Marriage and Divorce
My old co-ed college chum, Winifred Black, has recently propounded this question, “Why are husbands lobsters?” So I’ll explain to Winifred the cause of this sad state which devolutes a lover into a lobster. It’s like this: the rule is that the male of the genus homo is never any better than he has to be. Having said this much, let me further add that this truth also applies to the female of the genus homo. ¶ A marriage that is practically indissoluble gives the man security in his position. He is not obliged to win favors—he merely exercises his rights. As for the woman, she has him, and when she reminds him of the fact, hell is to pay. The man who stands on his rights, thinks about his rights, talks of his rights, belongs to the Lobsteria. He has ceased to be either loving or lovable. The only right any man should have is the right to be decent—that is, to be agreeable and useful ❦ One of Nature’s chief intents in sex is to bring about beauty, grace and harmony. The flowing mane and proud step of the horse, the flamboyant tail of the peacock, the song of the bird, the perfume and color of the flowers, are all sex manifestations, put forth with intent to attract, please and fascinate. Charm of manner is a sex attribute which has become a habit. The creative principle in all art is a secondary sex manifestation. The average married man feels that he is immune from the necessity of winning, pleasing, charming—he owns property. He’s a Turk! And from the Turk and the Comet, good Lord, deliver us! ¶ Public Opinion is the great natural restraining force. We are ruled by Public Opinion, not by statute law. If statute law expresses the Zeitgeist it is well, but often law hampers and restrains Public Opinion ❦ Divorce laws are obsolete in their character, and should die the death. A marriage that can not be dissolved tends to tyranny. There is a rudimentary something in man that makes him a tyrant—that divides humanity into master and slave—and to these barbaric instincts we are heir. The business of civilization is to make men free. And freedom means responsibility. ¶ The curse of marriage is that it makes the parties immune from very much of that gentle consideration which freedom bestows. Freedom in divorce is the one thing that will transform the marital boor into a gentleman. ¶ Freedom in divorce is the one thing that will abolish the domestic steam-roller. Freedom in divorce is the one thing that will correct the propensity to nag, in both male and female. We gain freedom by giving it. We hold love by giving it away. To enslave another is to enslave yourself. Constancy, unswerving and eternal, is only possible where men and women are free. ¶ Marriage was first a property-right. The woman was owned by the man. She was a chattel. He had the right of taking her life if she attempted to escape, or was otherwise unruly ❦ Then the priests came in and declared marriage a sacred rite. They brazenly declared that the marriage where they did not officiate was no marriage at all—that it was a base and unholy alliance, and that the children were illegitimate. ¶ The relationship of man and woman was to them a sin and a shame, but by their approval it was redeemed and made proper and right. To grant a divorce was to admit that the rite did not “take.” Hence, divorce was tabu. The Church isn’t interested in divorce—all the church is fighting for is to hold its position. Then comes civil marriage, which is a contract between the man and the woman from which neither party can withdraw without laying the whole matter before the courts—and the newspapers. And the sacredness of contract takes the place of the sacredness of the rite. “I would hold my friend by no stronger tie than the virtue that is in my soul,” said the gentle Emerson. ¶ Easy divorce would make divorce unnecessary in a vast number of cases, because it would put men and women on their good behavior, and thus do away with incompatibility. That which tends to increase charm of manner can not be bad; that which tends to conform a lover into a lobster is not wholly good. ¶ All over the United States there is a general demand for a uniform divorce law. This is right and well. And the way to bring about this uniformity is to do away with all divorce laws. ¶ If divorce were free, it would probably be no more frequent than it is now. Marriage should be difficult, and divorce easy. As it is now, any preacher will marry anything to anybody for fifty cents ❦ Nightly, clergymen are aroused from sleep to marry couples out of the second-story window. Marriages occur in circus-rings, balloons, show-windows, and yesterday I heard of a wedding in an automobile going on the high clutch at speed-limit, with Papa’s car opening up the cut-off close behind in hot pursuit ❦ Bum, lum, de-dum! Marriage is so serious a matter that it should not be entered upon lightly. The old plan of publishing the bans was founded on commonsense. The couple about to embark should be compelled to take a full month to think about it, and persons absolutely unfit should be debarred. But once entered upon, just two people know whether the venture is a success—and they are the man and the woman. In the name of freedom, let the only parties who are vitally interested decide the issue. ¶ Divorce is a heroic remedy for an awful condition. It is the culmination of a fearful tragedy ❦ I know of nothing worse than incompatibility. There is no hell equal to the hell of having to live with a person who is not your own. Either party who wants a divorce should have it. And the proof that it is desired should be reason sufficient for granting it ❦ Make way for liberty! It isn’t the law that brings a man and a woman together, and