ithets are the mental bulwarks of the powers of resistance against
Evolution.

Ignorance is fearful of the unknown, and the knights of Enlightenment
have ever had to fight their way through the ranks of abuse and
criticism and misrepresentation.

Free-love is a phrase with which even the most intrepid advocate of
rational thought hesitates to claim affiliation; and yet the goal of
our highest endeavors must be a state of Society where Love, the god,
is free from the mire of corruption, and the bonds of slavery.

Let us not be afraid of so harmless a thing as a word, remembering the
case of the little girl who ran to her mother crying with indignation
because someone had alluded to her as an "aristocrat." She did not
know what the word meant, and so resented it as something undeserved.

When we examine into what the phrase free-love really means, we will
not be so fearful of its sound.

To whom is this epithet most frequently applied?

Is it to the average man who is known to be a Lothario in matters of
sex? Not at all. He is referred to as a "gay bachelor" or as one who
is "sowing his wild oats" or some other phrase, which in no way
affects his social standing.

Is it applied to women of the half-world, to recognized, and legalized
prostitution? Never! It is significant of the real meaning of
free-love that the term is never used in connection with what modern
reform has aptly designated the "white slave" traffic, for the obvious
reason that nowhere is Love so un-free; so enslaved and bound and
murdered as in this phase of woman's degradation.

Nor is the term applied to unfaithful wives, because in this type of
defiance of traditional sex-ethics there is always the spirit of
self-accusation; a tacit, if not open, admission of wrong-doing.

We never hear the awful accusation of "free-lover" hurled at the young
woman who has, what the world calls, "sinned," because, forsooth, she
pays the price of her deviation from social standards (when
discovered) by ostracism, and not infrequently by a broken heart, or
by sinking further into the depths of bondage; and so here again it is
evident that there is no freedom for whatever spirit of love actuates
her conduct.

It must be admitted that the term "free-love" is applied only to those
who openly claim the right to bestow their affections and indulge in
the sex-relationship, independent of the marriage ceremony. It matters
not whether this claim includes but one mate