goes to? This
philosophy of vulgar denial? This philosophy of wallowing surrender?

The Christian stream has been polluted. It has gone dirty in the age
of hush. We are supposed to keep our mouths shut. We are not to give
sex away. We breed youngsters in fatal ignorance. They are always
asking questions. But we don't answer their questions. The church
don't answer them. Nor the state. Nor the schools. Not even mothers
and fathers. Nobody who could answer answers them. But they don't go
unanswered. They get answered. And they get answered wrong instead
of right. They get answered, smutched instead of washed. They get
answered blasphemously instead of reverently. They get answered so
that the body is suspected instead of being trusted.

A boy who knows nothing asks a boy who knows nothing. A girl who knows
nothing asks a girl who knows nothing. From nothing nothing comes. Men
who have been such boys know nothing. Women who have been such girls
know nothing. From nothing nothing comes. They have become familiar
with sex circumstances. They are parents. They have done the best
they knew how. But they never learned sex. They never realized its
fundamentals. They never went back to, or forward to it. They were
lost in a wilderness. They existed without living. They took sex as
they took whiskey. They breathed an atmosphere of hush. They had got
past the ascetics. But they had not got to be men and women. They
didn't refuse sex. But though embracing its privileges, they still
seemed to regard it as something not to be gloried in. The least
said about it the soonest mended. Mothers and fathers would say to
children: "You'll know about it soon enough." Teachers would say:
"Ask your questions at home." Home would say: "What ever started you
thinking about such things?"

The child goes about wondering. What's the matter with sex that
everybody's afraid to talk about it? What's the matter with my body
that I dare not mention it? My body seems very beautiful to me. I like
to look at it. I like to feel it. I like to smell it. But I'm always
hurried into my clothes. My body is so mysteriously precious I must
take care of it. But how am I to take care of it if I don't get
acquainted with it?

I find that having a body has something to do with being a father and
a mother. I want to be a father. I want to be a mother. But how can
I be a father or mother if some one who knows doesn't tell me what
precedes fatherhood and motherhood?