The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 32 - The Sexual Revolution Ruined Everything It Touched

00:00:00.000 I wrote a piece yesterday about the sexual revolution, kind of a follow-up 50 years later,

00:00:07.500 checking in. I mean, how did that work out? How'd all that go? Didn't work out very well,

00:00:12.400 it turns out. And I was prompted to write about this because of a story out of California

00:00:16.800 where STD rates are at record highs among young adults, according to a new report.

00:00:22.740 And the STD epidemic is very serious across the nation. So this story was pretty familiar at this

00:00:28.180 point. And we could go down the list of what the sexual revolution brought to us. STDs, that's just 1.00

00:00:36.060 one part of the problem. And I don't say that the sexual revolution created or invented STDs.

00:00:44.980 You had them beforehand. But we are seeing STD epidemics and certain diseases are at record

00:00:52.680 highs now. And that's not a coincidence. Now, we know what the sexual revolution promised to bring 0.59

00:00:58.160 us, promised to bring us free love and happiness and pleasure and all that. What did it actually

00:01:04.360 bring us? Well, STDs, when we talk about STDs, let's start with AIDS, okay? The AIDS epidemic swept

00:01:13.320 America right on the heels of the sexual revolution. And that is not coincidental. You know, you had the 0.67

00:01:21.960 hippies with their free love and everything. And then boom, we have AIDS, okay? And then now we have

00:01:28.460 epidemics of gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia across the nation. What else? If you look at a chart of the

00:01:37.260 divorce rate, it's very interesting. And I would recommend that you do that just to kind of fact

00:01:41.920 check me here. Don't do it now. But after the video or the podcast, go look at a chart of the divorce 0.96

00:01:48.160 rate starting in like 1890. And what you're going to find is that there is, it is steadily inclining

00:01:53.920 all along. It's a steady, gradual incline, which tells you that these problems didn't, you know,

00:02:01.660 they didn't start yesterday. They didn't start with the sexual revolution. Our cultural problems go back

00:02:07.320 much further than that. But if you look 1890 through, you know, the early part of the 20th century,

00:02:14.500 just a steady, divorce rate's still low, steady incline. You get to World War II, and there's a

00:02:20.440 brief sudden spike, which coincides with a brief sudden spike in the marriage rate. And then it

00:02:25.260 plummets back down again. And it starts that gradual incline. And then right around the 60s, 70s, 80s,

00:02:32.460 that's when it just explodes. There is an explosion of divorce. And it stays extremely high for a while.

00:02:42.040 Now, it has recently been trending back down again. It's still very, very high. But the divorce rate

00:02:50.940 has been declining again. And people will point to that and they'll say, okay, well, you know, I guess

00:02:59.060 that that spike in the divorce rate was an anomaly. And we're kind of figuring things out. Not really,

00:03:03.080 because what you'll notice is that the incline in divorce is also coinciding with a drastic drop in

00:03:09.980 the marriage rate. So millennials are giving up on marriage completely. They're just cohabitating 0.96

00:03:16.240 instead. But many millennials have replaced marriage with cohabitation. The average age of first marriage

00:03:24.060 for men now is 30. Compared to in 1950, it would have been, I know for women, it was like 20. For men, 0.73

00:03:34.840 it was probably around 23, 24. Now, that is a very high. That's a very big difference between those

00:03:42.580 two. So average age of first marriage has gone way up. And there are many millennials who have just

00:03:48.420 given up on marriage. I think something like 20 to 25% will never get married. So the next step

00:03:55.240 is kind of underway as we speak. Divorce was merely the spike of the divorce rate,

00:04:03.240 the explosion of divorce, was just the first consequence of our enlightened sexual attitudes.

00:04:09.640 The next step, which is happening now, is the dissolution of marriage as an institution.

00:04:15.660 So divorce was endemic for my parents' generation, the generation that started the sexual revolution. 0.96

00:04:20.860 And now in my generation, and these are the kids who were raised by all these divorced parents, 0.87

00:04:26.460 they're just throwing up their hands and they're bailing on marriage. And they're saying,

00:04:30.460 I don't need it. Again, that's not a coincidence. You have this kind of domino effect that began with

00:04:38.860 the explosion of the divorce rate on the heels of the sexual revolution, which destroyed a whole 0.56

00:04:45.100 generation of families. And then it completely soured another generation to the whole idea of marriage.

