AMERICAN CULTURE AND COMPARTMENTALIZATION

• First, consider marriage.  Science tells us that puberty comes earlier for American teens and as a result sexual activity results earlier as well.  However, the average age when people marry has grown later—26 for women and 28 for men.  The result is a decade or more of sexual activity before marriage.  Columnist Michael Gerson writes:  “The casual sex promoted in advertising and entertainment often leads, in the real world of fragile hearts and STDs, to emotional and physical wreckage.  But it doesn’t seem realistic to expect most men and women to delay sex until marriage at 26 or 28.  Such virtue is both admirable and possible—but it can hardly be a general social expectation.”  Typically, churches and parachurch ministries ignore this reality—to the detriment of these young adults.  So, because courtship is gone, young adults are now institutionalizing cohabitation.  From 1960 to 2007, the number of Americans cohabiting has increased fourteenfold.  About 40% of children are now products of such arrangements.  Social science evidence is now confirming that such arrangements are not stable and are devastating for children born from cohabiting arrangements.  Our culture can no longer compartmentalize the institution of marriage and simply argue that it works for some but not all.  Gerson argues that “Marriage is the most effective institution to bind two parents for a long period in the common enterprise of raising a child—particularly encouraging fathers to invest time and attention in the lives of their children.  And the fatherless are some of the most disadvantaged, betrayed people in our society, prone to delinquency, poverty and academic failure.  Cohabitation is no place for children.”  American culture can no longer compartmentalize the issue of marriage.  It is one of the most important institutions for civilization.  It remains the only institution where responsibility, commitment and sacrifice for the sake of children works.  We cannot set it aside and deem it irrelevant.  It does not belong in a compartment for a select few who still want it.  It is the vital center of a vibrant, robust civilization.

• Second,  consider David Letterman.  Prompted by a failed blackmail attempt, Letterman revealed that he had had sex with a number of female employees involved with his program.  He followed up two shows later with an uncharacteristically sober apology.  Few have shown such contempt for women in public than David Letterman.  He had the power to fire the women with whom he had sex; most would consider that something akin to sexual harassment.  James Poniewozik, Time columnist, writes that “Comedians don’t joke about sex scandals because they themselves are morally pure.  They do it because sex scandals are funny.  Letterman’s is too—maybe as hypocrisy insurance—he’s already been skewering himself over it.”  That a man like David Letterman remains a national late-night celebrity speaks volumes about American culture’s desire to compartmentalize things.  We compartmentalize our entertainers’ morals and values from our own and from their performances.  Instead of holding entertainment heroes to a moral standard, we overlook their horrific lifestyle because they make us laugh!  We will tolerate gross and offensive philandering and adultery because they entertain us.  Is there any wonder that our culture rightly deserves the charge of hypocrisy!  American culture should shun a man such as David Letterman.  What he did stands opposed to everything that is decent, ethical and acceptable.  But the culture accepts him because he is entertaining.  Shame on the broader culture for not holding him accountable and boycotting his show and his advertisers.  But the culture compartmentalizes his behavior and ignores it because he makes us laugh!

• Finally, consider the matter of abortion.  Dinesh D’Souza writes that “It seems bizarre that many who claim the political virtue of compassion are champions of abortion rights.  These people are able to cry tears for just about every vulnerable group in the world.  They feel the pain of seals, they grieve over sex trafficking in Asia, and they are worried about the plight of children in Darfur.  They react with genuine indignation and mobilize to take action.  Why, then, do the unborn persons in their own communities not usually inspire a similar compassionate response?”  There is no greater example of this culture’s penchant to compartmentalize than abortion.  It is thoroughly inconsistent and hypocritical, but there it is!  D’Souza correctly argues that abortion is the logical result of the sexual revolution.  If women are going to have control over their bodies and deal with a pregnancy they reject, they must be able to kill their child.  “It is not only painfully embarrassing, it is also painful to one’s self-image to acknowledge a willingness to sustain permissive sexual values by killing the unborn.”  We can no longer ignore this compartmentalization.  Abortion is not simply a right that some women want to maintain; it is inextricably linked to the sexual revolution.  If we are going to do away with abortion, the culture is soon going to need to address the matter of sexual libertinism!  And that will not be easy!

See Michael Gerson in the Omaha World Herald (20 October 2009); James Poniewozik in Time (19 October 2009); Dinesh D’Souza in Christianity Today (September 2009), p. 78.

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