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 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.”
