Personal
from Herbert W. Armstrong

Few realize it! But even in affluent America, Britain, and other Western countries, we face an enormous and growing tragedy. The institutions of marriage and family life are being formidably attacked.

A solid family structure is the very foundation of any stable and permanent society. But today in the affluent countries a conspiracy is developing which seeks to destroy marriage as an institution, as well as the FAMILY. This is another decisive bit of evidence that this world’s civilization is definitely in the END TIME – the end of this world as we know it!

The threat is dual: 1) Unrealized by most, there is a widespread and aggressive conspiracy to destroy the institution of marriage. 2) Marital relationships and family life are breaking down, and divorces are increasing alarmingly.

I feel strongly the need to talk to my Plain Truth readership of many millions about this major threat to civilization itself – and thus to YOUR life and mine. It’s time the facts were made known. Today many psychologists are saying that the institution of marriage is doomed – on the way out. And there is a definite movement to bring that about.

The conspiracy consists of a two-pronged attack: 1) a well-organized movement to subtly influence college students to prefer alternatives to marriage, and 2) an attempt to influence the general public by newspaper and magazine articles, television programs, the lecture platform, the women’s lib movement, and student or former student rebels of the “New Left.” How much of all this propaganda has been planted in the minds of the psychologists, professors, writers, publishers, women’s lib crusaders, and others by trained Communist propagandists can only be estimated.

There are publishers that seek out writers and authors to supply them with material offering alternatives to marriage – such as homosexuality, group marriages, sex outside of marriage, communal families – writers who will shout the gospel that “marriage is finished, out-dated, obsolete, on the way out.” This is a war which is being vigorously and fanatically waged. Every subtle method is being employed to capture the minds of those of premarriage age.

Today virtually every college and university in the United States offers numerous courses in psychology and sociology. And almost without exception, these courses make required reading books and articles that picture marriage as now outdated and soon to become a relic of the past. They represent that both men and women want variety in sex and other social relationships. They ridicule as a worn-out, old-fashioned idea the belief that one should confine all intimate relations to one person.

One book, required reading at some one hundred campuses in the United States, has a chapter on mate swapping, including the statement: “The family that swings together clings together.” The book represents mate swapping as a beneficial experience.

A few years ago, the pioneers in applying methods of scientific research to the subject of sex, Masters and Johnson, held a symposium in Chicago with some six or seven couples who freely admitted to “swinging” as a regular experience at certain chosen intervals. They exchanged their philosophies on the subject, probed by questions from Dr. Masters and Dr. Johnson (actually Mrs. Masters). Masters and Johnson checked five years later and found only one of the couples was still married.

But now what about existing marriages, home and family life? These have given great encouragement to the conspiracy against marriage and the family.

The so-called new morality – which is actually nothing but gross immorality – has gained considerable public acceptance since the end of World War II. This crusade of the “new morality” has brought about, first, far more openness and frankness of discussion and conversation about sex and morals; and second, a much more lax behavior, especially among the oncoming younger generation. And one of its greatest dangers is the advent of a new and almost total PERMISSIVENESS.

I think it probably started in the “Roaring 20s” in the days of the “flappers.” Those, especially the girls who were in their late teens and early 20s in the 1920s, became much more permissive. They married and became mothers, but they relaxed authority and parental guidance over their children. Then World War II produced another generation – still more permissive.

Discipline relaxed and virtually disappeared in almost all of the public schools. And now, in the past decade, most of the college and university campuses have provided “co-ed dorms” where men are free to visit women in their rooms, and women are free to visit men with almost no restrictions.

Of course, the worldwide conspiracy against marriage and the attack against the FAMILY institution has not, as yet, made any sensational dent in the number of marriages taking place. But it is becoming a THREAT which I feel our readers should know about.