Ep. 32 - The Sexual Revolution Ruined Everything It Touched
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Summary
50 years after the sexual revolution, STD rates are at record highs among young adults across the U.S. Why is this happening? Is it a result of the Sexual Revolution, or is it because of the decline in marriage?
Transcript
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I wrote a piece yesterday about the sexual revolution, kind of a follow-up 50 years later,
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checking in. I mean, how did that work out? How'd all that go? Didn't work out very well,
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it turns out. And I was prompted to write about this because of a story out of California
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where STD rates are at record highs among young adults, according to a new report.
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And the STD epidemic is very serious across the nation. So this story was pretty familiar at this
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point. And we could go down the list of what the sexual revolution brought to us. STDs, that's just
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one part of the problem. And I don't say that the sexual revolution created or invented STDs.
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You had them beforehand. But we are seeing STD epidemics and certain diseases are at record
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highs now. And that's not a coincidence. Now, we know what the sexual revolution promised to bring
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us, promised to bring us free love and happiness and pleasure and all that. What did it actually
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bring us? Well, STDs, when we talk about STDs, let's start with AIDS, okay? The AIDS epidemic swept
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America right on the heels of the sexual revolution. And that is not coincidental. You know, you had the
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hippies with their free love and everything. And then boom, we have AIDS, okay? And then now we have
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epidemics of gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia across the nation. What else? If you look at a chart of the
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divorce rate, it's very interesting. And I would recommend that you do that just to kind of fact
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check me here. Don't do it now. But after the video or the podcast, go look at a chart of the divorce
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rate starting in like 1890. And what you're going to find is that there is, it is steadily inclining
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all along. It's a steady, gradual incline, which tells you that these problems didn't, you know,
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they didn't start yesterday. They didn't start with the sexual revolution. Our cultural problems go back
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much further than that. But if you look 1890 through, you know, the early part of the 20th century,
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just a steady, divorce rate's still low, steady incline. You get to World War II, and there's a
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brief sudden spike, which coincides with a brief sudden spike in the marriage rate. And then it
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plummets back down again. And it starts that gradual incline. And then right around the 60s, 70s, 80s,
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that's when it just explodes. There is an explosion of divorce. And it stays extremely high for a while.
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Now, it has recently been trending back down again. It's still very, very high. But the divorce rate
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has been declining again. And people will point to that and they'll say, okay, well, you know, I guess
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that that spike in the divorce rate was an anomaly. And we're kind of figuring things out. Not really,
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because what you'll notice is that the incline in divorce is also coinciding with a drastic drop in
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the marriage rate. So millennials are giving up on marriage completely. They're just cohabitating
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instead. But many millennials have replaced marriage with cohabitation. The average age of first marriage
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for men now is 30. Compared to in 1950, it would have been, I know for women, it was like 20. For men,
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it was probably around 23, 24. Now, that is a very high. That's a very big difference between those
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two. So average age of first marriage has gone way up. And there are many millennials who have just
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given up on marriage. I think something like 20 to 25% will never get married. So the next step
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is kind of underway as we speak. Divorce was merely the spike of the divorce rate,
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the explosion of divorce, was just the first consequence of our enlightened sexual attitudes.
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The next step, which is happening now, is the dissolution of marriage as an institution.
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So divorce was endemic for my parents' generation, the generation that started the sexual revolution.
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And now in my generation, and these are the kids who were raised by all these divorced parents,
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they're just throwing up their hands and they're bailing on marriage. And they're saying,
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I don't need it. Again, that's not a coincidence. You have this kind of domino effect that began with
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the explosion of the divorce rate on the heels of the sexual revolution, which destroyed a whole
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generation of families. And then it completely soured another generation to the whole idea of marriage.
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And so what's going to happen with the generation after this? It's not good.
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What else? What else did the sexual revolution give us? Well, lots of dead children, 60 million
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dead children through abortion and counting. Then we have the spike in unwed pregnancies,
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which we have to distinguish from teen pregnancies. That's another objection I've heard. People have
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said, well, the teenage pregnancy is down. Teenage pregnancy is less common now than it used to be.
