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.