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THE 60's
and dissenting liberals. The split cannot
go on much longer.
Permissive Society
The Sixties gave birth to the "New
Morality" and "Situation Ethics." At
the end of the decade, these two trends
came to mean "Do your own thing."
And that could be anything from smok–
ing marijuana to taking off your clothes
in
public.
It was the decade when famous rock
music groups became more well
known than presidents and prime min–
isters. Long hair for roen and boys
became fashionable. Jt was the era when
the Generation Gap widened into a
chasm. The word "hippie" entered our
lexicons.
It
was also the age of the "Sexual
Revolution." In fashion, the trend pro–
gressed from mini-skirts to micro-skirts.
Other developments were see-through
blouses, "topless" bars, and now even
"bottomless" bars. "Unisex" fashions
added to the malady.
In the late Sixties, raw pornography
became almost as easy to buy in the
United States as a newspaper. Denmark
· abolished its remaining legal restrictions
against pornography. A movement was
under way to do the same in Britain.
Stage and theater moved in pace with
- or perhaps a step or two ahead of -
the skidding moral climate. Nudity on
stage or in
film
became accepted fare. In
1969, films and plays with simulated
scenes of the sex act clashed with the
courts.
Expect the Seventies to
be
freer yet,
with all legal restrictions on "what
goes" in books, magazines, or the
theater swept by the board.
Family Breakdown
The family unit in Wcstern society
was seriously shaken in the Sixties.
Working women, changing sex roles,
freer attitudes toward pre-marital aod
extra-marital sex, the "Pill," all weak–
ened the traditional family structure.
The
PLAIN TRUTH
And while people were marrying
more, they were enjoying it less!
The happily married couple increas–
ingly was looked upon as an "oddiry."
Divorce had come to be considered by
many as a part of the living process, a
"maturing" experience.
Many were "maturing."
And for every divorce, psychologists
told us there were severa! married
couples who wanted to get a divorce but
wouldn't because of children, religious
bel iefs or social stigma. Nowhere was
the divorce problem more striking than
among those husbands and wives scek–
ing to shed mates after 15, 20, and 25
yea rs of marriage.
The Sixties produced myriads of
"new marriage" proponents - psy–
chologists, ministers, and sociologists –
with propositions of "tria!" or "tem–
porary" marriages. Marriage, the public
was increasingly told, was a dying in–
stitution, "obsolete," and "not suitable
for human nature" or present social
trends. Indicative of the new thinking
were numerous revelations of student
"arrangements" practiced on sorne U. S.
college and university campuses.
But with the new "sexual freedoms"
the decade also produced alarming in–
creases in venereal disease and illegiti–
macy rates.
The price for the New Morality,
overall, was far less satisfaction in mar–
riage and family life.
Education in Chaos
On the education scene, the 1960's
began quietly, without turmoil or fan–
fare. University campuses only made
local headlines when a few studcnts
staged a "panty raid."
But in the mid-Sixties things began
to cbange.
In 1964, the Berkeley campus of the
University of California initiated a stu·
dent Free Speech movement which
quickly degenerated into a Filthy
Speech movement and then into a Free
Sex movement. Demands for student re–
forro quickly spread to other campuses
across the United States.
In 1968, the student revolution hit
the campuses with a sudden, savage fury
which caught the public by surprise.
Student turmoil struck severa! eastern
U. S. colleges. A leftist student protest
at Columbia turned into a bloody up–
heaval marked by dashes with police.
Students rioted in France and almost
toppled the De Gaulle government
from power. Students demonstrated in
Bclgium, in Japan. Student and worker
strikes flared up in Italy. "Rudy the
Red" Dutschke upset the calm in West
Germany.
The big year in tbe U. S. was 1969.
Many student protests polarized around
racial issues, especially the institution of
"Black Studies" programs. San Fran–
cisco State College was embroiled in
severe student and teacher strikes. Dem–
onstcations flared at such pcestigious uni–
versities as Duke, University of Chi–
cago, Harvard, and Cornell.
Befare the year was over, more than
230 American college campuses had
been disrupted by demonstrations, pro–
tests, strikes or riots.
Projection for the 70's- more of the
same, it seems. The poles of thought
between students and "the estab–
lishment" are more divided than ever.
Prospects for inaeased upsets in ju–
nior colleges, high schools and junior
high schools are frightening.
Heyday for Criminals
During the decade, crime rates sky–
rocketed in al! categories
in
most West–
ern countries, especially in the U. S. Thc
race riots, the political assassinations,
the mass murders, the sniper killings of