no law should be invoked to hold them together. ¶ The police should keep their heavy hands off. What can an outside party know of this most subtle and delicate of all human relations! The love of man for woman and of woman for man is the most powerful and persistent force in the universe. And man in his greed has seized upon it and attempted to regulate it from Harrisburg, Hartford and Helena. Now there are many folks who think it should be looked after from the District of Columbia. God help us all—just lift off the roofs and take a look at Social Washington some night at four A. M.! ¶ The lawyer here steps in and becomes as insistent and as dogmatic as the priest. Once you could marry only through the ministrations of a priest; now you can secure a divorce only through the services of a lawyer—often a dozen are employed, counting both sides. ¶ “Why make life difficult, complex and heavy?” cries Emerson. And well does he ask the question ❦ This supreme thing in life, our love, can not be regulated by man’s law ❦ The Supreme Power that made, fashioned and gave it to us provided for its automatic regulation. ¶ When love, honor and respect die, it is time in the name of purity to part. No priest can consecrate the holy relationship of a man and a woman, but God can and does. Love is the only consecration—and love is enough ❦ To imagine that God should endow us with this mighty passion, and then leave its regulation to those who govern us for a consideration, is an insult to the Divine Intelligence of which we are a part ❦ The mating of a man and a woman is the one sacred thing in life. And left alone it is lovely and true in all its attributes. In law, they will tell you that “the plaintiff has all the rights his contract gives him and no more.” In Nature, a man should have all the rights which love bestows, and no more. And when I speak of man I mean woman, too, for there is the male man and the female man ❦ I believe in equality—the equality of Nature, or, if you please, of God. I do not believe in the law interposing and giving a man rights and a woman privileges. Neither do I understand why the money a woman earns should belong to a man, unless we first grant the righteousness of master and slave, and frankly admit that the man owning the woman, also owns per se all that she produces, including her children ❦ God has decided who the children belong to—they belong to the woman who bore them and whose body nourished them. But man steps in and makes laws about a mother’s instincts. ¶ Men and women mate, and being mated cleave together until death do them part—and longer. They whom God has joined together no man can put asunder. The mischievous meddling of man leads to a condition where the parties think they own each other. This is slavery. Many married men treat any other woman with more respect than they treat their wives. ¶ The gallantry that holds through gentle treatment and just is gone when the man thinks he holds a warranty-deed for the property. To be free you must be on your good behavior. And do not for a moment imagine that a man would leave his mate if law did not manacle him to her. He is held by an unseen silken cord as strong as Fate, as constant as Life, as persistent as Death. “Whither thou goest, I will go: and thy people shall be my people.” ¶ The divine attraction which brings the right man and the right woman together must be trusted as strong and sufficient enough to hold them. When you treat them as rats baited into a trap, from which escape is impossible, you dissolve the main idea and interpose the thought of escape. ¶ And this is what makes so many married men and women stray in their sleep and tread the border-land of folly. I would hold my mate by the supreme integrity of my love for her, and by no other bond. And this once fixed in the minds of men and women would make for constancy. ¶ Nothing is more terrible in life than to break and sunder human relations ❦ To be true to your own is the natural thing, because it is the right thing. It is the only policy that pays. Happiness lies in loyalty. This applies to any field of human endeavor. The race knows it now for the first time in history. Truth is the new virtue, and Truth is a virtue because it reduces the perplexities of life and brings good results. ¶ The love of man for woman and of woman for man, and of both for their children, is a divine instinct ❦ When you bolster and brace it by political blacksmiths and shuddering shysters, you doubt its constancy, and, what is worse, you suggest the doubt to the very people you seek to fetter ❦ The greatest line ever written by Humboldt was this: “The Universe is governed by Law.” But he did not refer to the laws of man ❦ He referred to the laws of Nature, or, if you please, the laws of God, although Humboldt in his latter years never used the word “God.” I believe in the blessed trinity of Man, Woman and Child. These to me express Divinity. Left alone the woman would be the companion, friend and helpmeet of the man, not his slave, pet, plaything, drudge, doormat and scullion. ¶ Happiness lies in equality. The effort you put forth to win the woman, you should be compelled to exercise through life in order to hold her. And you will hold her by so long as Love kisses the lips of Death, and the dimpled hands of the babe encircle the neck of its father ❦ The house of the harlot exists because love is gyved, fettered, blindfolded and sold in the marketplaces. There is nothing so pulls on the heartstrings of the normal, healthy man as the love for wife and child ❦ Always and forever he wears them in his heart of hearts. To imagine that he would forsake them for the husks of license, unless looked after by Jaggers