E
edwest2
Guest
I lived through each phase. I can document what I write. Prior to the 1970s, the only way to get dirty magazines, aside from Playboy, was to go to the liquor store run by this gruff looking guy. He had a handful behind the counter and no kids were going to get them.I’m sorry, but the above is a thorough failure to understand historically (1) what actually took place, from the subculture to the wider culture, and (2) how cultures are influenced over time.
The cause of massive fornication & cohabitation (which btw is the root of the high rate of abortion today in the U.S.) is not “Adult Bookstores.”Those bookstores were already everywhere prior to the hippie culture. Ditto for topless bars. They were rampant in certain locations. The judges did not create, let alone initiate, such cultural realities. Rather, the youth that came of age during the hippie culture of which we speak was the definiing population that gave Permission to alternative lifestyles in general. They were the Baby Boom generation, and thus their numbers were high, their influence strong.
The way the law works on a pracitcal level in this country is that, once behaviors become more acceptable already in the mainstream of society – once they reach a critical mass of existence – those behaviors then become “legitimized” socially, first. Social integration/absorption of everyday behavior evolves into legitimization of that behavior, formally, after individuals and/or companies/groups/institutions bring concerns to the court. In my opinion it is hardly the ideal way to proceed with legal decisions (and that practical process is decried often, by thoughtful professionals in the field – judges, lawyers), but it is unfortunately the way legal decisions have evolved in this country, particularly in the area of social behavior.
The last thing that the hippie culture was interested in were Adult Bookstores and Topless Bars. Topless Bars were for the externally button-down fathers of the hippies. And adult bookstores existed for the grandfathers of those hippies.
One of the alliances with the hippie culture was in fact The Peace Movement. The two features were not interchangeable, but there was a great deal of overlap. Many hippies took global and local peace quite seriously. It was part of their social consciousness, and they did engage in a great deal of peaceful civil disobedience for causes they believed in – first & foremost efforts against not just the Vietnam War, but war in general and with the industrial-military complex, against which they took practical steps whenever possible (as consumer activists, as voters, etc.) Many of them were also conscientious objectors and were able to legitimately support that claim, given their history of activism against the military.
Because of their social justice stands, xombined with their (romantic) attractiveness, they did indeed gain (i.m.o.) far too much credibility with the mainstream media, comprehensively. That, together with their sheer numbers, population-wise as The Baby Boomers, resulted in a sea-change morally in this country, more than any other single event or movement – of which another was The Pill, of which a third was Women’s “liberation” (some of it legitimate, some of it quite misnamed, of course, or at least resulting in distortions of the term “liberated”). The three factors combined were the Trifecta of moral (especially sexual) relativism of the late 20th century through today.
So this entire spiral of relativism profoundly contributed to Roe v. Wade & the continued expectation of abortion on demand at any stage. (Because again, legal decisions follow social norms, not vice-versa; the groundwork for Roe was laid in the mid-'60’s, and it was not adult bookstores.) Now what we have sealing this trend is the unfortunate disordered level of expected “privacy” in this country, combined with a disproportionately lmagnified emphasis on “rights” (vs. responsibilities), which is not the topic of this thread but which does make reversing social trends even more difficult.
This was the beginning of a new wave of social engineering that was highly financed, protected by the best lawyers (to keep those religious nuts away), and designed to work as it did. No Pope in 1968 was going to convince women to listen, much less men, and affect the sales of The Pill. Then legalized abortion, then No-Fault Divorce, then zero sexual standards.
This was engineered and planned. The mainstream media did not give them credibility, the mainstream media became part of the movement as pockets of resistance were bought out by large corporations.
Recent legal decisions did not follow social norms in any way, shape or form. Roe v Wade was based on nonsense - penumbras and emanations. Give me a break. The same with No-Fault Divorce. How lovely. It’s nobody’s fault anymore. The Hippies were one part of the mechanism, that’s all.
Peace,
Ed
…oh wait a minute…they founded it