[utahagen]

Are you kidding? On the following point, Hugh Hefner and I were/are in agreement: American society used to uphold the ideal that sex was for marriage, that people should remain virgins until they marry. That was the IDEAL, although, of course, people often fell short of the ideal. That was still the ideal in 1950, but the Sexual Revolution changed that by, say, 1970. Factors contributing to the Sexual Revolution included the birth control pill and Playboy magazine, which paved the way for more provocative forms of pornography. Hugh Hefner takes a big share of the credit for the Sexual Revolution, credit he deserves. Your responding that I had implied nobody ever had sex outside of marriage before 1953 was inane.

[Snickering Hound]

Are you kidding? On the following point, Hugh Hefner and I were/are in agreement: American society used to uphold the ideal that sex was for marriage, that people should remain virgins until they marry. That was the IDEAL, although, of course, people often fell short of the ideal. That was still the ideal in 1950, but the Sexual Revolution changed that by, say, 1970. Factors contributing to the Sexual Revolution included the birth control pill and Playboy magazine, which paved the way for more provocative forms of pornography. Hugh Hefner takes a big share of the credit for the Sexual Revolution, credit he deserves. Your responding that I had implied nobody ever had sex outside of marriage before 1953 was inane.

When 19 yr old males away from home for the first time in 44'-45' were told by girls in France, Philippines, Italy etc. just what they would do for a pack of Lucky Strikes...

There was a reason there were millions of doses of penicillin stored before D-Day and they didn't all have to do with combat.

Hefner would like to THINK he had a great deal to do with the sexual revolution of the 60's and 70's but his and Playboy's contribution was minor compared to the pill and access to transportation that could get you anywhere in the country in hours and get people in larger cities with their anonymity.

[Borges]

There is an interesting confluence of events within a fairly short period of time that led to the ‘loosening up’ of public ideals or whatever one calls them.

1947: Gore Vidal published ‘The City and the Pillar’, the first mainstream American novel to offer a positive treatment of homosexuality.

1948: Kinsey publishes ‘Sexual Behavior in the Human Male’ (Hefner wrote a college thesis on Kinsey).

1948: ‘United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.’ The USSC declares that movie studios cannot own movie theaters because it is monopolistic. They divest and that opens the door for mainstream distribution and exhibition of non Hollywood and Foreign language films that were not subject to Hollywood’s Production Code then in place.

1952: ‘Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson’ Another Supreme Court decision declaring that a state banning a film on ‘sacrilege’ was unconstitutional. Incidentally the film in question was Italian and got displayed as a direct result of the 1948 decision.