[Tax-chick]

I think if we could just get government to stop rewarding immoral and incompetent behavior through welfare, that would go a long way.

Okay, you've persuaded me ;-). Since the imposition of costs would fall on more than just the male and female involved - people such as her parents - that would go a long way toward rebuilding a social consensus against promiscuity.

[allmendream]

Her parents and his parents. I think too long people have had a ‘let the boys be boys’ attitude and left it up to girls to be the guardians of sexual morality.

I have been reading Edgar Rice Burroughs (writer of Tarzan, and John Carter of Mars). His heroic ideal includes devotion in love, in the face of tantalizing temptation; as well as a distinction between the love between two hearts and the lust between two bodies caught up in circumstance. The Outlaw of Torn, circa 1914, almost 100 years ago.

In the Godfather, DeNiro is shown the beautiful actress girlfriend of his friend up on stage, “Isn't she gorgeous?” he asks. “For you, she is pretty. For me, there is only my wife and child.”

We need a return to THAT as a masculine ideal (perhaps without the criminality, but examples are hard to come by!).