and Jaggers, is to doubt the Wisdom of the Creator. In our hearts Divine Wisdom implanted the seeds of loyalty and right. These are a part of the great plan of self-preservation. We do not walk off the cliff, because we realize that to do so would mean death. ¶ Make men and women free, and they will travel by the Eternal Guiding Stars. That which makes for self-respect in men and women, putting each on his good behavior, increasing the sum of good-will and lessening hate, will have a most potent influence on future generations. I can not imagine a worse handicap than to be tumbled into life by incompatible parents and be brought up in an atmosphere of strife. “We have bred from the worst in the worst possible way, and the result is a race of scrubs,” says Alfred Russel Wallace. ¶ All that tends to tyranny in parents manifests itself in slavish traits in the children. Freedom is a condition of mind, and the best way to secure it is to breed it. So I say, make marriage difficult by demanding notification and a pause; then make divorce free on application of either party ❦ Do you remember the woman who wanted a divorce if she couldn’t get it, and if she could, did not want it? No one wants a divorce from his own ❦ This would be the one horrible and appalling thing in life. Let life be automatic. Make room for the Divine. And in this article I have only stated what all thinking men and women know and believe, but which they—wisely—decline to say or even admit. Therefore, I have said it for them. We will now listen to the Anvil Chorus.
The Taxation of Church Property
I am in receipt of a very interesting letter from the Reverend A. B. Taylor, Lakeside, New York, in which he says that he reads The Fra with much pleasure and profit, and often receives valuable help therefrom in compiling his sermons. Doctor Taylor is an orthodox Methodist, and the fact that I am able to express for him, in degree, many of the things he holds as truth is one of the encouraging signs of the times. It is frank, friendly and beautiful in Doctor Taylor to write me his acknowledgments. But after writing the letter he adds a postscript. I might say that I have a suspicion he wrote the beautiful letter in order to add the postscript, but I will not. Here is the P.S.: “One thing I do not like, and can not comprehend, is why you so wrongfully advocate the taxing of church property.” ¶ Then he encloses a column clipping from The Christian Work and Evangelist, wherein the reasons for exemption of church property from taxation are fully set forth. Very seldom does one get the entire argument at first hand, but here it all is, skilfully presented ❦ I give it in its entirety: “The worst enemy New York has, or any city has, is the perennial critic who would tax the churches. Some interesting correspondence has recently been going on in one of the New York papers over this matter. Some one by the name of Hubbard discovered that there were several million dollars’ worth of property in churches which was untaxed. The critic supported his arguments by statements that the churches are not direct public servants, as are schools and hospitals; that they exist to teach certain doctrines of their own, differing among themselves, and which have no direct relation to the public good—some of the doctrines, indeed, being pernicious, according to this critic. The short-sightedness of all this is apparent to the most superficial mind. The policy of taxing the churches would be almost suicidal to any town or city. The churches save New York fifty times what the city loses in taxes from them. Here are a few facts which when perceived stop all such talk at once: The Church is the greatest police force in the community. The Roman Catholic Church alone—we mention that Church because it practises the negative doctrine of restraint more than do the Protestant churches—restrains hundreds of thousands of men and women from petty crimes that would cost New York more than all her courts and police and jails and prisons have cost her for years. Take the churches out of New York for ten years and it would be an unsafe city to live in, and the expense of administering its criminal courts and prisons would bankrupt it. As a matter of fact, the teaching of any particular theological doctrine is the smallest part of any work the churches do ❦ Go into any church in New York and you will find that fully three-fourths of all the efforts are being directly expended in making good citizens. In Sunday school the children are being taught honesty, purity, brotherhood, ambition and the unselfish life. Fully two-thirds of the sermons of the average preacher are direct inspirations to the moral life or instructions in ethics. We venture to say that had our friend collected fifty of the sermons preached in New York last Sunday he would have found forty-nine which dealt with practical religious life to one on the doctrine, say, of the future life. ¶ Of course, there are millions of people who have found in their experience that the ‘peculiar doctrines,’ as our friends call them, produce the highest type of citizenship. As a matter of fact, the main efforts of the churches of New York are put on producing honest and altruistic men ❦ Heaven only knows what would become of the city if its one thousand four hundred churches were crippled by great taxes. It is bad enough now. The police service the churches render New York saves the city millions every year. The service of furnishing her with honest and unselfish men can not be put in numbers. There are none large enough.” ¶ It will please be noticed that the editor of The Christian Work and Evangelist starts his article by informing us who the worst enemy of New York