fallen.

=Man’s appreciation of pure women destroyed.=--Constant association with fallen women degrades or destroys a man’s conception and appreciation of pure womanhood. He may become so degraded as to believe that all women have their “price.” Such a man could not appreciate a pure sister, daughter, wife or mother. Such men become sensualists and should they marry, their excesses would wreck the health and happiness of their wives, and their children would receive an unfortunate heredity.

=A great physical risk.=--For physical reasons a visit to the fallen women would be a hazardous risk. These women are nearly always diseased. In this way young men become diseased and they infect their wives and transmit serious troubles to their children.

=Self-respect lost.=--From a moral point of view a visit to the strange woman is wholly inadmissible. You could never wholly recover your self-respect. A young man has no moral right to demand purity of his sweetheart at the marriage altar unless he can offer her a pure life.

=Danger of becoming an illegitimate father.=--Finally, through illicit intercourse a young man is constantly in danger of becoming a father. An illegitimate father never loves, feeds, clothes, shelters, educates and trains his own child. Every instinct of nature demands this much of him. The child is blood of his blood, bone of his bone, life of his life; it is as truly his child as if it had been conceived in wedlock. Sin that will so degrade a man as to leave him without sense of honor, justice and right in his relation to his own child certainly has no equal in the catalogue of crime.

=The pure man is worthy of a pure wife.=--The young man who keeps himself as pure as a virgin will be worthy of one of God’s queenly women, he will be capable of making her a kingly husband, and, conscious of their dignity, purity and virility, he and his wife will become the happy parents of a brood of fair girls and lusty boys.