Is America in moral decline? Morality is a very broad and complicated topic due to the fact that it is based primarily on individual opinions. Moral values constantly change with the generations and it would be impossible to answer the question where every individual would agree. However, most people would agree that today's moral values are more tolerant of behavior that, a generation ago, would have been considered obscene and immoral. For example, sex on television is accepted by today's public as normal, but until the 1980s one could hardly say the word "sex- on television without being condemned. Yes, America is currently in a rapid decline of moral values. .
Judging by current statistics, all that once was immoral is now considered moral. It seems as though people have lost their conscience and are now controlled by their surroundings. Whatever the media says is okay, the people do. If the media says there is no need to get married before having sex, then that is what everyone does. Illegitimacy rates are astronomically high; over 30% of the children born today are born out of wedlock. The American public is turning into a puppet of the few people that are in charge, namely the media and Hollywood. The message going out today maintains that everything pleasurable is moral. Such a message poses a great danger to the morality of the nation because it is not true that everything pleasurable is moral. For example, sex is always a pleasurable activity, which, means that it is always moral. Such reasoning set the ground for the sexual revolution, which brought with it the spread of homosexuality, teen sex, and free love. This sexual revolution led to many problems such as teenage pregnancy and the rapid spread of AIDS. .
Gertrude Himmelfarb, professor emeritus of history at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, argues that moral decline in America is a very serious reality.
