It was difficult to select the initial topic to display the wit and wisdom of Sam Divine contained in the many articles that were published in the Chattanooga News during the 1912-1915 period.
However the topic that allegedly arose out of the eating of the forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden has been a most consistent subject of discussion on a daily basis since the beginning of recorded time.
Readers should be forewarned that Mr. Sam did not always follow the current trend of publishing and disseminating 99% positive items currently practiced by some sources of media in print or on the airways.
On July 28, 1914 he expressed his viewpoint under the heading of “Overthrow of Modesty” based on an article clipped from the Argonaut national newspaper:
“The subject is plain speaking on sex matters. The object of the article is to show that this question is being overworked by sex hygiene cranks.
The reckless handling of the subject has produced a gross familiarity which is getting in its deadly work through the agitation of sex fanatics. The article says:
"Every sacred mystery of life has been cheapened, coarsened, profaned. All the protective veils of mystery and sanctity have been broken down and in their place we are offered statistics, hospital reports and iodoform."
The article closes with the assertion that the police woman and the delinquency court are left to do the work neglected by the parents. This is a terrific arraignment of parents and our moral teachers if true.
The article also condemns so-called "purity Sundays" with sermons preached to audiences of young men and women, with their sex relations as a topic, and compares such discussion to that of an open sewer. (Not in my Baptist tabernacle)
We are bound to admit that we have lost much of the old-time modesty that once existed between the sexes in this southern country of ours, where the barrier between the sexes of immature age was kept intact by a veil of mystery and a sentiment that protected the young of both sexes from vulgar ideals. Familiarity breeds contempt, and too much knowledge without wisdom and moral strength is a dangerous thing, especially when the attending evils are obscured by ignorance.
There is a limit to all things. Frankness itself has a limit, beyond which it becomes brutal. Sex, hygiene is not for public discussion in public schools nor in public places with children audiences.
It is too often the case that preachers and teachers of sex hygiene are sexually impure them- selves and are moral lepers in the flock of the innocents. There are some things that children should be taught as they are able to receive and understand, but it is a wise teacher who can unfold the mysteries of life to a child without a shock to its imagination and a damage to its ideals.
The mother is the rightful source through which the child should get its first awakening to its mission in life. Men, in my opinion, are unfit by nature and instinct to expound such a delicate subject to immature minds.
Let the women do this work, for which they are peculiarly gifted by the refinement of their nature, moral and religious sentiment, due to the responsibility of motherhood placed upon them by the Creator. Sex relations should be taught to children in private, in the most delicate and in the most reverent way.
The Chicago way knocks the bloom of innocence off of young maidenhood, and begets a boldness in the young man that tears away the veil of mystery that stands between modesty and the blase.”
(This forward thinking topic in 1914 under 2025 modern standards, Sam Divine’s words may result in being considered sexist discrimination and/or controversial. However, the eternal topic possibly exceeds the equally interesting issue, of whether humans came from a lower species of animals argued in Dayton in 1925?)
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