Herbert W Armstrong

The vast majority of Americans would probably never think that the way they are living has any connection with the surprising lack of success on the world stage. But it does. There is indeed a "morality connection," as this report will show. The nation's collective will is being sapped by an increasingly hedonistic life-style. First of all, here is a cover story, "The War Against Pornography," which appeared in the March 18, 1985 issue of NEWSWEEK:

After a decade of not-so-benign neglect, virtually any adult American has a license the Lord never allowed the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah. Adults can't legally buy a drink in Topeka, but they have their choice of dirty books and guaranteed "first run" skin flicks. Porn plays openly in Peoria, a city that supports two adult-only sex shops. Always the leading edge, New York has stores that sell bestiality video cassettes over the counter.... With Cable TV and VCR's, adults can see sexual athletics without fear or embarrassment.

And porn did not become a multibillion-dollar business on the raincoat brigade. "Middle America has gotten heavily into the consuming end of pornography," says Los Angeles lawyer John Weston. "That's what's killing the censorship groups. They have the sense that this is their last stand."...

Home porn is booming: wherever VCR's go, porn is sure to follow. "When people buy their tape deck, they buy a kiddie movie for their child and an X-rated movie for themselves," says Arthur Morowitz, president of New York's Video Shack chain. "It's the standard starter kit." He estimates that X-rated films account for one-fifth of all video sales, and the NEWSWEEK Poll indicates that 9 percent-Of all Americans — nearly 40 percent of VCR owners — bought or rented an X-rated cassette within the last year.

The man who did much to make modern America the “liberated society" it is today is Hugh Hefner, publisher of PLAYBOY magazine. Here is a profile of Hefner which appeared in the LOS ANGELES TIMES, the issues of December 26, 27 and 28, 1984, written by staff writer Bella Stumbo:

Three decades after launching America's slickest, most successful girlie magazine — shocking a prudish nation with simple nudes in 1953, advancing to graphic newsstand porn in 1984 — Hugh Marston Hefner, perhaps mellowing with age, now wants greater credit and respect for his social contributions....

As far as Hefner is concerned, there is no such thing as unacceptable sex unless it is "hurtful" to someone. If it feels good, do it. That is what's wrong with society today, he says-­ still too many rigid, irrational taboos. Therefore, although Hefner disapproves of "hurtful" sado-masochism or sex with children, for instance, he unhesitatingly approves of bestiality. "What I'm saying is, what difference does it make if it turns somebody on? Isn't that a positive thing? The only thing I see in bestiality that is hurtful to people is the fact that people used to go to prison for it.... I think that's a very sick attitude on sex!"...

Hefner, who sometimes refers to himself in the third person, is...a man with a big ego. He has always regarded himself as an idealist with noble social mission, of the 20th Century's most enlightened visionaries and major force for social progress through sexual liberation. In Hefner's opinion, he has probably enhanced the quality of American life more than some Presidents.

Hefner also sees himself as a philosopher of consequence.... He explains that, through Playboy, he is "dealing with the great moral issues that society has historically refused to deal with," freeing society from "its guilt over sex and images of the (naked female) human body,” thereby liberating us from "the historic conflict between mind and body" to enjoy sex as "the most loving, civilizing force on the planet."

Hefner has also courted legitimacy on a personal level for many years. A committed political liberal — personally worth, by his own vague estimates, "Oh, I dunno, around $200 million, I'd guess" — he has supported, through donations and fund-raisers... nearly every liberal cause worth mentioning, from the equal rights amendment and legalized abortion to handgun control and the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People....

Lest posterity inherit an incomplete picture, he is building his own monument to Hugh Hefner's life and times. It is inside a small, unadorned room on the [Playboy] mansion's second floor. Here, Hefner keeps his personal scrapbooks. Hundreds of them. So far, there are 353 volumes.... Neatly bound and carefully indexed, the scrapbooks appear to contain practically every word ever printed by or about Hugh Hefner, good or bad, starting with his birth certificate and baby pictures. Hefner personally selects all entries and meticulously writes all captions himself....