or any city actually is. This worst enemy, according to my Christian colleague, is the critic who would tax the churches. Thus, before he attempts to reply to the critic, he denounces the critic as not only an enemy of the State, but its worst enemy. Grafters, thieves, dealers in dope, procurers, sweat-shop fiends, murderers, all take second place: the worst enemy of a city—any city—is the man who advocates the taxation of church property. The editor himself is a Christian, a church-member and a clergyman. Does he stand as a sample of the head, hand and heart of the modern church-member? ❦ I think so. He is a man of education, of position, honored and respected in his denomination. And he tells us that people who disagree with him in a matter of finance are not only the enemies of the State, but its worst enemies. “A traitor to God is a traitor to his country.” Thus did religious fanaticism once link the heretic and the traitor as one ❦ To disagree with the prevailing religion was to be regarded as the foe of society. How hard the tyrants die! ¶ Yet many clergymen believe that it would be better to put church property on an absolute parity with all other property. In fact, many churches now voluntarily pay taxes. The great and influential congregation presided over by Rabbi Leonard Levy of Pittsburgh requested the assessors to tax their synagogue at its cost valuation of three hundred thousand dollars ❦ In Toronto is a Baptist church—the Jarvis Street Baptist Church, I believe—that has paid taxes on its property for more than twenty years, because the congregation voting on the question decided that an evasion of taxes on the part of a church because it did “good” was really no better than the exemption of an individual for the same reason. ¶ The enemy of the State, forsooth, is the man who asks some one to pay a few paltry dollars for police and fire protection! ❦ Naturally, one might say the enemy of the State is the man who refuses to pay his quota of expense for the maintenance of the Government machinery. ¶ The editor of The Christian Work and Evangelist is a clergyman ❦ He is paid by the religious denomination he serves. This denomination has large holdings of real estate, upon which it pays no taxes. If it paid taxes it would not have so much money to pay clergymen; therefore, one of its leading clergymen, acting as spokesman for the rest, defines for us the worst enemy of New York—“or any city.” Thus we get the quality of logic that rules in our churches. It would be laughable were it not pitiable in its weakness. The church isn’t dead—it can still call vile names ❦ How nimbly it yet flings the theologic stink-pot! The fires of the auto da fe are not extinguished. They are only banked, banked in the editorial office of The Christian Work and Evangelist. “The worst enemy of New York or any city!” It is the old, old cry of “Away with him!” ❦ It is the cry of entrenched tyranny, that he who disagrees with you in religious matters is the enemy of the State. Socrates spoke disrespectfully of the gods, and for this they brewed for him the hemlock. The crime of Jesus was that he undermined the State ❦ Savonarola, Bruno, Latimer, Wyclif, enemies of society—all! ¶ The editor of The Christian Work and Evangelist thinks that the State and Religion are one. And he is right. For just as long as the State grants immunity from taxation to church property, the divorce is not complete. We haven’t yet caught up with Thomas Jefferson. Well, you know what the State in the past has done to those who are considered its enemies? Yes, and that is just what the meek and lowly editor of The Christian Work and Evangelist would do to you if he had the power. ¶ Carefully read, analyzed and digested, we find that the sole excuses churches have for not paying taxes are: First, the churches form a police system which prevents certain people from committing crime. Second, the churches supply us a great number of honest and unselfish citizens, who otherwise would be rogues ❦ For these two things they claim a cash reward from the community. My answer is that both propositions are assumptions, quite gratuitous, but that, even if they were true, it would not justify the State in remitting their quota of taxes. ¶ I have had a large and varied experience with clergymen and church-members, and that they are better morally and stand higher intellectually are propositions which they admit, but which no one besides themselves puts forward. The names of clergymen, Sunday-school teachers and pious deacons who go wrong would fill a five-foot shelf of books. In fact, it is an axiom that the bankers’ colony in every penitentiary is made up mostly of church-members ❦ When the University of Copenhagen says that church-members are better citizens than non-church-members, I may believe it. Until then, the verdict must be, “Not Proved”—and especially so, in view of the fact that when Christianity was absolutely supreme the headsman worked overtime, and crime, grime, blood, poverty, disease and woe were the rule, not the exception. The doctrine that some folks are so much better than others that they deserve eternal bliss is the most selfish idea ever put forth by mortal man. Folks who think they are better than others, usually aren’t. That the idea of endless joy for believers, and endless hell for doubters, is not being preached now so much as it was a few years ago, is nothing to the credit of church-members. ¶ All separations of society into sacred and secular, good and bad, saved and lost, learned and illiterate, rich and poor, are illusions which mark certain periods in the evolution of society ❦ The offer of endless life and the threat of endless hell are frightful rudimentary