"Sex-Satisfying"

Usually somnolent, the House of Lords woke up to debate last week the act to broaden British grounds for divorce (TIME, June 14), with Lord Dawson of Penn, long physician to King George V and friend of Queen Mary, championing the bill. "When a marriage's main purpose is frustrated it ceases to have spiritual meaning," somewhat daringly observed Lord Dawson, while more than one bishop frowned. "Women are more sex-conscious than of old and demand a more sex-satisfying life. Why should marriage alone remain static?"

One purpose of the bill is to enable a spouse who has been frustrated by the jailing or shutting up of the other spouse in an insane asylum to cite this as grounds for divorce and eventually wed again. "This bill would launch the marriage laws of England on a path of which one cannot see the end!" cried the high church Marquess of Salisbury. "There is not even any definition in this bill of either 'desertion' or 'incurable insanity' " although it would make them grounds for divorce, and the Marquess went on in his opposition to quote from the Bible. Sarcastically the late King George's physician cut in: "When standards of conduct are changed, opponents of the change always appeal to God and the Bible!"

Some weeks ago the Archbishop of Canterbury took as Primate of All England a straddled position on the bill, saying he would abstain from voting, and this freed the tongues of such unconventional clerics as the Bishop of Birmingham who last week cried: "I challenge the suggestion that bishops of the Church of England should not vote for the bill because remarriage after divorce is contrary to the traditions of the Church of England. . . . One of the merits of the bill is that it would promote morality"--i.e., tend by making remarriage easier to lessen the temptation to adultery. "I give general support to this bill," concluded the Bishop of Birmingham, "not because of concessions to a semipagan community, but because it seems to be legislation in accordance with the spirit of Christ!"

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