Hefner's mansion [in L.A.'s Holmby Hills area], modeled after a 16th-century Gothic castle in England, lacks for little. An opulent, six-acre fantasy-land of botanical beauty, creature comforts and human amusements, it is like some throwback to another era when the rich did not hesitate to flaunt their wealth.... Scattered within are swimming pools, tennis courts, saunas, movie screens.... Flamingos and peacocks stroll the grounds,...monkeys and brightly feathered birds screech from treetops in the large private zoo Hefner has assembled for his personal pleasure.

A fleet of uniformed butlers stands silently at the ready to respond to the touch of "butler boxes" scattered all over the house and grounds. The kitchen and bars operate on a 24-hour basis. A staff of 60 is required to maintain all this splendor....

Of all the words in the English language, Hugh Hefner's favorite seems to be moral. He seems almost obsessed with having people believe it when he says, as he repeatedly does: "The publisher of PLAYBOY magazine is essentially a very moral man. I have often said I am the most moral millionaire I know...."

Hefner once even primly announced that, although he had had intercourse with "hundreds if not thousands" of women, "I have never gotten anybody pregnant. No abortions in my whole life." And, despite the number of Hefner's sex partners, he makes the "moral distinction" of having a "primary romantic relationship, usually one that lasts for several years" with only one woman at a time.

It is important to Hefner that you understand that he has thought about these "moral questions" practically from the cradle on. [He was] born in Chicago on April 9, 1926.... His parents, devout Methodists, were "wonderful people" but "terribly repressed sexually...uncomfortable with touching and kissing...typical of their generation and that era." And so, young Hefner grew up, he says, questioning the "hurtful" aspects first of religion, then of sex....

Second, as a college student, Hefner says he was indelibly impressed by the famous Kinsey reports on American sexual behavior and did a term paper on it, urging that repressive sex laws be scrapped as unrealistic.

One impact of the sexual revolution that Hefner and others helped bring about was discussed in the April 13, 1985 issue of the LOS ANGELES HERALD EXAMINER in the article "Only 20% of American Women Delay Sex Until Marriage, Study Finds":

Only about one American woman in five waits until marriage to begin sexual activity, according to government statistics disclosed yesterday. This was a decline from an earlier figure of nearly half who postponed sexual intercourse, a survey said.

The decline, which appeared to occur most sharply between 1965-69 and 1970-74, was reported as part of the National Survey of Family Growth, a study of childbearing, contraceptive practices and maternal health conducted in 1982 by the National Center for Health Statistics.... "The proportion of women who delayed sexual intercourse until marriage declined from 48 percent among women marrying during the period 1960-64, to 21 percent among women marrying in the years 1975-79," the authors wrote. The largest decline appears to have occurred between 1965-69, when 42 percent of women marrying for the first time had not previously had intercourse, and 1970-74, when only 28 percent had delayed intercourse, the study said....

At the same time this increase in premarital intercourse has been occurring, women have been postponing marriage in favor of increasing their education and advancing their careers in larger numbers than ever before, meaning that on average women remained single longer.

And now, more women are desiring to be mothers without being married, as the following report titled "More Women Are Accepting Challenge of Motherhood Without Marriage," also from the LOS ANGELES HERALD EXAMINER (April 21), reveals:

An increasing number of women across the country...have decided to become mothers without first becoming wives. Driven by an overwhelming desire for a child, and in many cases, the biological clock, these women have transcended social conventions to become single mothers in a nation that doesn't necessarily understand.

"More and more people are doing it — not only here, but in other countries as well," said Fae Pannor, a psychotherapist with the Los Angeles Women's Therapy Center in Culver City, who has counseled many such women. "I think it is the women's movement that has made room for these kinds of decisions. It's another aspect of reproductive freedom — women are free to have a child without having to be married, so they can take charge of their own lives."... Although there are no statistics on single mothers by choice, according to the U.S. Census, more than 1 million unmarried mothers are raising families, while more than 3 million children live with mothers who have never married.

