nl_e17

Campbell, "Why an Age of Consent?" April 1895
Document 15: Vie H. Campbell, "Why an Age of Consent?" Arena, 69 (April
1895), pp. 285-88.
Introduction
The Arena, a national journal founded by reformer Benjamin O. Flower and
dedicated to social and political reform, focused national attention on the social
purity movement and the campaign to raise the age of consent.[13] The journal
published several articles in 1895 about the age-of-consent campaign because after
impressive legislative gains in the first five years of the campaign, legislators in
several states had introduced bills to lower once again the legal age of consent. In
her article, Vie H. Campbell argued that age of consent should be abolished
altogether, and that instead it should be a crime to seduce women of any age.
"Moral death is a greater misfortune than physical death," she wrote. In an era
when many working-class single women were embracing a freer sexual
atmosphere, Campbell and some middle-class women reformers continued to place
responsibility for premarital sexual relations solely on the shoulders of the male
seducers, unable to admit that women possessed sexual desire or should have the
right to act on those desires. Instead, reformers believed that working girls should
be protected from the very leisure activities and sexual experimentation that many
of these girls sought out.
WHY AN AGE OF CONSENT?
BY VIE H. CAMPBELL, PRESIDENT
WISCONSIN W.C.T.U.
The most infamous laws that stand as a blot upon our statute
books to-day are those known as the "age of consent laws." They are
a disgrace to America's boasted civilization, a menace to the peace of
our homes and the safety of our children, a bar to our social and
spiritual advancement; and they are doing more towards the
maintenance of a double standard of purity than all other forces
combined.
I believe that it is the duty of every right-minded man and woman
to be brave, frank, and outspoken in behalf of a higher civilization, to
show the people the awful downward tendency of these iniquitous
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