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Sir: Once again, a TIME cover story has cast a searchlight of brilliant but not garish illumination and in near-perfect focus on probably the most murky and chaotic sector of contemporary life. "Sex in the U.S." is one of your best on morals and religion. From continuous and fairly intimate association with three successive "younger generations," I would not alter or add a syllable to its exposure.
What American morals most need is not rules or a code, old or new, but a norm: the "ideal" (if the word be permitted) development and experience of sex for normal men and women. A norm cannot be legislated or regulated, but only illustrated. The only effective persuasion for Christian, or any other, conviction on sex and marriage is demonstration, in the most literal sense incarnation.
For those who have been fortunate enough to bypass the morasses and escape the miasmas of contemporary experiment and its rationalization, this is wholly convincing.
HENRY P. VAN DUSEN Union Theological Seminary New York City