Look Magazine And Group Marriage
The nationally circulated ("It's bigger than Life") Look Magazine has served well as a harbinger of the "new morality." The ideas expressed by George B. Leonard, Senior Editor, in Look, Jan. 13, 1970, are familiar to regular subscribers to the magazine and/or the philosophy. The article is called "Why We Need a New Sexuality." Bear in mind that the terms "taboos and guilt" are used by "new morality" writers to signify Bible standards of morality.
"The taboos unquestionably were useful prior to modern contraception and hygiene. The highly specialized, limiting roles of male and female were probably appropriate to those earlier times. . . .
"We might start making sex safe and joyful simply by renouncing all censorship. This means just what it says: Sexual intercourse and birth could be shown on network television and in family magazines. Nothing would be hidden. No need for 'X' or 'R' ratings for films. As it is, the censors have the age limits backwards. . . In a very few years, preoccupation with hyped-up, 'hot' sex would very likely begin to fade. Such has been the case in Denmark, where pornography for grown-ups has been legalized."
The situation in Denmark is not really as grand as these new moralists would lead us to conclude. The following statement is from a Nashville Banner editorial, Feb. 11, 1970: "Congressional response to the antipornography proposals reportedly is the result of survey of Denmark and Sweden. The survey, completed in Copenhagen reveals that the traffic in filth has become such an immensely lucrative business that the Mafia has moved into it. Additionally, the widespread reports of dramatic decreases in sexually motivated crimes in the two Scandinavian nations as a result of unlimited access to pornography are totally false, the survey maintains. What has happened is that Sweden and Denmark have revised the laws so that what was once a sex crime no longer is. Violent sex crimes or forcible rape and assault have not diminished since the abolishment of obscenity laws, says Copenhagen Police Chief Herr Clor Christiansen."
The closing paragraph of Mr. Leonard's article especially caught my eye:
"We need bigger, less well-defined 'families.' We need groups of friends and neighbors who are willing and able to share the strongest feelings, to share responsibility for the emotional needs of all the children in the group. Thus no one will be childless, no one will lack affection . . . The new sexuality leads eventually to the creation of a family as wide as all mankind, that can weep together, laugh together and share the common ecstasy."
Now all of that may sound pretty good to some. Our first question upon reading it was: "What on earth is he talking about?" Our first mental application was this quotation from the Communist Manifesto: "Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.
"On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On Capital, on private gain . . . Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.
"The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parent and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labor."
There's but little doubt in my mind that this application is apropos but some details that I have since learned are at least interesting.
Have you heard of "Proposition Thirty-one?" An organization known as Future Families of America has been campaigning to have this proposition appear on the ballot in California. It would legalize group marriage in that state.
A book, "Proposition 31" has been written in the form of a novel regarding an experiment in group marriage by two couples who have been instrumental in this movement. The novel itself is pure and unadulterated filth but the book contains some invaluable information, especially in the preface and the postscript.
The back cover reads:
"VOTE YES for proposition 31
* Legalized group marriage
* Guilt-free sex
* Moral sanity
* Meaningful mate-sharing
* Preservation of the family
"VOTE NO against
* Adultery and divorce
* Loveless wife-swapping
* Hypocritical monogamy
* Sexual inhibition
"Before you go to the polls, read the remarkable story of Nancy and David Herndon and Tanya and Horace Shea — two respectable middleclass couples who dare to live and love together freely, in open defiance of outmoded morality. Their courageous experiment in group wedlock will shock, even stun you. But it may alter forever your thinking on the meaning of marriage and the nature of sexuality."
Then, on pp. 283-285, we find listed groups, communities, and institutes which are either behind this proposition or which philosophies are keeping time with it. Among them is Esalen Institute. From this organization one may buy a two-hour stereo tape from a weeklong group encounter, with Robert Rimmer (author of the book) and nineteen others discussing Proposition Thirty-one and interpersonal relations.
What's the connection? Merely this: George B. Leonard, Senior Editor of Look Magazine, is vice president of Esalin Institute. ("Beware Sensitivity Training" by Phoebe Courtney, p. 74) Leonard told an Esalen meeting: "We envisage no mass movement, for we do not see people in the mass; we look instead to revolution through constant interplay between individual and group, each changing the other. The revolution has begun. Human life will be transformed. How it will be transformed, is up to us." (The New York Times, Oct. 8, 1967)
So it should be clear what this man has in mind when he tells his many readers: "We need bigger, less well-defined 'families.' "
Every home of Christians should receive and make available literature which is uplifting instead of downgrading (Phil. 4:8). I feel that unless one is receiving some of these publications for purely informational purposes, i.e. to keep up with the newest low . . . one would do well to drop his subscriptions, write and inform the publishers why he does not wish to receive these magazines, and put the money where it will do more good. We would suggest some gift subscriptions for friends or relatives to The Gospel Guardian.
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