The record-union., 1895-01-29

equal recognition in this matter. DIR.
Janney, one of the ablest of the essayists
in favor of the highest limit, would. as
we have said. prefer the abolition of all
age of consent laws. and DR.. Lewis, writ
ing In the same vein, says that his re-
search convinces him that these laws are
relics of the ancient sex worship of the
period when the male principle, recog-
nlzed as the source of life, had the right
to command at its will the submission
of the female to its lust as sacrificial
worship; that the system pervaded Ori-
entail, Egyptian, Mexican and American
paganism. 1t created a religious prosti-
tuition and sanctified lust. 1t was born
of the Babylonian lechery and supersti-
ton that gave woman to whatever
stranger demanded her to appear within
the precincts of the temple of Venus.
This cult pervaded the Chaldeo-Assyrian
religion in the worship OF the goddess
Astarte. Sex worship swept into India
and permeated it, and her Phallic shrines
still exist in Benares. The worship is
found in Borneo, Australia and Tas-
mania. 1t prevailed in Germany to the
twelfth century, in France to the four
teenth, and fingers among the peasantry
of Italy to this hour.
nd this f,,.+ tN
say that out of the licensing Of prostitu-
ton. 600 b. c., sprang the age of consent
laws, both being the outgrowth of sex
worship, and from this source we get the
double standard of morality. 1t is pre-
cisely the same in spirit as the sex wor-
ship that made Babylonian lust lawful,
and fixed price upon its qualification.
So it comes. he adds, that in the boast of
our civilization we still enact laws in
favor Of man and against the innocence of
female childhood.
But we think we have shown that this
is not true; that in California childhood is
protected to the radical disadvantage of
the male up to and away beyond the age of
puberty. That while it is true the imma-
ture woman, the girl, has not legal ca
pacity to contract marriage, nor to sue or
be sued, nor to dispose of her property, it
is not logical sequence that she shall be
held during all the period of minority in
capable Of consent. AS our law now
stands procuration is guarded against.
while there is no protection whatever to
the boy, the youth. from the wiles of the
coquette just under age" or even ear
lier. She may be, generally is, equally
guilty with the boy of the same age, but
he must suffer ignominious punishment
and she go free.
Let it be considered calmly whether
we are likely to better conditions by
throwing a guard about women to the
age of IS, that shall hold them incapable
Of wrong doing. Whether it is not true
that this very protection may prove an
incentive and lure to lewdness. Assur-
edly, in this day and age of clamor for
political equality of the sexes before the
law. it is logical to plead that they shall
be held equal in morals before the law.
no matter what society may hold in its
peculiar code of ethics, which condemns
the woman who falls and eoddles the man
who aided in her descent
If we would impress upon girls the
highest sense of right doing, let it be our
task to so teach them and raise them that
they shall not need legal protection by
age limitation, as is advised in the Senate
bill. We may concede that woman is
the weaker vessel; that chivalry should
and does put man in the attitude of de-
fender and warns him not to avail of
even the invitation and allurement of the
immature girl, whose peril should rally
his manhood to her defense. But we pro-
test that the safer procedure will be to
leave the law as it is and let all cases
arising in the grades above the age now
fixed in the California code stand upon
their merits and not be prejudged by
statute against the male, for no better
reason than the fact that one offender is
male and the other female.