According to a report by the Institute of Economic Affairs in Britain, it does. Newspaper coverage in The Independent showed that "the freedom of young men to engage in sexual intercourse without being powerfully restrained by the pressure to become monogamous husbands or fathers is closely linked to crime."

A similar article in The Observer reluctantly agreed that "it is ludicrous to deny the relationship between fatherlessness and crime. The areas of high unemployment, highest lone parenthood and worst crime are coterminous."

The report's author, Norman Dennis, maintained that cultural mechanisms that once sent messages of "responsibility, striving, self-help and self-improvement" to the next generation have broken down.

American historians Will and Ariel Durant understood this principle well. "A youth boiling with hormones will wonder why he should not give full freedom to his sexual desires," they wrote; "and if he is unchecked by custom, morals or laws, he may ruin his life before he matures sufficiently to understand that sex is a river of fire that must be banked and cooled by a hundred restraints if it is not to consume in chaos both the individual and the group."

Undeniable, yet often overlooked, is the relationship between the biblical commandments against promiscuity in thought, word and deed and those forbidding the crimes of stealing and murder. The apostle James noted this connection: "For whosoever shall keep the whole law and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all" (James 4:10).

The adulterer steals affection that belongs to another. The news and entertainment media regularly bear out that sexual promiscuity can lead even to murder. Both Old and New Testaments command us to love our neighbor by refraining from these illicit acts that enslave and to diligently teach our children to follow this royal law of liberty (verse 12). (Sources: The Independent; The Observer; Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1968, pp. 35-36.)