Methodist Mores

"In the interest of morality and sound scientific knowledge, we favor such changes of the law in the State of New York and Connecticut as will remove the existing restrictions upon the communication by physicians to their patients of important medical information on birth control."

Not by professional Progressives nor by drum-pounding Contraceptionists was the above resolution passed last week, but by the staid, deliberate members of the New York East Conference (in Brooklyn) of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Many persons were surprised that a denomination which usually frowns on all modes of conduct which make for ease and intimacy in sex relationships should publicly advocate Birth Control. But in the most populous regions of the U. S. practically all the religious strata are veined with liberalism. In the New York-Connecticut area, Birth Control has already been recommended by conferences of Jews, Congregationalists, Universalists.

The Methodists further urged the preparation of a sex curriculum for use in their schools and colleges. "We assume," they declared "that such courses . . . will meet the real needs of our young people, giving them such sex education as will lift the entire subject into the realm of spiritual values." Another resolution: "We recommend that the State of New York enact legislation requiring that licenses to marry shall be issued only after public notice and the lapse of a reasonable period of time to be fixed by law."*

*States requiring an "interval between application for license and its issuance or between license issuance and marriage" are: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin.

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