One day I put on dark glasses and a hat and pasted on long sideburns, and I went to some of these stores in New York. I had thought that Sweden was bad, but Sweden hasn't gone near to the depths of various sex deviations and obsessions that we have gone. I suppose there are sections of this country that have sunk as low as anything in history, because in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah and Pompeii and Rome they didn't have the presses or the motion pictures to stimulate all of this.
Dangers of Censorship
No nation in history has ever been able to go in this direction and survive very long. I think that the greatest threat to our democracy is moral decadence. And I do not think it represents the majority of the American people. I know many of the members of the Supreme Court, and I don't think they ever meant that their rulings would bring about this avalanche of filth and dirt that is greater than anything in the history of the world. And I think that the Supreme Court is going to have to go back and study this situation and clarify their position. I think censorship is a very dangerous thing. But I think we should have some rules where we draw the line on obscenity.
God never meant that people were to wear clothes. He meant we were to be nude. But we were in a state of innocence. Then sin came into the human race and became a blood poisoning. The first thing that Adam and Eve did after their rebellion against God was to see themselves naked, and they were ashamed, and they sewed fig leaves and clothed themselves. The whole Biblical teaching since then is that people are to dress in modesty. Now that doesn't mean that girls are to wear their dresses down to their ankles. Certainly a woman should never disguise the fact that she is a woman. A woman's body is very beautiful. But this emphasis on nudity, which stimulates sensuality—this is what is going to destroy any society.
Dangers of Sexuality
It's interesting to me that in the Soviet Union, Cuba and China, they're trying to build a strong society, a revolutionary society that they hope will ultimately conquer the world. But they don't allow this kind of sexuality. They came to the conclusion that this is a destructive force. I don't think the function of the playwright, the author, the artist, is to reflect what's going on, any more than I should reflect what's going on. I think their function ought to be to lead, to direct.
When I was 17, 18, 19, 20, I was interested in sex—and if I had had all of this thrown at me at that time, I don't know whether or not I could have withstood it. I think about my own sons and my own daughters, and I'm sure that many parents are concerned about what their children are exposed to. Human nature is so built that it cannot resist these temptations when they are thrown from every angle.