Impact of Sexual Revolution Revealed in New Book
by Randall Murphree
August 25, 2005
(AgapePress) - America's sexual revolution has swept morality out the door and left the family in a state of disarray. I remember my boss -- American Family Association founder Don Wildmon -- returning from a California conference in early 1987 and telling me to be expecting an article to arrive in the mail.
"It's by a guy named Steve Gallagher," Don told me. "About sexual addiction."
"Huh?" I said.
"Yeah," he replied. "Use it in the next Journal."
That sex or pornography could become an addiction problem was not a common concept 18 years ago. At least, it wasn't publicly acknowledged as such. The idea is crystal clear these days, and the counseling field has had to adjust to address the porn phenomenon.
"People become addicted to the high of pornography and sexual activity in the same way that others become addicted to the high of alcohol or drugs," wrote Steve Gallagher in August 1987. His one-page article in that month's AFA Journal was the genesis of a deep relationship between AFA and Pure Life Ministries, which Steve founded that same year.
In How America Lost Her Innocence: A History of the Sexual Revolution, his latest book, Steve relates how America has gone from innocent to X-rated in a few short decades.
The former Los Angeles County deputy sheriff and former addict himself, Steve is passionate and focused. He and his wife Kathy started a work that has blossomed into one of the nation's premiere ministries in the field. Pure Life offers many resources: books, at-home study programs, care for wives of addicts, programs for struggling women, and live-in programs for addicts, the latter at their campus in northern Kentucky.
How America Lost Her Innocence is informative and revealing. And disturbing. To think that we have sat idly by while the likes of Hugh Hefner, Alfred Kinsey and the Mafia manipulate our culture to the extent that we "tolerate" any aberrant behavior that evil can devise!
But that's precisely what has happened. Hefner and friends have hoodwinked America into thinking up is down, perversion is good, morality is bad, illicit sex is good, fidelity in marriage is passe.
The little 100-page book documents the process that occurred beginning with Alfred Kinsey's now discredited "research" in the 1940s. Steve explains how Kinsey's manipulative and defective work was gobbled up by academia without so much as a question or any validation of peer research.
In a nutshell, Steve goes on to detail how each decade contributed its own element that feeds the amoral tornado of tolerance that has ripped apart the fabric of family in our society. In the 1950s, Hefner took the sexual revolution to the masses with his pornographic Playboy magazine. The 1960s saw the gay activist agenda come to the forefront of public discourse. Drug abuse soared in the '70s, and sexually oriented businesses tainted the landscape in the '80s. By the mid-1990s, Internet technology brought hard-core porn into our homes with the click of a few computer keys.
Steve's disheartening portrait of our times is balanced by his challenge for the Church to take a stand and address the problem head-on. He writes, "If we are going to return to the godly living of our forefathers, we must face the blight of pornography and sexual sin in an honest and forthright manner. The greatest threat to the Church today is not so much the pornography itself as it is the lackadaisical attitude many Christians have toward its sinful nature."
To that, we at AFA say, "Amen, brother." When Don founded AFA, he thought the big problem was television programming. But in the early years of this ministry, he recognized the escalating porn problem. It now remains one of the major issues covered by AFA, and Pure Life is still one of a very short list of ministries to which we refer those in need.
From time to time, Steve finds his way to Tupelo, Mississippi, where his visits to our AFA offices are always eagerly anticipated. I've had the privilege to host him and his wife and other staff members in my home. Actually, Steve cooked the last great steak that's come out of my under-utilized kitchen. Obviously, I look forward to his visits.
I say all that to say this: AFA knows Steve Gallagher. AFA trusts his heart of compassion and empathy for the sex addict, his desire to honor God with everything he does, and his ministry to those who may have nowhere else to go.
How America Lost Her Innocence should be required reading for pastors and other ministry leaders, counselors, teachers and parents. That gets most of us, doesn't it? Be forewarned, it will not only inform and motivate, but also anger, convict and challenge.
Randall Murphree, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is editor of AFA Journal, a monthly publication of the American Family Association.