00:04:52.940 And so what's going to happen with the generation after this? It's not good.

00:05:00.000 What else? What else did the sexual revolution give us? Well, lots of dead children, 60 million 0.96

00:05:05.360 dead children through abortion and counting. Then we have the spike in unwed pregnancies,

00:05:10.800 which we have to distinguish from teen pregnancies. That's another objection I've heard. People have

00:05:17.180 said, well, the teenage pregnancy is down. Teenage pregnancy is less common now than it used to be.

00:05:25.740 Well, yeah, that's because your grandparents and your great grandparents, their generation,

00:05:31.840 yeah, teenagers were getting pregnant. But guess what? Those teenagers were married. So the teen 0.99

00:05:37.400 pregnancy rate doesn't mean anything at all. There's nothing wrong with an 18-year-old being pregnant

00:05:43.420 if she's married. And that's how it used to be. As I said, the average age of first marriage in the 0.65

00:05:48.320 40s and 50s for women was 20, which means that a whole lot of them, millions, were getting married

00:05:53.020 when they were teenagers. It was very common throughout human history for women to get married 0.98

00:05:58.260 young. So that's not the problem. The problem is unwed pregnancy. A married 18-year-old woman who is 1.00

00:06:09.040 pregnant is in a much better situation than a 35-year-old single woman who is pregnant. So we 0.68

00:06:16.080 have the spike in unwed pregnancies. We have, obviously, the problem of porn addiction, fatherless

00:06:22.220 homes, on and on and on. It even ruined our university system, which has turned into this

00:06:27.920 embarrassing orgy of drunkenness and debauchery, which it was never meant to be, but that's what

00:06:35.160 it's become now. And why? Why did it have this result? Well, it goes back to what we were talking

00:06:42.020 about yesterday. Sex is a powerful thing. And there are two things that happen when you're

00:06:50.980 reckless and frivolous with sex, and you remove it from the bonds of marriage, like we discussed

00:06:55.880 yesterday, and this is what the sexual revolution was all about, taking sex, removing it from marriage, 0.80

00:07:01.280 and then what happens is, number one, you lose the deeper joy that can be found in sex. You've

00:07:06.820 settled for mere pleasure, which was already a part of the joy. Okay, that was already a part of the

00:07:12.840 bargain. But the joy is something that you experience through the intimacy with someone who you are

00:07:19.900 committed to and you love and you're devoted to. And you have, you know, it is happening within the

00:07:27.380 safe confines of the marital union. That's how you experience the deeper joy in that intimacy.

00:07:34.560 Now, we've lost the joy. You still have the physical pleasure, but you haven't gained anything

00:07:39.900 because, as I said, the pleasure was already part of the joy. All you've done is you've lost something,

00:07:44.020 which is the joy. Second, you still have to deal with the consequences of the power of sex.

00:07:52.380 Sex is a powerful thing. And you still have to deal with those consequences, except you're going

00:07:58.520 to be unprepared for those consequences because you aren't married. And thus, the consequences are

00:08:05.540 worse. So, the, the quote, old way was to save sex for the confines of committed marriage

00:08:13.460 because it's the safest context for it. This is really the only form of safe sex that you can have.

00:08:21.720 You hear a lot today about safe sex and it's just absurd. I mean, it really is ridiculous 0.99

00:08:29.320 that we're telling 16-year-old high school students that it's possible for them to have 0.96

00:08:36.920 safe sex with some, with, you know, some classmate of theirs if they use contraceptive. That, that's not, 0.84

00:08:45.600 it's still not safe, as is clearly evidenced by all the things I just listed off.