In response to this growing phenomena, groups have formed across the country to help women with the fears and the stress, and to encourage the pleasures and rewards, of having children on their own.... While some women ask male friends to father a child, others become pregnant and never tell the father, experts said. And an increasing number become pregnant through artificial insemination, Pannor said....

"I always had wanted children," said Louise, a slim woman with lanky brown hair and oversized glasses who lives in a cramped one-bedroom Palms apartment with 21-month-old Claire. "I'd rather have a husband, but it never happened for me and life is short and I just decided to have a family even if I weren't married.... I think if you're going to have a baby you should be able to provide a decent life for them, but I don't think a child has to have a mother and father to be happy.”

Governments in modern-day Israelite nations keep coming up with wacky solutions to moral dilemmas. Canada is no exception, as this Reuters report of April 24 indicates:

Prostitutes should be allowed to sell sex in their homes and Canadian provinces should be given permission to regulate "small­scale prostitution establishments," a federal committee recommended Tuesday....

Police have been left largely powerless to deal with the problem of street soliciting since 1978, when the Supreme Court ruled that prostitutes could not be convicted unless they are "pressing and persistent."... In its most revolutionary recommendation, the committee said Canada's criminal law "should not prevent one or two prostitutes, 18 years or older, from operating out of a place of residence. If any provinces decide to allow and regulate small-scale prostitution establishments, the federal law should not intervene," the report added.

If this happened in the U.S., the young "entrepreneurs" might even qualify for a Small Business Administration loan! Meanwhile the scourge of AIDS stands, some scientists believe, on the threshold of becoming a major nationwide disease disaster. In the article, "Grim News at AIDS Battlefront: Scientists Stand on Shaky Ground," the HERALD-EXAMINER (also April 21) reports:

ATLANTA — The international AIDS conference was held here this week.... It presented an inspiring picture of dedicated scientists facing a momentous challenge, and marshaling all the resources of laboratory and clinic to battle a teasingly clever enemy.... But even so, after 400 speeches and presentations by some of the best scientific minds of a generation, the grim bottom line remained the same....

Although improved treatments are now available for AIDS symptoms, they can only postpone inevitable death; a vaccine, if one is ever found, is years, perhaps a decade away. And by that time the disease will be so widespread that everybody in the United States will have to be inoculated.

And most alarming to the general public, AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, which so far has afflicted mostly homosexuals and drug addicts, now stands revealed as a sexually transmitted scourge that can strike straights as well as gays. "This is a true medical health emergency," said Robert Gallo, the co­ discoverer of the AIDS virus, HTLV-III, and a top research scientist at the National Cancer Institute. "And we don't have many tools to fight it with."

In the major cities, AIDS inexorably has expanded its hold. This week alone the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services confirmed another 59 cases of AIDS, bringing the number diagnosed in the Los Angeles area to 805. Nationwide, there have been 9,000 confirmed AIDS victims, and half of them already are dead.

Dr. James Curran, the head of the AIDS task force for the National Centers for Disease Control, said that it is certain the number of confirmed AIDS cases will double in the next year, to 18,000. And the number will double again the next year. But whether the number of cases will continue to double every year will be determined by factors that scientists admit are now unknown.

"Some of the risk factors are going to taper off," Curran said.... "But the problem is that because AIDS has such a long incubation period, up to 10 years, we just have no idea how many of the people who have been exposed to the virus ultimately will come down either with milder pre-AIDS symptoms, or with the fatal form of the disease itself." Curran estimated that as many as 1 million people have been exposed to the AIDS-causing HTLV-III virus in the U.S. "It is such a health problem that if we get a vaccine we will have to vaccinate everybody, just as we did for polio," he said....

