And so those who have the lawmaking itch set about
saving humanity from itself by making inhuman laws, which the clever
and the criminal evade or break through, leaving the gentle and the
timid in the net.
For there was never no divorce. No amount of law has ever availed
to keep those together who had the courage or the cruelty to break
the bonds. By hook or by crook, if not by book, they will be free.
The question of the children is often used to cloud the issue, as if
all that children needed for their welfare were the formal alliance
of their parents, and as if a home where hatred rages or complacent
vice is serene were the ideal rearing-ground for the young. When love
of their children is enough to keep two incompatible souls together
there is no need of the law. When that love is insufficient what can
the law accomplish? And what of the innumerable families where there
have been no children, or where they are dead or grown-up?
The experiment of forbidding what cannot be prevented and of refusing
legal sanction to what human nature demands has been given centuries
of trial with no success.
Marriage is among the last of the institutions to have the daylight
let in and the windows thrown open. For the home is no more
threatened by liberty than the State is, and that pair which is
kept together only by the shackles of the law is already divorced;
its cohabitation is a scandal. Free love in the promiscuous sense is
no uglier than coupled loathing.
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