One of the first objections to the acceptance of the statement that the sex relation is, per se, always right, will be found in the conclusion to which the average mind immediately jumps: "Ah, then it is right for men and women who are depraved and licentious to live as they do; it is right for husbands and wives to deceive each other, and while pretending to be faithful to their marriage vows, to secretly carry on flirtations and intrigues with other men and other women!"
Ask one hundred men or one hundred women this question: "Is the sex-relation right or wrong?"
The men will declare that it is "right sometimes and wrong sometimes." The women, almost as a unit, will do the same. Occasionally a woman will be found sufficiently illumined to give a sane answer.
Following up the thoughtless answer with the request to illustrate, and the reply will be something like this: "Well, if people are married it is right, but if they are not married it is wrong;" and even as this silly answer is given, the person answering knows that it is puerile; but since the Public Mind prefers hypocrisy to Truth, few have the temerity, and fewer yet have the capability, to utter Truth.
It would be as sensible to say that it is right for the sun to shine sometimes and wrong for it to shine some other times. It is right for the sun to shine. This is all the answer that there is, and all that is needed.
Whether the sunshine bestows life and health, or decay and death, is entirely "up to us." The sun does its part. It is fulfilling the inexorable law of Nature, and is therefore right.
But of even greater importance in the universe is this law of sex. The law is forever and always right. Our concept of it may be right or it may be diseased. As a matter of fact it is, in all too many cases, diseased. If it were not, there would be no disease in the world.
How is it possible to have a perfect flower—a healthy, normal and wholesome sprout from a diseased root?
The root of all life is sex. We have thought disease into it, and the only remedy is to change our thought toward the function. This may be done by realizing that the sex-relation is always pure, holy, sacred—the bi-une God of the universe. This statement is quite different from saying that people are always right or sacred in their sex-relations.
To say that the sex-relation is always right under the institution of marriage and always wrong outside of it, is a lie. A lie cannot bring back health to either a person or a principle. Truth is the only thing that can make us whole—and the first office of Truth, as everyone knows, is to make us free. We cannot be whole until we are free, and the essential thought to be free from, is an attempt to keep alive the lie that the righteousness of Sex, per se, depends upon marriage.