NEWS from one hundred years ago: IMMORALITY IS RIFE

A leader of the Salvation Army has just joined the chorus of those who say that the war and a new postwar mood of materialism has led to a change in sexual habits among the young people of New Zealand. He tells the Council of Churches that ‘immorality is rife’ and that ‘the standard of morals of many people ... is very low.’ He goes on to sat that ‘young girls go into sin of the grossest kind without any compunction, and this I think is due to the circumstances under which they live. The chief cause of juvenile depravity is the laxity of home training.’ He claims that drinking and gambling are vectors, too. Nothing is said about the sexual behaviour of the men who have sex with these ‘depraved’ young women.
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Lyttelton Times, 19 October 1920