(Mattachine REVIEW is indeed grateful to T. F. Fox, M. D., editor of THE LANCET for permission to extract most of the preceding material from the excellent articles which appeared in the December 12 issue of this distinguished British medical magazine. THE LANCET is published in London (WC2) at 7 Adam Street, Adelphi.)

STANDING ROOM ONLY

by Claude Lane

"Birth Control"—"Planned Parenthood"-"Family Planning"-articles in the newspapers-Seminars-discussions on the street comers—everywhere the subject is being bandied about. Even the President of the United States got in the squabble-(with two left feet). And there is good reason for all this discussion of Birth Control. The "Population Explosion" is the

cause.

The population of the world has doubled in the last century (1850-1950). In 1950 the world population was 22 billion. At the present rate of increase the number will again double by the year 2000. The $64,000.00 question is how to feed this increase and give it space to live in. Every thinking person realizes that this is a vital issue. "Something should be done," allagree. What to do, that is the question.

The most vociferous of the minorities dealing with the question in this country is the Roman Catholic Church. Their suggestion is the so-called rhythm-method: That is, for the husband and wife to have intercourse only during the "safe" period, when the ova is not present to be fertilized. Unless, of course, an additional child is desired.

At best this is a hit and miss method for accomplishing a needed result. The weakness of this method is seen even by Roman Catholic leaders. Speaking informally, in Providence, R.I., on the subject a Jesuit said: "The Church (the Roman Church) will never change its doctrine on the Gospel principle, but there may be an evolution of our concrete situation which will require a modification of the application of the Principle." The Jesuit, The Rev. Gustave Weigle, S.J., Professor of Ecclesiology at Woodstock (Md.) College, made the statement in response to a request for clarification after an informal discussion of "Catholic and Protestant Relations Now" at Brown University.

A nurse at one of the New York hospitals made an informal survey of the women and girls who came to the hospital for methods and mechanisms for birth control and found that 4 out of 5 of the persons seeking such information were Roman Catholics.

mattachine REVIEW

Recently The University of Michigan-aided by the Scripps Foundation for Population Research-interviewed 2713 married women between the ages of 18 and 39.

Two-thirds (62% to be exact) of the women expressed unqualified approval of birth control and 12% more approved with some qualifications.

The research teams then asked about the methods they used and it turned out that "standard contraceptive devices" were used, occasionally or exclusively by 89% of the Protestants and 96% of the Jews who practice birth control.

So, a large majority of American families DO practice some form of birth control.

The rapid population growth in Asia, Africa and some European countries is a different matter. More than 40 years ago Margaret Sanger wrote: "the greatest threat to the peace of the world is to be found in the teeming population of Asia." And that threat to the peace of the world is even greater than it was 40 years ago.

At that time, (1910-20), infant mortality took a large percentage of the new-born but today with modern medical advances most of these children grow to be men and women and are a still greater threat to "the peace of the world."

All of the "methods and mechanisms" of "family planning" have, so far, been centered on the female side of control. But there is also the male control side, also, not as a form of libertinism but as a concem to see sex as a natural part of the total man and a means, a very sensitive means, of expressing man's relationship to his fellow man.

The recognition of the fact that man's love relationship extends far beyond the mere expression of the marriage relationship as expressed in the begetting of children means that the healthy and whole man expresses this love relationship in himself, his fellows and his world. The main concern of the thinking man today must be with his inner attitude toward his male as well as his female companions.

Civil laws and church canons concern themselves with human behaviorsymptoms only. Curing a symptom never yet has reached the curing of the fundamental "disease." Bad law and unfortunate canon can never reach the heart of these multiple relationships.

As one writer states: "All the Judeo-Christian attitudes toward sex are wrong and many of them are positively vicious," or to put it in a more classical way: Christians have much to unlearn in the area of sex and much in their tradition has been positively harmful.

Nowhere are these harmful attitudes toward sex more evident than in the area of the control of the population explosion both here in America as well

as among the teeming population of Asia, Africa and elsewhere.