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Well, yeah, that's because your grandparents and your great grandparents, their generation,
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yeah, teenagers were getting pregnant. But guess what? Those teenagers were married. So the teen
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pregnancy rate doesn't mean anything at all. There's nothing wrong with an 18-year-old being pregnant
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if she's married. And that's how it used to be. As I said, the average age of first marriage in the
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40s and 50s for women was 20, which means that a whole lot of them, millions, were getting married
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when they were teenagers. It was very common throughout human history for women to get married
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young. So that's not the problem. The problem is unwed pregnancy. A married 18-year-old woman who is
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pregnant is in a much better situation than a 35-year-old single woman who is pregnant. So we
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have the spike in unwed pregnancies. We have, obviously, the problem of porn addiction, fatherless
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homes, on and on and on. It even ruined our university system, which has turned into this
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embarrassing orgy of drunkenness and debauchery, which it was never meant to be, but that's what
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it's become now. And why? Why did it have this result? Well, it goes back to what we were talking
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about yesterday. Sex is a powerful thing. And there are two things that happen when you're
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reckless and frivolous with sex, and you remove it from the bonds of marriage, like we discussed
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yesterday, and this is what the sexual revolution was all about, taking sex, removing it from marriage,
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and then what happens is, number one, you lose the deeper joy that can be found in sex. You've
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settled for mere pleasure, which was already a part of the joy. Okay, that was already a part of the
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bargain. But the joy is something that you experience through the intimacy with someone who you are
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committed to and you love and you're devoted to. And you have, you know, it is happening within the
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safe confines of the marital union. That's how you experience the deeper joy in that intimacy.
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Now, we've lost the joy. You still have the physical pleasure, but you haven't gained anything
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because, as I said, the pleasure was already part of the joy. All you've done is you've lost something,
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which is the joy. Second, you still have to deal with the consequences of the power of sex.
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Sex is a powerful thing. And you still have to deal with those consequences, except you're going
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to be unprepared for those consequences because you aren't married. And thus, the consequences are
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worse. So, the, the quote, old way was to save sex for the confines of committed marriage
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because it's the safest context for it. This is really the only form of safe sex that you can have.
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You hear a lot today about safe sex and it's just absurd. I mean, it really is ridiculous
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that we're telling 16-year-old high school students that it's possible for them to have
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safe sex with some, with, you know, some classmate of theirs if they use contraceptive. That, that's not,
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it's still not safe, as is clearly evidenced by all the things I just listed off.
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Everyone's having safe sex now, yet we're having all these problems. So, clearly, there's a
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disconnect here. It's still not safe. Still isn't safe. There are still many potential consequences
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that cannot, that cannot all be solved or prevented by contraception. It's kind of like telling somebody
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that, um, it's kind of like if we invented some sort of, uh, special helmet and harnessing system
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for a vehicle that you can use so that you can safely drive drunk. It's like saying to kids,
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well, listen, it's best if you don't drive drunk, but if you're going to drive drunk, well, here's this
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special helmet and a special seatbelt. Make sure to use that. Now, I don't want you to, but I know
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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.
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It is by nature a reckless act. When you've got unmarried high school students who are reckless
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and frivolous and dumb and they're going around having sex with each other, well, there's no,
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it's right. There's no safe way to do it. It doesn't exist. Here's, so, you know, you've got
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these, the two potential options, save it for marriage, don't save it for marriage. And the
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question, the equation kind of works like this. You know, it's, it's like you have to ask yourself,
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okay, here is this act of sex, this act, and it requires you to fully expose yourself
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to another person and to be completely vulnerable to them. It can bring great pleasure, but it can
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also be an effective means to transmit awful and deadly diseases. So, it can do both at the same time.
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And also, you may, you're not going to know if the other person has a disease unless they tell you.
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And a lot of times, they don't want to tell you. It will likely cause you to feel an emotional
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attachment to this other person, or else if you do it with the wrong person in the wrong context,
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it may cause you to feel a deep disgust with yourself and a shame. And, oh, by the way,
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this act can make babies as well. I mean, it can do that. Now, the question,
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should you do it with a stranger? Everything I just listed, fully expose yourself, completely
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vulnerable, offering yourself up, can transmit disease, involves your emotions, can make babies.
