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Jewish World Review Aug 16, 2012/ 28 Menachem-Av, 5772 The legacy of Helen Gurley Brown By Cal Thomas
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
When women complain about men who can't commit, they can thank -- or blame -- two people: Playboy magazine publisher Brown was the flip side of Hefner, offering women permission, even encouragement, to embrace a female version of Hefner's freewheeling "Playboy philosophy" of unrestrained sexual pleasure. Brown and Hefner offered one-way tickets to fantasyland, a journey supposedly without cost to a destination seemingly without consequences. I confess to pausing at the supermarket checkout each month to read A sampling of In any revolution -- political, or the sexual one championed by those like Hefner and Brown -- there are casualties. No one wants to talk about the casualties of the sexual revolution because that wouldn't sell magazines or seduce a new generation of young people. Sex sells, but it also brings misery when it's misused.
There was a time when words served a purpose. Some were once used to discourage bad behavior that was thought to be harmful to individuals who practice it and to societies that tolerate it. "Fornicator" was one. We changed the word so as to appear less "judgmental," but the behavior that word describes didn't change. "Sexually active" is now the preferred phrase that describes what the word used to. It seems more tolerant and that's the problem. I recall reading an interview in the 1970s with Just as there are laws in nature which, if violated, bring repercussions, so, too, are their moral laws which, when violated, cause physical, emotional, social and spiritual consequences. It is one reason we have preachers to remind us of such things, but fewer of us listen to them and suffer as a result.
Having abandoned a code of conduct that has served humanity well for millennia, Brown and her followers were forced to write a new code to deal with the predictable result of bad male behavior that previous constraints had worked well to limit. Men wanted their cake "and Edith, too," to paraphrase a country song and women didn't like the end result. Brown sowed the wind, to borrow a biblical phrase, and millions of women who ingested her poison continue to reap the whirlwind. What a legacy.
JWR contributor Cal Thomas is co-author with Bob Beckel, a liberal Democratic Party strategist, of "Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That is Destroying America". Comment by clicking here.
© 2011, Tribune Media Services, Inc.
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