When it became known earlier this year that the Rev. Jesse Jackson had fathered a child out of wedlock, there was commentary on who may or may not be fit to criticize Jackson’s moral indiscretion. But that should not be the issue. The reality is that sexual mis­conduct on the part of adults who should “know better” is tearing apart the social fabric of our soci­ety, from teen-age pregnancy to abortion from child abuse and poverty to domestic abuse and overburdened court systems. There are plenty of examples of men and women from the ideological left and right who have been caught in illicit sexual affairs over the last several years.

For every Newt Gingrich, there is a Bill Clinton; for every Jimmy Swaggert, there is a Jesse Jackson. What the Des Moines Register  Newspaper’s editorial writer Lovell Beaulieu wrote in his article, “The Angels Don’t Just Touch the Few Who Believe They May Judge,”  ignores the impact of these revelations on young people in America. Like most other liberal apologists this viewpoint tolerates ever more serious de­grees of sexual misconduct by its politicians, athletes, entertainers and cultural manipulators (mass media).

Nowhere has this trend been more destructive than in the African American community, where, as of 2000, fully 70 percent of all black children since 1996 were born out of wedlock. In some inner-city communities, the figure is a staggering 85 percent. While these numbers do not re­flect the number of couples who marry after the birth of the child, the African American divorce rate stands at 62 percent, a figure well in excess of the national average (55 percent) for racial groups.
Compounding this alarming state of affairs is the fact that since 1998, black Americans have led the nation in the rate of new AIDS cases.

Sadly, few black leaders are addressing these horrendous statistics, which are reflected in declining standardized test scores for many low-income black youths, and rates of criminal incarceration for black juveniles and adults.
At the end of 2000, fully 60 per­cent of all federal, state, county and municipal prison and jail inmates are African American.
This state of affairs is particu­larly troublesome considering the black incarceration rate increased from 40 to 45 percent in the 12 years of Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, then jumped 15 percentage points under President Bill Clinton during his “war on drugs.”

The breakdown of many minor­ity families and communities dur­ing this undeclared war has warped the image of manhood and wom­anhood for all too many children, black, white, brown and red, who only have to turn on top-40 radio or network television to be barraged by every sort of sexual deviance, profanity and gratuitous violence. Stable, loving families are not the end product of young men social­ized to view all women as “hootchie mamas” or “ho’s,” nor young women who view their bodies as exchange capital for “playas with full-grown pockets” (among other things).

Adults in America are fueling this moral myopia by failing to lead by example, or establish and en­force moral codes of conduct, while making millions in profits force ­feeding the garbage that passes for entertainment and popular music to impressionable young people. Human sexuality has become a means of exchange between consenting strangers, rather than a God-given gift to be shared by husband and wife.

Inevitably, children, usually un­planned, become the most vulner­able victims of this game of sexual Russian roulette.
Promiscuity, drug and alcohol addictions, mental instability, poverty and sexually transmitted diseases contribute to set the stage for an unending series of human tragedies, from beaten or murdered paramours to crack cocaine, methamphetamine and alcohol­ addicted babies.