00:08:51.720 Everyone's having safe sex now, yet we're having all these problems. So, clearly, there's a

00:08:57.540 disconnect here. It's still not safe. Still isn't safe. There are still many potential consequences

00:09:04.200 that cannot, that cannot all be solved or prevented by contraception. It's kind of like telling somebody

00:09:12.560 that, um, it's kind of like if we invented some sort of, uh, special helmet and harnessing system

00:09:20.760 for a vehicle that you can use so that you can safely drive drunk. It's like saying to kids,

00:09:28.380 well, listen, it's best if you don't drive drunk, but if you're going to drive drunk, well, here's this

00:09:33.780 special helmet and a special seatbelt. Make sure to use that. Now, I don't want you to, but I know

00:09:39.540 you kids and you're going to do it. So, just make sure you do it safely. There's no safe way to do it.

00:09:45.920 It is by nature a reckless act. When you've got unmarried high school students who are reckless 1.00

00:09:55.720 and frivolous and dumb and they're going around having sex with each other, well, there's no, 1.00

00:10:02.200 it's right. There's no safe way to do it. It doesn't exist. Here's, so, you know, you've got 1.00

00:10:08.300 these, the two potential options, save it for marriage, don't save it for marriage. And the

00:10:13.560 question, the equation kind of works like this. You know, it's, it's like you have to ask yourself,

00:10:18.260 okay, here is this act of sex, this act, and it requires you to fully expose yourself

00:10:27.720 to another person and to be completely vulnerable to them. It can bring great pleasure, but it can

00:10:34.120 also be an effective means to transmit awful and deadly diseases. So, it can do both at the same time.

00:10:42.900 And also, you may, you're not going to know if the other person has a disease unless they tell you.

00:10:48.640 And a lot of times, they don't want to tell you. It will likely cause you to feel an emotional

00:10:53.420 attachment to this other person, or else if you do it with the wrong person in the wrong context,

00:10:59.380 it may cause you to feel a deep disgust with yourself and a shame. And, oh, by the way,

00:11:05.740 this act can make babies as well. I mean, it can do that. Now, the question,

00:11:12.900 should you do it with a stranger? Everything I just listed, fully expose yourself, completely

00:11:21.020 vulnerable, offering yourself up, can transmit disease, involves your emotions, can make babies.

00:11:30.580 Before we even talk about what this act is, pretend you had no idea about human biology,

00:11:34.800 and I just explain it to you that way, which is completely accurate. And then I say, you know,

00:11:39.340 whatever this thing is, do you think it's something you should do with a stranger?

00:11:41.820 We used to say, no. Of course not. Obviously not. But with the sexual revolution, we said, yeah,

00:11:52.120 sure, what could go wrong? Well, a lot could go wrong and did go wrong. Now, some people have argued

00:12:00.860 with me and they point out that the world was not a bastion of sexual morality before the 60s.

00:12:10.860 There was rape, there was disease, there was prostitution, there was lust, there was promiscuity,

00:12:15.040 all throughout human history. The sexual revolution didn't invent any of that. That's what I've heard

00:12:21.560 over and over and over again over the last day. And this is the argument that you hear anytime you

00:12:28.900 talk about, the moral decay in our culture, there are all these people who try to rationalize it,

00:12:33.980 they try to dismiss it, they try to undermine the importance of what you're talking about

00:12:39.400 by saying, well, this is how things always have been. And yeah, it's true that this kind of stuff

00:12:48.260 has always happened. It hasn't always been as bad as it is now. Now, that would be completely false.

00:12:54.420 Because what you have now, there have always been promiscuous people, lustful people, there's

00:12:59.260 always been prostitution. There's always been people having sex outside of marriage, there's

00:13:04.680 always been adultery, all this stuff. What you have now is that all of those things are completely

00:13:09.800 mainstream. They're entirely in the mainstream. They're not out on the fringes, they're not seen

00:13:16.960 as this fringe, gross, shadowy, shameful thing that you have to slink off to a dark corner of society

00:13:25.160 to engage in. That's how it used to be. And yeah, people were engaging in it in those dark corners.

00:13:30.580 But now it's just out in the open. Why is that? Because there's a really crucial difference

00:13:36.580 between, you know, how it is now with these things and how it used to be. People used to do these

00:13:44.940 things. Yet society and the individuals who did the things still knew that it was wrong.