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Before we even talk about what this act is, pretend you had no idea about human biology,
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and I just explain it to you that way, which is completely accurate. And then I say, you know,
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whatever this thing is, do you think it's something you should do with a stranger?
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We used to say, no. Of course not. Obviously not. But with the sexual revolution, we said, yeah,
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sure, what could go wrong? Well, a lot could go wrong and did go wrong. Now, some people have argued
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with me and they point out that the world was not a bastion of sexual morality before the 60s.
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There was rape, there was disease, there was prostitution, there was lust, there was promiscuity,
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all throughout human history. The sexual revolution didn't invent any of that. That's what I've heard
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over and over and over again over the last day. And this is the argument that you hear anytime you
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talk about, the moral decay in our culture, there are all these people who try to rationalize it,
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they try to dismiss it, they try to undermine the importance of what you're talking about
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by saying, well, this is how things always have been. And yeah, it's true that this kind of stuff
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has always happened. It hasn't always been as bad as it is now. Now, that would be completely false.
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Because what you have now, there have always been promiscuous people, lustful people, there's
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always been prostitution. There's always been people having sex outside of marriage, there's
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always been adultery, all this stuff. What you have now is that all of those things are completely
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mainstream. They're entirely in the mainstream. They're not out on the fringes, they're not seen
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as this fringe, gross, shadowy, shameful thing that you have to slink off to a dark corner of society
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to engage in. That's how it used to be. And yeah, people were engaging in it in those dark corners.
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But now it's just out in the open. Why is that? Because there's a really crucial difference
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between, you know, how it is now with these things and how it used to be. People used to do these
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things. Yet society and the individuals who did the things still knew that it was wrong.
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To be lustful, to be unfaithful, to be promiscuous, was seen as shameful and wrong and dirty,
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which didn't prevent anyone from acting that way. But it did mean that our, although it was a
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disincentive, I'm sure it convinced a lot of people to not act that way. But no matter how,
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you know, no matter how effective it was in terms of preventing, it did mean that our basic moral compass
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was still preserved. The acts themselves didn't change, but what changed is our
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attitude about those acts. And because our attitude changed, that means that these things
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are even more common now. Now, it's one thing for someone to, you know, for someone to do something
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evil and admit that it's evil and be shamed by society for the evil. But it's another thing
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for him to insist that the evil thing is actually good. And then for society to agree
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and throw him a parade, celebrating it. Society can survive when people do bad things because
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people have always done bad things. But society cannot survive when people are celebrated for
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doing the bad things. So that is a really important difference.
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It's a hugely important difference. And it is, it's the difference between a thriving,
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growing, prosperous, healthy civilization, and a civilization that is collapsing.
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Now, another argument is that a lot of these things, as I just touched on, touched on earlier,
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but a lot of these things, divorce, certain STDs, unwed pregnancy, some of these things are on a
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downward trend again. And that's true. But all that means is that they exploded as a result of
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the sexual revolution. And society has since been struggling to kind of contain the damage.
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So going back to the explosion and divorce on the heels of sexual revolution, started to decline
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again. Part of that is there was this catastrophic result of this horrible thing called the sexual
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revolution. And society has now just been, has been, has been trying to catch up and find some
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way to contain this. It has made some progress in containing some of the damage, but the problem
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remains. And, um, you know, we still have, the fact is we still have damage to contain.
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And at what cost has the damage been contained? Well, as I said, the divorce rate is down largely
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because the younger generations aren't getting married. So that's been the cost for getting
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the divorce rate down. The cost is, um, discouraging marriage altogether.
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Teens today are actually less sexually active according to, you know, different reports and studies
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that you'll read. Teens today are less sexually active than they were in years past and
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even in the last, you know, they would have been 20 years ago or 30, but that's largely because
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they're inside on their computers. And a lot of the sexual activity has migrated online.
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And I'm not sure if replacing in-person promiscuity with online promiscuity is really an improvement.
