For the flap to occur, it was necessary first for: 1) the U. S. Supreme Court to render abortion a constitutional right, 2) ecclesiastics like John Spong, the fraudulent Episcopal bishop-prophet, to whoop it up for self-expression of every non-Republican kind, 3) moral leaders to demote the old moral and religious norms, such as abstinence from premarital sex, 4) parents to countenance the practice once known as "shacking up," and 5) prestigious universities such as Princeton to start boarding male with female students, as if it were Auschwitz or something.
Predictably, relationships between men and women have never been crazier or more prone to disaster. Nor is it that codes have vanished. What might be called the codeless code rules us: the code of anything goes, no holds barred.
The aim of Princeton's Anscombe Society is to challenge the idea of codelessness. Says one of the founders: "[W]e want to enrich the discussion of sexual issues and family. So we also present sociological data and medical research. We want to bring all of those issues in." That's to counter an environment wherein (to quote another Anscombeist) "in my [freshman dorm], we went to our residential adviser for our study break, and there with the soda pop and the chips was a bowl with flavored condoms." What did that tell the freshmen if not that Princeton's expectations for them were not on the high side?
Forty years ago, the Ivy League led a dazed and goggle-eyed America into a new Babylonian captivity of total freedom to do whatever. Is it barely possible the Ivy League itself is ripe for subversion by people who don't think the sexual revolution, etc. successfully upstaged 2,000 years of Western wisdom on the ways of the heart? Gee, I don't know, but I think thinking about it calls for another shiraz.