Sex Education

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30406, 3 April 1964, Page 10

Sex Education

Sir,—l agree with A. Simpson that the Danish Government’s experiment in sex education shows an enlightened and realistic outlook. When people begin to tolerate sexual promiscuity in society, and can only talk negligently about “empty moralising with outdated concepts” as a defence of their toleration, when .the use of “precautions” becomes the accepted remedy for increase in venereal disease cases, New Zealand has surely reached the depths of imitative depravity. Sex has only the connotations of sordidness and filth that man chooses to give it. It can be a clean, wholesome, beautiful relationship involving love and creation within the bonds of marriage. If marriages of love are “outdated concepts,” then so are human families, and eventually so is our whole painfully gained civilisation, because the human family is the building block of every stable society. Do we really want to undo all this?—Yours, etc., W. A. PORTEOUS. April 2, 1964.

Sir, —“R.A.M.G.” doubts my contention that venereal disease and illegitimacy are the result of promiscuity. Yet in the following sentence he writes: “Venereal disease spreads rapidly when infected females are unaware of their condition and continue to infect.” In other words, promiscuity is the agent of infection. Logic, obviously, is not his strong point, which explains why he, like “P. O’D,” apparently subscribe to the nonsensical idea that the incidence of venereal disease and of illegitimacy will be reduced by removing restraints on promiscuity.— Yours, etc., H.J.E. April 1, 1964.