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I'm not sure that it is. It's probably more of a lateral move. It may actually be a step backwards
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because it's less human. I mean, you've got, on one hand, you consider a teenager who's 16 and, um,
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has sex with his girlfriend, which is not good and not advised. On the other hand, you have a teenager
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who's 16 and, um, isn't even attempting to go that route because he's just watching four hours of porn
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a day instead. And he's kind of getting his fill that way. We're supposed to believe that there's
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been some kind of improvement because teens are, you know, going, uh, going with the, uh, with the,
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with the latter approach, but I'm not sure that it's really better. I'm not sure the hours of porn
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a day are better than that in-person experience. As I said, at least it's lateral. It may be worse
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actually. Uh, it may easily be worse because there's this dehumanizing that goes on with pornography,
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this reducing of another human being to just nothing but an image on a screen for you to consume.
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So not sure that's an improvement. I mean, not, it certainly not, it's not an improvement, uh, at all.
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Now, the final argument people have made against my, my point is that, um, is that I haven't offered
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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
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way around when somebody is observing and pointing out problems in our culture, especially problems
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that a lot of us refuse to face and admit our problems, which is what I'm trying to do here.
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So when someone does that, and then you come in and say, well, there's no reason to talk about it
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unless you offer solutions. We got to be solution oriented. Give me a five-step plan to solve the
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problem. And I know that's supposed to sound very practical and logical. It's actually lazy.
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It's a, it's kind of a lazy, cowardly way around the observations that the person is making. It's
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a way for you to not engage the observations that the person is making because yeah, obviously I can't
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sit here right now and solve society for you. Okay. I can't do it. Neither can you. And if that's the,
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if that's the, uh, the price of entry into this conversation is that we have to come equipped with
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a, with a three-step solution to solve all the ills of mankind. Well, that means that we should never
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talk about anything ever again, because none of us have that solution. All right. Um, so no,
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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
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societal collapse where I'm not sure that there is any solution. I'm not sure that it can be solved.
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I'm not sure that we can be pulled back from the brink at this point. I'm not sure that we can.
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I can, I can look throughout history. I can find many civilizations that have gotten to the point.
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Of course, ancient Rome is a great example. I can find many civilizations that have gotten to the
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point where we are now. I'm not aware of any that ever got to that point and then did a 180 and turn
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back and went the other direction and save themselves. I'm not sure of that ever happening.
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So we may be at the past, the point of no return. I don't know, but I do have a solution actually on
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an individual level. Um, I can't do anything about, I don't know about on a collective level.
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I can't force anyone to adopt this solution, but the, but the solution is actually pretty simple.
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It's a solution that I offered yesterday. It's a very simple solution, but it is a solution to
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almost all these problems I have just mentioned. And that is to get married, stay married, be faithful
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and monogamous. That's it. That's the, that's the solution. So that's your, that's, those are the
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steps. Get married, stay married, be faithful. That's a three-step plan. There we go. Married,
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stay married, faithful. You want a three-step plan? I tell you what, if everybody did that
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as an alternative, if the, if everyone adopted that approach as an alternative to the modern
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sexual revolution approach, almost all these problems would go away, they'd be gone. They
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would not be problems anymore if everyone actually did that. Now I know that everyone is not going
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to actually do that. So this solution is not going to solve the problem because it's not going
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to be adopted. But if it were, that would solve a lot of our problems. Just like, and this course
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is related, so many of our societal problems would be all but solved overnight if we got rid of the
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fatherless issue and dads just stayed home with their kids, stayed home with their families and didn't
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leave. That also would solve a lot of our problems. If we had intact families and marriages, and if people
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prioritized their families and their marriages, and if they saved sexual activity for the confines
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of marriage, I'm not saying we would live in a utopia, but we would certainly live in a society that
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doesn't have to deal with hardly any of this stuff. If you want a solution aside from that, well, I can't
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give you one because it doesn't exist. So basically we do that or there's no solution and we just plummet
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into our civilizational demise. Those really are the two options. There is not a third one. So it's up to
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us to decide. I think I have a pretty good idea of which one we're going to choose, unfortunately, but
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we can always pray and hope and prayer. That's another big part of the solution.
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Thanks for watching, everyone. Thanks for listening. Have a great day. Godspeed.