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Says Sol Gordon, director of the Institute for Family Research and Education at Syracuse University: "There's a highly moral trend among college students, influenced by the women's liberation movement. One of young people's primary interests is love—falling in love and getting married. That's a new phenomenon. For the first time in history, more people may be getting married just for love than for other reasons." Donald Johnson, psychologist at the University of Colorado, sees a similar trend. Says he: "The promiscuity concept is dying out like crazy. People are talking about fidelity. It's a revolution against loneliness."
"Why shouldn't we be together—we're very much in love!" says Pamela Hudak, 21, a Boston secretary who has lived for more than a year with Herb Witten, 27. "We're faithful to each other. We never cheat. But I really don't want to get married right now. I want to wait and see where my career goes."
To find what Americans today really think about the very basic but infinitely complex questions of sexual morality, TIME commissioned the firm of Yankelovich, Skelly & White, which regularly conducts TIME's polls of voters' political, social and economic views, to undertake a special survey. Yankelovich interviewers questioned 1,044 registered voters, a group representative of various regions, races, ages and religious groups in proportion to the nationwide figures for those same groups. Thus 14% came From the Pacific Coast states, 10% were between 21 and 24 years old, 34% had only a high school education, 29% were Roman Catholic, 72% were married.
What percent ever tell the whole truth when questioned about various aspects of sex is harder to determine. In any case, the poll did not ask people about their sexual practices, only about what they thought.
One thing most Americans are ready to confess is that while they are talking more openly about sex, they are increasingly confused about the moral values involved. Fully 68% agreed with the statement that "it's a lot better to have more openness about things like sex, homosexuality, premarital and extramarital relations." But 61% felt that "it's getting harder and harder to know what's right and what's wrong these days." Of these people, whom the Yankelovich survey categorized as "morally confused," the highest incidence occurred among those over 50 (65%) and, surprisingly, among those under 25 (66%).
The pollsters asked people to make judgments on a series of actions, deciding whether such actions were morally wrong or not a moral issue. On most issues the answers were stern ones.
Is it morally wrong for a married man to be unfaithful to his wife? Yes, said a solid 76%. Is it morally wrong for a married woman to be unfaithful to her husband? Seventy-nine percent condemned it. (Women are generally more conservative than men on these issues, perhaps be cause, as one woman observed, "they usually have to pay the consequences." They are even as quick to apply the double standard—i.e., like men, women condemned female adultery more than male adultery.) The worst sin of all is when couples exchange partners: 81% of everyone questioned condemned it.