Still less should people who are not jealous be urged to
behave as if they were jealous, and to enter upon duels and
divorce suits in which they have no desire to be successful. There
should be no publication of the grounds on which a divorce is
sought or granted; and as this would abolish the only means the
public now has of ascertaining that every possible effort has been
made to keep the couple united against their wills, such privacy
will only be tolerated when we at last admit that the sole and
sufficient reason why people should be granted a divorce is that
they want one. Then there will be no more reports of divorce
cases, no more letters read in court with an indelicacy that makes
every sensitive person shudder and recoil as from a profanation,
no more washing of household linen, dirty or clean, in public.
We must learn in these matters to mind our own business and not
impose our individual notions of propriety on one another, even if
it carries us to the length of openly admitting what we are now
compelled to assume silently, that every human being has a right
to sexual experience, and that the law is concerned only with
parentage, which is now a separate matter.
DIVORCE WITHOUT ASKING WHY
The one question that should never be put to a petitioner for
divorce is "Why?" When a man appeals to a magistrate for
protection from someone who threatens to kill him, on the simple
ground that he desires to live, the magistrate might quite
reasonably ask him why he desires to live, and why the person who
wishes to kill him should not be gratified.
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