From 1920 until 1933 it was against the law in the United States to manufacture, sell or transport alcohol. This time was known as Prohibition , and it was a wildly unsuccessful experiment, as laws were continually broken, especially in urban areas. People wanted to drink alcohol, and rather than making a large segment of the population criminals, Prohibition was repealed.
Today, not only is the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol legal, it is big business. Only the most radical of religious conservatives hold to abstinence as a moral conviction. In fact, the manufacture and consumption of marijuana is also legal in Colorado, and nationally 53% of all Americans support its legalization. Among 18-34 year olds that number rises to 68%.
When broadcast television exploded in the 1950’s, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulated broadcasts, prohibiting “obscene or indecent” programming. These terms were defined relative to contemporary community standards. As a result, sexual activity was not depicted, and was alluded to only in the most indirect ways. Married couples, when seen in their bedroom, slept in separate beds.
Today, while “obscene or indecent” programming is still prohibited, community standards have declined precipitously. Sexual themes are common, the depiction of sexual activity is overt, and some programs have sexual relationships, humor and drama as the central aspect of their stories.
In 1973, the legality of abortion was a matter left to the states. Thirty states in the Union had laws prohibiting abortion, and in the other twenty there were severe restrictions on abortion (only in instances of rape, or to save the life of the mother). That year the Roe V Wade decision by the United States Supreme Court invalidated all those laws, and made abortion legal in the entire United States.
Today, popular opinion is rather evenly divided depending upon how pollsters frame questions about abortion. Regardless of the polls, since 1973 an estimated 58 million abortions have been performed in the United States.
Until 1973, homosexuality was listed by the American Psychiatric Association in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. At that time, the act of homosexual sex was actually illegal in most states. In fact, until 1962 sodomy was a felony in all fifty states. Pressure from changing social norms and an increasingly politically active homosexual community led to its removal from the manual.
In 2003 federal justices struck down all remaining sodomy laws. In the last twelve years homosexual activists have changed the minds of sufficient numbers to where a majority of Americans consider homosexuality normal and moral, and support homosexual marriage. Some states have legalized homosexual marriage. The gay agenda has been rebranded as the LGBT agenda, (lesbian, gay, bisexual & transgender). The term cisgender has been coined, as a complement to transgender. If you are a cisgender individual, your sex agrees with your gender. If you are transgender , your sex is different from your gender. Many trumpet the rights of a transgender individual to live as the gender with which they identify. Some have surgeries to superficially conform their “sex” to their perceived gender. Many are demanding that the federal government mandate such procedures to be covered by medical insurance.
Example after example could be given of the changes to societal mores in the last few decades in America. It is obvious to those who accept God’s standard of morality as revealed in the Bible, that today immorality is raging in our country. One must only look to the antediluvian world (cf. Genesis 6:5-7), the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (cf. Genesis 18:17-33), or the rebellion of Judah (cf. Isaiah 59:1-15), to see that God repays ungodliness with judgment.
Our nation is destined to fall if it does not turn from such ungodliness. We must take care to not be sullied by the evil that surrounds us. The prophet proclaimed, “According to their deeds, accordingly He will repay, fury to His adversaries, recompense to His enemies; the coastlands He will fully repay. So shall they fear the name of the Lord from the west, and His glory from the rising of the sun; when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him” (Isaiah 59:18-19).
