Cal Thomas: The beginning of the end of the sexual revolution

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, April 19th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from member-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: Call me old fashioned. I’ve been called worse. But I’m going out on a limb today to say I’m sensing we may be at the beginning of the end of the sexual revolution.

EICHER: Commentary now from WORLD Radio’s Cal Thomas.

THOMAS: New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has written about a new book by Joanna Coles titled “Love Rules.”

The book emphasizes ways to avoid unhealthy relationships in the digital age.

Coles ought to know plenty about unhealthy relationships. She used to be editor in chief at Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire magazines.

But now she’s spoken candidly with the Times about young women’s regrets. Coles told Dowd she knows young women who are disillusioned with the hookup culture and feeling obligated to have sex with men they don’t even like.

Here’s what especially intrigued me about Dowd’s column. Coles tells her, and I’ll quote here, “No one wants to go back to sock hops and going steady, but to attempt to separate emotions from sex is not only illogical, given that emotion intensely augments pleasure, but also impossible for almost all women.” End quote.

As a product of the sock-hop and going-steady generation, I’d like to rise to its defense.

I grew up understanding there were certain rules about how men should treat women. And those rules largely worked. Of course women experienced problems, but certainly nothing on the scale we know about today. The sock-hop generation simply did not experience the emotional, relational, and even physical problems we now see as a result of modern lifestyles.

The me-too movement tells you all you need to know about the failure of the sexual revolution. The sexual-harassment stories that have emerged since the exposure of Harvey Weinstein tell a common story: female victims feeling used and abused by men who apparently were never taught that women are co-equals and thus deserving of respect, even honor.

Common sense and experience also reveal certain things about human relationships. Women especially bear the burden when men fail to “love, honor and cherish” them until death they do part.

Dowd quotes Coles as saying modern sex is “bleak.”

It doesn’t have to be.

Millennials would do well to consult their old fashioned and long married grandparents.

Or they can put on a “Golden Oldies” radio station and hear Don and Phil Everly sing:

I’m the kind who loves only one

So the boys say I’m old fashioned.

Let them laugh, honey, I don’t mind.

AUDIO: “
I’ve made plans for a wedding day for you and me.” “
That’s old fashioned. That’s the way love should be.”

For WORLD Radio, I’m Cal Thomas.

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