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Feel the Quake? Pat Boone Did you feel it? The giant convulsions underfoot, the shuddering mammoth earth movements, opening terrible fissures all along the deep fault lines, the tectonic plates shifting and lifting, with irresistible force shoving ancient landmarks tumbling down upon themselves, the very landscape sinking and rising and changing before our eyes, never to be the same again? No? You didn't? Maybe it's because it happened rather gradually, not all at once, in stages, while we were busy about our lives and always assuming things would just stay the way they were. While we were sure our structures could withstand any pressures, our way of life and our landmarks would continue as long as we live, without any necessary effort on our part. After all, who would want to change , to upset, the basic traditions and secure moral guidelines we've always taken for granted? Who, indeed. Very interesting article in the Washington Times a couple weeks ago: "Knot now: American youth are waiting longer to marry." Hmmm. Is human nature changing? What could this be about? The article documents that since 1950 (not so long ago) the average age for first marriage has crept up from 22.8 years to 27.1 for men and from 20.3 to 25.8 for women. But why? Oh, "I'm busy with other things," "I want to go to graduate school first," "I'm not sure she/he is my real soul mate," "I want to be financially secure in my profession first," "I guess I just haven't met the right one" – to "My parents couldn't stay together; why should I try it?" or "I want my freedom; why should I tie myself down?" or "I'm not really sure I'm marriage material; I'm afraid to commit myself to one person for life. What if I can't do it?" To most folks who came of age in the '50s, it wasn't unusual at all for wedding bells to ring a year or two after high school graduation. Getting married while in college was more common, and most everybody was getting serious about somebody and thinking family, kids and long lives together soon after college. And those who didn't go to college married even sooner.
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That was truly the expected, accepted norm. And if a woman reached 30 still single, she was likely to be considered an "old maid," at least potentially. Well, why was that? What was the rush? Let's think about that a moment. Even though sexual experimentation and backseat affairs have always been a fact of life in any age, until recent years the rules of society have mandated marriage as the place where men and women find their full expression and fulfillment and bonding – and sex has been the glue. Extramarital affairs have always happened, too, but were not popularly accepted. Even in Hollywood, it wasn't so long ago that Ingrid Bergman had to leave the United States and her career, for a time, when it became public knowledge that she was pregnant, out of wedlock, by director Roberto Rossellini. People knew these things went on, but they were not to be approved in polite society, even in movies, and certainly not in real life. Today? Just a few years later?
How many actresses can you name right now who have proudly had babies outside marriage, sometimes without naming the father? How many famous couples live together openly, buy expensive houses and start "families" with no apparent intention of wedlock or real commitment? How many couples do you know, right where you live, who've just moved in together, enjoy all the benefits of marriage, without any embarrassment at all? And, in too many cases, get tired of each other and move in with somebody else later? And you haven't felt the ground shifting beneath us? How do you suppose centuries of accepted mores have been so largely scrapped in such a short time? Could it possibly be that countless hours of television and movies and music and best-selling novels, relentlessly portraying uncommitted men and women rutting like barnyard animals in every imaginable situation – and not only getting away with it but becoming rich and famous and celebrated – might have had some effect on our young? On all of us? Just the other night, the biggest guffaw of the show "Desperate Housewives" occurred when one of the "wives," engaged to be married again, announced she was "saving herself" till after the wedding. And then, on the "Tonight Show," when Jay Leno asked very popular young Justin Timberlake if he and Cameron Diaz were planning to get married, his shocked response was "Married! Why should we get married? We're enjoying sex too much to get married!" Huge laughs and applause. It reminded me of a moment, perhaps largely forgotten now, in a big press conference during the early days of his career when a TV reporter asked Elvis when he was "gonna get married, settle down and have kids like Pat Boone?" Elvis looked sideways at the reporter, gave a little lopsided grin and answered, "Why should I buy a cow when I can get milk through the fence?" I assume he was just joking, but the remark sent shock waves through the country, convincing many parents their kids shouldn't buy Presley records. Of course, that made many kids want them all the more. But the negative reaction was widespread and branded Elvis as "a dangerous influence on our kids." Times have changed. The ground has shifted. Rules, moral guidelines, abstinence, marital fidelity – all have become subjects of humor, even ridicule, especially in the media. Currently, after just a few months of stunned objection to changing the very definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman, polls (always questionable) are telling us that a growing percentage of Americans don't care that much, don't feel threatened for themselves, their kids or the future of our society. The proponents of same-sex unions, often famous and popular entertainers, invariably get loud and supportive applause on the TV shows when they declare their "rights" to live any way they want. And when they declare, way before any way to prove their claims, that kids they adopt will be just as well adjusted as any others, and absolutely unaffected by their role models, millions of us just accept and applaud their good intentions. Of course, that defies not only all accepted psychology but also all previous history and time-honored morals. To say nothing of what we know of God's intentions and pronouncements. And you didn't feel anything?
Editor's note:
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