Free love is a social movement that supports all types of love. Its main goal was to let people handle matters like marriage, birth control, and relationships without government or religious control. The movement started in the 19th century and became more popular among young people in the 1960s and early 1970s.
The free love movement believed that adults should be allowed to have consensual sexual and emotional relationships without interference from the government or religion. It focused on personal freedom, the right to make choices about one’s body, and the rights of women. Though connected to feminism and efforts for major social changes, the movement was often led by men and faced criticism for not changing traditional ideas about gender roles.
Throughout history, many idealistic and extreme groups have supported free love as a way to challenge traditional marriage and sexual rules. Early examples include the Adamites and Mazdakites, who avoided marriage and encouraged shared or open relationships. In medieval Europe, groups like the Cathars and Brethren of the Free Spirit were punished for their beliefs, which included opposing marriage and promoting celibacy or free love.
Thinkers during the Enlightenment, such as Mary Wollstonecraft and William Blake, criticized marriage as unfair. Wollstonecraft wrote about women’s right to control their own lives, while Blake opposed strict religious rules about love. Romantic writers like Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley also supported free love in their work and personal lives. These ideas were later shared by thinkers like Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, who believed that limiting sexual freedom harmed society. By the 19th century, people like Herbert Spencer argued for easier divorce laws, showing how free love, feminism, and personal freedom were linked. The Summer of Love in 1967 helped spread the ideas of the Beat Generation, supporting free love, opposition to war, and greater freedom in relationships.
Principles
The free love tradition is based on a belief that people should be free from government and religious rules that control personal relationships. This idea says that adults who choose to be in relationships—whether romantic or sexual—should be respected by others. Some writings from the free love movement argued that both men and women should have the right to enjoy sexual pleasure without being limited by laws or social rules. In the Victorian era, these ideas were considered very new and different. Later, the movement connected free love to bigger changes in society, showing it as a way to challenge authority and unfair rules.
In modern times, many people think that middle-class Americans in the past wanted homes to be safe and stable places. This idea led to strict roles for men and women, which caused some people to oppose these roles and support the free-love movement.
Although the word "free love" is often linked to having many sexual partners, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, the free-love movement did not support having many partners or short-term relationships. Instead, it believed that adults should be allowed to choose their relationships freely without government rules. However, some men in the movement saw free love as a way to have sexual freedom.
The term "sex radical" is sometimes used the same as "free lover." Both groups believed that relationships should not involve forced sex and that women should have the right to make their own choices about their bodies.
Laws that free love supporters were concerned about included rules that stopped unmarried couples from living together, laws about cheating, divorce, age of consent, birth control, homosexuality, abortion, and prostitution. Not all free-love supporters agreed on these issues. They also worried about laws that took away rights in marriage, such as not recognizing spousal rape as a serious crime. Since the 19th century, free-love movements have fought to allow people to talk openly about sex and challenged laws that banned books about sexuality.
The history of free love is connected to the history of feminism. Starting in the late 1700s, women like Mary Wollstonecraft challenged marriage and some wanted to end it completely. Feminists argued that married women were only expected to be wives and mothers, which stopped them from working or having other jobs. For example, some laws prevented married women from teaching. In 1855, Mary Gove Nichols wrote that marriage was harmful to women because it treated them as property, allowing men to control their lives. She said that many children were born in unhappy marriages without the parents’ love, but children born outside of marriage had fewer rights.
In 1857, Minerva Putnam wrote that women had not been given a chance to share their views on free love and encouraged other women to speak up for themselves.
Most leaders of the free-love movement were men, even though some women, like Mary Gove Nichols, wrote about the topic. Her book was the first full-length book against marriage written by a woman. During the Reconstruction era, half of the major free-love magazines had women as editors.
People who supported free love believed that sex was not only about having children. They thought birth control helped women be independent, and many birth-control activists also supported free love. These groups focused on helping women control their bodies and discuss issues like contraception, abuse in marriage, and sexual education. They believed that talking about these topics would help women gain more power. They used books, pamphlets, and magazines to spread their ideas for over fifty years across the United States. However, some feminists later said that the free-love movement in the 1960s did not change how society saw women’s roles. Dr. David Smith, who helped start the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic during the 1967 Summer of Love, said in 2007 that some men at the event saw women as being more likely to be controlled.
History
Throughout history, many groups have believed in the idea of free love, which means people should be free to choose their relationships without marriage. One such group was the Adamites, a Christian group in North Africa during the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries. They did not believe in marriage and practiced nudism, thinking they were free from sin.
In the 6th century, a religious movement called Mazdakism in Persia supported free love instead of marriage. A story from the 10th–12th century, "The Tale of Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman" from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, describes a community of people who lived freely and without clothing under the sea.
In 1895, Karl Kautsky wrote that some medieval groups, like the Cathars of Western Europe from the 10th to 14th centuries, also rejected marriage. The Cathars believed people should live simply, avoid harming others, and remain celibate. Women in these groups had more equality and independence, even as religious leaders. However, these groups were called heretics by the Roman Catholic Church and faced persecution. Other groups, like the Brethren of the Free Spirit, supported free sexual relationships instead of celibacy.
During the "English Revolution" of 1640–1660, a group called the Ranters promoted free love. Gerrard Winstanley, a leader of this movement, criticized marriage and believed people should be free to choose their relationships.
Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the earliest English feminists, also supported free love. She wrote that marriage was harmful to women and should be abolished. In her first novel, Mary: A Fiction (1788), the main character is forced into a loveless marriage for money and finds love with another man and a woman. In her unfinished novel Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman (1798), a woman imprisoned by her husband finds happiness outside of marriage. Wollstonecraft argued that women have strong desires and that pretending otherwise is wrong.
Although Wollstonecraft had a child with her partner, Gilbert Imlay, she did not marry him. After Imlay left her, she later had a relationship with William Godwin, who also supported free love. Despite their shared beliefs, they married shortly before her death.
William Blake, a poet and friend of Wollstonecraft, compared the restrictions of marriage to slavery. In his poem Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), he criticized marriage laws and traditional ideas about chastity. He believed that love should not be forced and that marriage often reduces love to duty.
In the early 1800s, utopian communities in France and Britain, inspired by thinkers like Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, promoted free love, feminism, and simple living. Fourier, who coined the term "feminism," argued that people should be free to express their desires without harming others.
Herbert Spencer, a sociologist, supported free divorce, saying that if a marriage lacked love, it should end automatically. Free love focused on women’s rights because many laws, like those against birth control, harmed women.
Free love became a clear movement in the mid-1800s. The term was first used by John Humphrey Noyes, who founded the Oneida Community in 1848. This group rejected marriage as unfair and allowed all members to have relationships. Noyes believed marriage was not needed because, as the Bible says, "In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage" (Matthew 22:30).
In 1852, Marx Edgeworth Lazarus wrote a book called Love vs. Marriage pt. 1, arguing that marriage harms society. He linked his ideas to religious teachings, making free love more acceptable to some people.