00:13:54.580 To be lustful, to be unfaithful, to be promiscuous, was seen as shameful and wrong and dirty,

00:14:03.000 which didn't prevent anyone from acting that way. But it did mean that our, although it was a

00:14:08.860 disincentive, I'm sure it convinced a lot of people to not act that way. But no matter how,

00:14:18.560 you know, no matter how effective it was in terms of preventing, it did mean that our basic moral compass

00:14:26.000 was still preserved. The acts themselves didn't change, but what changed is our

00:14:33.000 attitude about those acts. And because our attitude changed, that means that these things

00:14:38.980 are even more common now. Now, it's one thing for someone to, you know, for someone to do something

00:14:45.380 evil and admit that it's evil and be shamed by society for the evil. But it's another thing

00:14:54.300 for him to insist that the evil thing is actually good. And then for society to agree

00:15:00.580 and throw him a parade, celebrating it. Society can survive when people do bad things because

00:15:10.220 people have always done bad things. But society cannot survive when people are celebrated for

00:15:17.160 doing the bad things. So that is a really important difference.

00:15:23.860 It's a hugely important difference. And it is, it's the difference between a thriving,

00:15:33.480 growing, prosperous, healthy civilization, and a civilization that is collapsing.

00:15:43.420 Now, another argument is that a lot of these things, as I just touched on, touched on earlier,

00:15:47.140 but a lot of these things, divorce, certain STDs, unwed pregnancy, some of these things are on a

00:15:55.840 downward trend again. And that's true. But all that means is that they exploded as a result of

00:16:02.700 the sexual revolution. And society has since been struggling to kind of contain the damage.

00:16:08.620 So going back to the explosion and divorce on the heels of sexual revolution, started to decline

00:16:12.860 again. Part of that is there was this catastrophic result of this horrible thing called the sexual

00:16:18.720 revolution. And society has now just been, has been, has been trying to catch up and find some

00:16:24.500 way to contain this. It has made some progress in containing some of the damage, but the problem

00:16:30.060 remains. And, um, you know, we still have, the fact is we still have damage to contain.

00:16:38.060 And at what cost has the damage been contained? Well, as I said, the divorce rate is down largely

00:16:47.000 because the younger generations aren't getting married. So that's been the cost for getting

00:16:51.260 the divorce rate down. The cost is, um, discouraging marriage altogether.

00:16:57.980 Teens today are actually less sexually active according to, you know, different reports and studies

00:17:03.860 that you'll read. Teens today are less sexually active than they were in years past and

00:17:07.820 even in the last, you know, they would have been 20 years ago or 30, but that's largely because

00:17:13.980 they're inside on their computers. And a lot of the sexual activity has migrated online.

00:17:24.980 And I'm not sure if replacing in-person promiscuity with online promiscuity is really an improvement.

00:17:32.960 I'm not sure that it is. It's probably more of a lateral move. It may actually be a step backwards

00:17:40.800 because it's less human. I mean, you've got, on one hand, you consider a teenager who's 16 and, um,

00:17:51.320 has sex with his girlfriend, which is not good and not advised. On the other hand, you have a teenager 0.90

00:17:58.300 who's 16 and, um, isn't even attempting to go that route because he's just watching four hours of porn 0.50

00:18:06.700 a day instead. And he's kind of getting his fill that way. We're supposed to believe that there's

00:18:13.860 been some kind of improvement because teens are, you know, going, uh, going with the, uh, with the,

00:18:19.540 with the latter approach, but I'm not sure that it's really better. I'm not sure the hours of porn

00:18:25.040 a day are better than that in-person experience. As I said, at least it's lateral. It may be worse

00:18:34.080 actually. Uh, it may easily be worse because there's this dehumanizing that goes on with pornography,

00:18:42.360 this reducing of another human being to just nothing but an image on a screen for you to consume.

00:18:50.720 So not sure that's an improvement. I mean, not, it certainly not, it's not an improvement, uh, at all.

00:18:58.340 Now, the final argument people have made against my, my point is that, um, is that I haven't offered

00:19:03.040 a solution, which first of all, I, you know, I, I kind of think it's, that's a, it's sort of a lazy

00:19:09.280 way around when somebody is observing and pointing out problems in our culture, especially problems

00:19:17.400 that a lot of us refuse to face and admit our problems, which is what I'm trying to do here.

