non-smoking, have a better appetite, but feel the lack of something to
do when I am working. I am not optimistic (or pessimistic) enough to
bum my pipes yet.
All suffering from a sunless summer. We stored no orgones ... the
land here lacks lime and for four years we have drunk water as soft as
rainwater, lovely to wash in but lacking in all salts. Welsh children with
their soft water have bad teeth; so in parts of Scotland.
This is a dull letter. The sun doesn't shine at all. I hope to hear more
of the son and his mother.- I •
Forest Hills, New York
December 22, 1944
My dear Neill:
The most important thing in your letter of November 24th
seems to me the question of what has to be considered a "marriage."
Time and again, I and many others working in our field of endeavour
are meeting not only the difficult problems of social sex-economy, but,
in addition to that, also wrong concepts which have been adopted from
a dying world by the very same people who profess to change this world.
You write in your letter: "I explained the situation, that I don't
believe in marriage as it is today, but that professionally I would be in
danger of extinction if I lived without marriage." I am sure you won't
mind if I object to this statement, not as a person but as the representa
tive of a definite type of work which tries to abolish social ideologies
without basis in facts. You are married when you live married, and not
when you possess a certificate of marriage without being married. In
almost all of the states of the United States the fact of factual marriage
is acknowledged in the form of the common-law marriage. The same is
the case in France and was the case in Germany and Austria.
It is not a matter of "believing" in marriage or not. It is a matter of
correcting the irrational and pestilent notions of sick people about what
marriage is and what marriage is not. The pestilent ideology that you
are married when you possess a certificate of marriage and that you are
a criminal when you are really married but don't possess a certificate
of marriage has been spread for decades and centuries by sick people,
all over the world. It is not the opinion of the healthy average man. The
piece of paper called a certificate has under present conditions only the
function of protecting the woman in case the man does not wish to