Once upon a time in America, society demanded civility and manners and honored women and motherhood.
But honor seems to have been tossed to the wayside in this modern era, and exchanged for a cheap and tawdry view of the female sex.
What happened to so utterly change the widespread estimation of the “fairer” sex?
First, we must understand that our nation’s mores were built upon a biblical worldview. We read in Proverbs:
Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing,
But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.
~ Proverbs 31:30. . .
He who finds a wife finds a good thing,
And obtains favor from the Lord.
~ Proverbs 18:22
The Founders — many of whom were devout Christians, the balance of whom believed in a Creator and respected biblical Christianity — envisioned a country of free men and women, families, devoted to one another, worshipping freely.
As long as Americans adhered to the original worldview of the first settlers and founders, individuals were treated with respect. Each person was acknowledged as created by God and thus intrinsically valuable.
Women were protected and honored. Pregnant women with protected and honored. Mothers were respected and honored.
But with the twentieth century came some wholly destructive changes.
Margaret Sanger founded the American Birth Control League [est. 1921], which became Planned Parenthood in 1942, and ushered in a new notion, that babies in the womb were nothing more or less than either a detriment or useful entity in society.
Sanger convinced many women that motherhood was not a blessing, and that some people, by virtue of their mental abilities or race, were not worthy of life. This was a giant step, a monumental lie, based on a Darwinist worldview.
Planned Parenthood and its nefarious founder began the indoctrination of “materialism:”
a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that all being and processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter – scientific materialism
Sanger’s indoctrination eroded the once held view of mankind as the height of God’s creation, and replaced it with a utilitarian viewpoint. This new concept deemed people worthy of life based upon their capacity to contribute to society.
In the span of twenty years many Americans were persuaded that people were not intrinsically valuable because God created them, but rather, a person’s value was dependent upon their utilitarian value.
Next came Helen Gurley Brown and Hugh Hefner who continued the indoctrination, persuading men AND women that sex apart from marriage and procreation was fine and dandy. Throw off the chains of old thinking and embrace your sexuality!
Helen Gurley Brown convinced several generations of women to engage in sex outside the safety of a loving marriage. Ms. Brown taught young women, enamored with Cosmo and the free love mantras of the day, that the sole goal of sex was orgasm and pleasure.
Counter that with God’s wondrous idea: sexual intimacy was to be the height of oneness between a man and wife, and the means of procreation. Marriage was intended to be a safe place, a refuge, where a loving husband and wife could raise children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.
But indeed, if humans are not wondrously created by a Creator, but merely biologic units, then sex is pretty much like any other biologic activity.
Hugh Hefner, with his slick Playboy magazine, indoctrinated decades of young men, and older men, with the lie that unrestrained sex is a terrific recreational activity and women’s bodies are the intended venue. Playboy perpetuated the view of women as playmates.
Consider that, if a man believes that women are good for a thrill, like a ride at Six Flags, he is not considering her character and heart important, he is only concerned with her body.
Hef was a big proponent of the “if it feels good do it!” movement and convinced millions of men to throw off the long held ideas of womanhood and sex.
It was as very short step from nullifying mankind’s true value, to sex with abandon and variation and absolutely no restraint.
Add to that horrendous mix of immoral indoctrination, the radical feminist movement. If Cosmopolitan magazine was the “Bible” of free love, sex and orgasim for the single girl, Gloria Steinem was the prophetess of the sexual revolution.
Steinem founded Ms. magazine in 1969, which happily harmonized with Cosmo, further disseminating the dogma of free love and sex without the tedious tether of marriage.
The devotees of Brown and Steinem, once college radicals burning bras, protesting the Vietnam War, rebelling against parental authority, and belittling the institution of marriage, are now ensconced in America’s halls of academia teaching malleable young minds.
And with the advent of 2017, America was forced to reckon with the consequences of almost a century of humanistic, unbiblical, immoral ideology.
We now know what happens when you teach a nation that people are not intrinsically valuable, that women are mere means to pleasure, that women should want unfettered sex whenever and however. And by all means, if a woman is impregnated, dispose of the fetus and resume hedonistic activities as soon as possible.
And the really horrible thing is — Hefner and HGB and Steinem persuaded females that this sexual abandonment would be a fun thing. A really cool thing.
Unfortunately, women in 2017 are beginning to awaken and realize that they’ve been sold a rotten to the core bill of goods.
Free”love” is neither love nor free. It’s costly. Women are objectified. Sexually transmitted diseases proliferate. Unwanted pregnancies terminated by abortion result in, not only murdered babies, but severe depression in women. Men, being denied their rightful duty and purpose to protect women and children are emasculated and devalued.
How can we turn this around? How can we once again teach the amazing worth of each man and women, boy and girl?
How can we teach men that women are not playmates to use, but rather, women are wondrously created in the image of God?
How can we turn back the clock to a time when men honored women? A time when men would stand when a lady walked in the room?
America can only change if we as a nation turn to the principles that first made us great: God’s principles and values.
America can become a safe place once more for women and babies if we teach the transcendent truth that “all men [and women] are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Americans can realize the great heritage of our nation if we repent and acknowledge the words of the Psalmist:
Happy are the people whose God is the Lord!
First published at Illinois Family Institute