00:19:22.820 So when someone does that, and then you come in and say, well, there's no reason to talk about it

00:19:26.620 unless you offer solutions. We got to be solution oriented. Give me a five-step plan to solve the

00:19:31.900 problem. And I know that's supposed to sound very practical and logical. It's actually lazy.

00:19:36.800 It's a, it's kind of a lazy, cowardly way around the observations that the person is making. It's

00:19:41.980 a way for you to not engage the observations that the person is making because yeah, obviously I can't

00:19:48.640 sit here right now and solve society for you. Okay. I can't do it. Neither can you. And if that's the,

00:19:56.080 if that's the, uh, the price of entry into this conversation is that we have to come equipped with

00:20:00.920 a, with a three-step solution to solve all the ills of mankind. Well, that means that we should never

00:20:06.480 talk about anything ever again, because none of us have that solution. All right. Um, so no,

00:20:13.000 I don't, you know, in fact, I think it's, it's gotten so bad and, um, we're at a point in our

00:20:20.880 societal collapse where I'm not sure that there is any solution. I'm not sure that it can be solved.

00:20:25.740 I'm not sure that we can be pulled back from the brink at this point. I'm not sure that we can.

00:20:30.260 I can, I can look throughout history. I can find many civilizations that have gotten to the point.

00:20:36.780 Of course, ancient Rome is a great example. I can find many civilizations that have gotten to the

00:20:40.660 point where we are now. I'm not aware of any that ever got to that point and then did a 180 and turn

00:20:47.480 back and went the other direction and save themselves. I'm not sure of that ever happening.

00:20:52.520 So we may be at the past, the point of no return. I don't know, but I do have a solution actually on

00:21:00.060 an individual level. Um, I can't do anything about, I don't know about on a collective level.

00:21:04.320 I can't force anyone to adopt this solution, but the, but the solution is actually pretty simple.

00:21:08.240 It's a solution that I offered yesterday. It's a very simple solution, but it is a solution to

00:21:12.300 almost all these problems I have just mentioned. And that is to get married, stay married, be faithful

00:21:18.080 and monogamous. That's it. That's the, that's the solution. So that's your, that's, those are the

00:21:23.340 steps. Get married, stay married, be faithful. That's a three-step plan. There we go. Married,

00:21:29.580 stay married, faithful. You want a three-step plan? I tell you what, if everybody did that

00:21:35.220 as an alternative, if the, if everyone adopted that approach as an alternative to the modern

00:21:43.820 sexual revolution approach, almost all these problems would go away, they'd be gone. They 0.76

00:21:52.700 would not be problems anymore if everyone actually did that. Now I know that everyone is not going

00:22:00.820 to actually do that. So this solution is not going to solve the problem because it's not going

00:22:06.980 to be adopted. But if it were, that would solve a lot of our problems. Just like, and this course

00:22:15.380 is related, so many of our societal problems would be all but solved overnight if we got rid of the 0.69

00:22:24.420 fatherless issue and dads just stayed home with their kids, stayed home with their families and didn't

00:22:31.900 leave. That also would solve a lot of our problems. If we had intact families and marriages, and if people

00:22:42.660 prioritized their families and their marriages, and if they saved sexual activity for the confines

00:22:49.620 of marriage, I'm not saying we would live in a utopia, but we would certainly live in a society that

00:22:57.960 doesn't have to deal with hardly any of this stuff. If you want a solution aside from that, well, I can't

00:23:04.460 give you one because it doesn't exist. So basically we do that or there's no solution and we just plummet

00:23:10.340 into our civilizational demise. Those really are the two options. There is not a third one. So it's up to

00:23:17.840 us to decide. I think I have a pretty good idea of which one we're going to choose, unfortunately, but

00:23:22.300 we can always pray and hope and prayer. That's another big part of the solution.

00:23:29.460 Thanks for watching, everyone. Thanks for listening. Have a great day. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - May 17, 2018

Ep. 32 - The Sexual Revolution Ruined Everything It Touched

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