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And why should people move to San Francisco to kill themselves? In this incredibly attractive and civilized city, where —according to a recent Gallup poll—a majority of Americans would most like to live, suicide is the seventh commonest cause of death (28.2 per 100,000 people). In the U.S. as a whole, suicide ranks 11th (10.7 per 100,000). Alcoholism is another blotch on the winsome face of San Francisco. The experts admit that they cannot measure it accurately, although the most reliable indicator is found in the number of deaths from cirrhosis of the liver. This disease ranks tenth among killers in the U.S., sixth in California —and fourth in San Francisco.
Californians as a whole have the most improbable marriages in America. One of every two weddings ends in divorce —and the rate is climbing faster than the population increase: 34,632 in 1950 to 44,045 in 1960. In San Francisco health authorities estimate the homosexual population at 75,000—or 15% of the city's sexually potent inhabitants. Highly organized, mindless swinging-couples groups also flourish in the cities. In their hunger for kicks, wife swappers go to extraordinary lengths: one swingers' club in Los Angeles flashes pictures of available couples on a screen; another, in San Francisco, issues membership buttons and bumper stickers.
Thanks in part to the proximity of the Mexican border, the continent's best-stocked marketplace for narcotics, drug addiction is widespread. The incidence of venereal disease is increasing. From 1964 to 1968, the number of diagnosed cases of syphilis and gonorrhea rose 165%. At the University of California's Berkeley campus the gonorrhea rate in 1963-64 was 0.54 per 1,000 students, and the rate of contagion was 13 boys to 1 girl. In the past school year, the rate was 8.1 cases per 1,000 and the ratio—thanks to the Pill —was roughly 13 boys to 9 girls.
Many Californians assume a philosophical detachment toward such statistics. Behaviorist Richard Farson claims that the statistical evidence is actually a proof of Californians' good emotional health. For example: "Our divorce rate shows that we have a higher expectation of marriage out here than anybody else. We have a lot of things here that remind us of what our marriages are and what they might be." Similarly, some observers argue that the suicide rate is higher in San Francisco because people kill themselves most frequently in the most attractive environments. That may explain self-destruction in San Francisco, but the parallel stops there. Hungary and Finland have the highest suicide rates in the world, but few would classify either as Cockaigne. At any rate, millions of Californians reject the slightly desperate optimism that seeks to find hope in death and disorder, and view all this as evidence of a general decline in the American character.