1965 to 1975: The Free (Filthy) Speech Decade

I was at my daughter’s sports event the other day and found myself standing next to a lady I had not seen in years. We exchanged pleasant conversation, which on her part was laced with vulgar words. She knows what I do for living but it does not seem to faze her. I mentioned to my wife later that I remembered why I did not like being around this person. She said, “Rich you need to get in the real world, everyone uses words like that.” She went on the educate me that it is considered normal and acceptable even in well-educated parts of society. Really?

When we say that America has transitioned to a Post Christian culture I know that many of you are thinking, “Let’s not return to the good old days of the 1950s and blatant racism, sexism and a host of other ugly cultural problems.” With that I totally agree. But we all would like to see America return to a culture of “civil discourse.”

I was a college student in the 70’s. They were crazy times for me, we rioted against the War, we took anything that someone called a drug and our morals were…let’s just say missing. I had grown up in the county just outside Denver in the 50’s and 60’s. I heard plenty of cursing growing up, including the F word, but to be honest it was restricted to locker rooms, same sex conversation and other “acceptable” places.

The Mainstreaming of Vulgar Speech

By the mid sixties I was hearing the F word being mainstreamed into the culture primarily through the universities and movies. In the 1960s there was a shock value to spouting vulgarities in places that were virgin territory for filthy speech. My friend Frank Tillapaugh went to Long Beach State. At Long Beach State they had a new “progressive” educational devise, a Free Speech Area. Like the Greek City States or the “Speakers’ Corner” in London’s Hyde Park people could express themselves freely in the Free Speech Area. But unlike those other free speech areas the specialty of his Free Speech Area was vulgarity. Regardless of the speaker’s topic his or her oratory was likely to be laced with the most vulgar profanities possible.

From the campus Free Speech Areas profanities quickly became the norm in the classrooms. Frank remembers sitting next to a Nun in a Modern Literature Class. They were the only two who didn’t freely express vulgarities at every opportunity. The teacher got a kick out having one of them read passages aloud that contained a litany of other vulgarities. They were pitied because they were perceived as “really up tight” while everyone else had been liberated by profanity without limits.

I am convinced that my neighbor only curses in front of me, and he take’s great delight in saying the F word over and over. I know he thinks I am uptight; my guess is this lady at my daughter’s school event definitely thinks I am uptight and maybe my wife is right I should get over it. But you know what I hate it. So let me ask you a question:
What was the more telling signal that the culture had become Post-Christian: (1) the launching of Playboy magazine (public pornography) or (2) the Free (filthy) Speech decade, of 1965 to 1975, (public vulgarity)?