The Indianapolis times., 1930-09-17
Free Love
Losing Game
for WO m e n
BY MARTHA LEE

Women have gone far in the last
thirty years toward equalization OF
their right and those Of men. They
have made it possible for their sex
to receive a good education. They
have obtained the right to vote.
They have made it possible for
women to have professional and
business careers as brilliant and re-
munerative as those of men.
The object has been to raise wom-
en- to the plane occupied exclusively
by men for centuries. intellectually
and financially, this has been pos
sible. But when women start to
simulate men to the extent OF
adopting their morals they have
struck a snag.
When it come to emotional free
dom without benefit of clergy as
Mr.. Kipling so nicely puts it, there
is something to be reckoned with.
Defied Conventions
Men seem to "nve their own
lives" free of the bonds ef marriage
and get away with it. But women
simply can not do it, regardless OF
new freedom, liberalism, modernism
and all the rest. They have too
much to take into consideration.
The double standard simply can
not be adopted safely and Sensibly
by women. 1t shows lack Of fore
sight entirely incongruous with their
intellectual attainments in the past
thirty years. If there is to be any
equalization along these lines at all,
women must insist that men raise
themselves to the level of women.
Women can not step down to the
level of men in this matter.
have letter from a young girl
who has felt that modernism and
the new freedom made it possible
for her to defy convention in this
matter.
Love Gave Excuse
She was in love, which was ex-
cuse enough in her own mind. But
now she finds she does not want
things to continue as they were be-
gun.
She wants what every woman
wants. Comfortable security in mar
riage. The right to claim this man
as her husband. The respectability
that comes with marriage. And the
boy says nothing at all about it.
It is not intelligent nor wise of
women to tear down the barriers OF
protection that marriage gives them.
Marriage is woman's only assurance
that she and her children will be
protected.
Failed to Consider
The trouble with free love Is that
too often women are left, sometimes
with children, to make the best
they can of things. And society,
being what it is, the best usually is
bad enough.
What the girl did not take into
consideration, and what most girls
who are contemplating such step
fail to consider. is the possibility
they may learn to care far too much
ever to retire gracefully from the
scene.
The whole thing is so terribly un-
fair. No person can live for him
self entirely. There are too many
other people invloved in our lives
whose interest in what we do is TOO
keen to allow us to follow our own
desires.
Injustice Is Done
When girl fundamentally Is
good. defying conventions, even for
what she considers the supreme eX-
cuse, love, does not still her con-
science. It does not blind her to
the fact that she is placing her
self outside the pale, that she is do
ing something that will make her
lose her self-respect, which Is i'm
portant above all things.
She knows she is doing herself
and all those who love her and trust
her, a gross injustice. And she
knows, because it is so evident all
about her, that she is losing every
thing and gaining nothing.
There is no such thing as free
love. Being in love is bond itself,
which can not be any stronger for q
marriage ceremony. Marriage only
blesses that love with security and
responsibility. It only puts the
hand of approval of the law and
church upon the love.