In his 1979 book, "Our

Dance Has Turned To Death," Christian sociologist Carl W. Wilson

outlined the dangers facing traditional marriage and the family in America's

increasingly sexualized culture. Wilson could clearly see what was going

to happen to the American family if our society continued to be sex-saturated.

Wilson noted that history reveals

that nations decline and eventually die when sexual immorality becomes

rampant and the traditional family is discarded in favor of group sex,

homosexuality, infidelity, and unrestrained sexual hedonism.

He pointed to the writings

of British anthropologist J. D. Unwin, whose 1934 book, "Sex and

Culture," chronicled the historical decline of numerous cultures.

Unwin studied 86 different

cultures throughout history and discovered a surprising fact: No nation

that rejected monogamy in marriage and pre-marital sexual chastity lasted

longer than a generation after it embraced sexual hedonism.

Unwin stated it this way, "In

human records there is no instance of a society retaining its energy after

a complete new generation has inherited a tradition which does not insist

on prenuptial and post-nuptial continence."

Unwin found that nations that

valued traditional marriage and sexual abstinence were creative and flourished.

He described this as "cultural energy" that can only be maintained

when sexual activities remain restricted within marriage.

Sociologist Pitirim Sorokin,

in "The American Sex Revolution," found essentially the same

thing when he examined sexual immorality as it relates to cultural decline.

Sorokin noted in the late '60s that America was committing "voluntary

suicide" through unrestrained sexual indulgence.

He observed that as individuals

began engaging in pre-marital sex unrelated to marriage, the birth rate

would decline and our nation would be slowly depopulated. He predicted

an increase in divorce, desertion, and an epidemic of sexual promiscuity

resulting in a rise in illegitimate children. His predictions, unfortunately,

have come true.

Sorokin's study of decadent

cultures convinced him that a healthy society can only survive if strong

families exist and sexual activities are restricted to within marriage.

Sexual promiscuity leads inevitably to cultural decline and eventual collapse.

Carl Wilson notes that decadent

cultures display seven typical characteristics: Men reject spiritual and

moral development as the leaders of families; men begin to neglect their

families in search of material gain; men begin to engage in adulterous

relationships or homosexual sex; women begin to devalue the role of motherhood

and homemaker; husbands and wives begin to compete with each other and

families disintegrate; selfish individualism fragments society into warring

factions; and men and women lose faith in God and reject all authority

over their lives.

Soon, moral anarchy reigns.

When the family collapses, the society soon follows.

If we do not learn from history,

we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. And, once the decline

begins, it will be very difficult to turn things around.

William Bennett, in "The

Broken Hearth," says it well: "My concern is that we are now

embarked upon an experiment that violates a universal social law: In attempting

to raise children without two parents, we are seeing, on a massive scale,

the voluntary breakup of the minimal family unit. This is historically

unprecedented, an authentic cultural revolution, and, I believe, socially

calamitous.

"We may be under the illusion

that we can cheerfully deconstruct marriage and then one day decide to

pull back from the brink. But as a friend of mine puts it, once you shoot

out the lights, can you shoot them back on again? As the long record of

human experimentation attests, civilizations, even great civilizations,

are more fragile and perishable than we think."

Our culture must strengthen

traditional marriage, promote abstinence before marriage, and reject any

attempts to undermine the natural law by redefining marriage to include

same-sex couples.

[Traditional Values Coalition

is an interdenominational public policy organization representing more

than 43,000 churches across the United States. TVC's Web site is:

https://www.traditionalvalues.org.]