New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Miami account for nearly two-thirds of all AIDS cases in the United States.... An estimated 60 percent of gay men in San Francisco and New York are infected with the HTLV-III virus, researchers said....

Dr. Mervyn Silverman, the president of the U.S. Conference of Local Health Officers, said that the threat of AIDS, combined with existing fears about herpes and other sexually transmitted diseases, has pulled the reins on the galloping sexual freedom of the last 20 years. "I believe the sexual revolution is just about over," Silverman said.

But take heart, sinning America! "Heroes Are Back," proclaims the headline of an article in the April 22, 1985 U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT. But the article itself shows today's heroes are a far cry from yesteryear's:

Clint Eastwood, whose steely film challenge "make my day" has stirred the combative juices of millions..., is the No.1 hero of young adults in America. So finds a survey of people age 18 through 24 that was commissioned by U.S. News & World Report....

Today, aside from a few political or religious figures, the icons of the young are celluloid stars and other entertainers. Actor­ comedian Eddie Murphy holds the No. 2 spot, followed by [President] Reagan in third place and actress Jane Fonda in fourth. Actress Sally Field and film director Steven Spielberg tie for fifth place. Next is Pope John Paul II, then Mother Teresa, the Nobel Prize-winning missionary, and, finally, entertainers Michael Jackson and Tina Turner....

During the late 1950s, [President Dwight D.] Eisenhower, Britain's Winston Churchill, missionary Albert Schweitzer,...Billy Graham, President Harry Truman and Gen. Douglas MacArthur were the Gallup Poll's most admired men. Eleanor Roosevelt, Queen Elizabeth II, Clare Boothe Luce, Mamie Eisenhower and Helen Keller, the blind and deaf writer-lecturer, topped Gallup's most­ admired-women list. The common denominator: Most were either shapers of history or figures noted for inspirational sacrifices.

Then came the turmoil of the 1960s. By 1969, 4 out of 10 Americans polled refused to name anyone.... Today...sociologist [Amitai] Etzioni perceives "a theme of populism running through the choices. Many are antiestablishment," he finds, adding: "Field and Fonda have played protest roles on and off stage. Eastwood is a rebel, too. He reminds you that your boss is sitting on you and the law is bugging you. People who feel beset by many forces see him standing up against the world. And look at Murphy. He flouts all the rules and gets by with it."

Princeton sociologist Suzanne Keller worries that too many of today's heroes are media creations.... "I'm not sure celebrities are heroes. With many, you could ask: What moral position have they taken in life? What risk have they taken?" Keller calls the show-business figures "idols of consumption — those who entertain or divert you." In the Roper poll, she notes, only Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca, who appears on the men's list, is an "idol of production."

The old song "School days, school days, dear old golden rule days" no longer applies much to today's American school scene, most specifically the problems today's educators face. Radio commentator Paul Harvey reported the following on his daily broadcast of September 28, 1984:

The Gallup Poll on education indicates that the number one problem in public schools is discipline. Has been for all but one of the last fifteen years. But the nature of the discipline problem has changed. Today's disciplinary problems, in this order, are: rape, robbery, assault, burglary, arson, bombings, murder, suicide, absenteeism, vandalism, extortion, drug abuse, alcohol, gang warfare, pregnancies, abortions and venereal disease. Those are today's main most problems in public schools.

In 1940, the behavioral problems were: talking, chewing gum, making noise in the classroom, running in halls, getting out of turn in line, wearing improper clothing and not putting waste paper in the waste basket.

Seeing all the above, how can a flaccid, morally corrupt, undisciplined United States possibly stand up to its determined enemies? Even the lesson of history shows America cannot prevail.

— Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau

(Editor's Note: Mr. Hogberg and Mr. Ron Kelly have been in Germany covering the Bonn Economic Summit, as well as Mr. Reagan's state visit to Germany and his speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. Hopefully a report will follow next issue.)