errors of the savage mind, born of fear and frenzy, and then perpetuated as a police system by a Divine Collection Agency. For not only does a religion of fear keep people “good,” but it also makes them pay for being kept good. The offer of immunity from the penalties of sin, through belief in the blood of Jesus, is merely the immunity that human sacrifice once provided, slightly refined and modified. The “belief” in a blood sacrifice has taken the place of the sacrifice itself. ¶ The orthodox Christian Church still teaches immunity from penalties on the acceptance of its creed. From exemption from the natural penalty of a misdeed to exemption from taxation is but a step. The man who can accept the one takes kindly to the other. “Jesus died and paid it all—yes, all the debt I owe.” “Saved by the blood of the Lamb.” That is, throw it off on some one else. Who cares! Any way to go scot-free! And this evasion of a penalty for wrong committed is called “the glad tidings of great joy.” To escape the payment of taxes is a variation of the same idea ❦ Many of these “saved” people do not pay their debts until compelled to. If they work for you they loaf and visit on “company time.” They cheat you in a hundred ways, and often spend as much time trying to evade the responsibility of shouldering the burden as, rightly used, would have carried the message to Garcia. ¶ The entire Christian doctrine of rewards and punishments, of a vicarious atonement, and the substitution of a pure and holy man for the culprit, is a vicious and misleading philosophy ❦ That fear in some instances has deterred men from crime, there is no doubt. But the error of religion as a police system lies in the fact that it makes superstition perpetual. Untruth that good may follow is not a nice philosophy. ¶ It will be noted that the learned editor of The Christian Work and Evangelist pleads, as a reason why churches should not pay taxes, the assertion that three-fourths of all sermons now preached deal with present-day problems, and the effort is not merely to save souls but to make better citizens. This is doubtless true ❦ The church is saving herself from dissolution by becoming secularized. Gradually the world is being educated into the belief that one world at a time is enough. Also, a vast number of men and women see the fact that immunity and exemption are not desirable, that nothing can ever be given away, and that something for nothing is very dear ❦ To make a man exempt is to take from him just so much manhood; and to make a church exempt is to weaken the fabric and place the institution on a mendicant basis ❦ To accept salvation for yourself, with the consciousness that there is still one soul in hell, would turn your paradise into purgatory, if your soul were worth a damn. “One man is no man,” said Aristotle four hundred years before Christ. We are all parts and particles of each other. ¶ This matter of exemption from taxation of certain edifices and certain men, transportation at half-rates, and the ten-per-cent discount to clergymen and teachers, all hinges on a lack of the Ethical Monistic Concept ❦ It assumes that certain work is sacred and other work secular; that certain places are holy and others profane. My esteemed colleague, the editor of The Christian Work and Evangelist, admits that this world is no longer “but a desert drear, heaven is my home.” He admits that we are here, and that this is our home now, at least. When he goes a step further and admits that this is God’s world, not the Devil’s; that every man is doing the best he can with the light and power he possesses; that all human service is sacred; that there is no high nor low; that there are no “saved” so long as men are in bonds to fear, superstition and incompetence; that a smokestack is as sacred as a steeple—then he will agree with me that churches should pay their just quota of taxes. Good people no longer ask immunity from payment of bills because they are “good.” Businessmen are just as “good” as preachers. Business today is founded on the thought of reciprocity and mutuality ❦ We help ourselves only as we help others. And all transactions in life should be co-operative and reciprocal. ¶ Granting for argument’s sake that the Church does do all the good claimed by my Christian brother, still that is no reason for its exemption. “So far as this Court knows, all men who live in houses are good men, making the world of men better by their lives; but this is no reason why their residences should be exempt from taxation.” So said a wise and learned judge in deciding the question of taxation of parsonages in Illinois. Here we get the growing concept of the world of thinking men and women, the concept of Ethical Monism. All is One, and the sacred is that which serves. Pay the price, and provided you pay the price, the thing you buy is worth the money. ¶ The churches will never do the good they are capable of doing until they throw off mendicancy. ¶ And the beggar is a robber who has lost his nerve, a bandit with a streak of yellow in his ego. The churches must take their stand, firmly and frankly, as human institutions, asking no exemption, demanding no immunity. Then they will be free. For her own good the Church must meet her responsibilities, and not shift her burden of taxes upon the people who do not believe her creed. If you believe in a “peculiar” doctrine, that is your affair, and you are the man to pay for its support. To say that I must pay for the support of your creed or else be branded as a foe of society is bad logic, worse ethics, and very indelicate, not to say discourteous ❦ Only that is fair and beautiful which neither threatens, bribes, evades, demands nor supplicates.
