Page:The Woman Socialist - Snowden - 1907.djvu/67

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CHAPTER VIII

SEX

Socialism is understood by the ignorant to stand for promiscuity between the sexes, or what is commonly known as “free love.” Such a condition of things is viewed with pardonable apprehension, and would, indeed, be ample justification for any and every attempt to retard the progress of society in the direction of Socialism, if it were true.

But “free love,” as that term is ordinarily understood, is not the disastrous promise of the future. It is the awful fact of the present. The sacred institution of marriage, the holy ties of family are not sufficiently strong to keep men pure to–day. A sad army of more than four millions of women in Europe alone are, at this time, after all that it is imagined Christian teaching has done for women, ministering to the lusts of men. In each

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