In a recent column (April 22) lamenting the damages of the sexual revolution, including the consequences of easy divorce, Cal Thomas quoted a song by the Everly Brothers, a rock ‘n’ roll duo of yesteryear. Extolling the kind of love Thomas extols, the lyrics say that exclusive devotion between two people leading to marriage is best.

Reality check: Phil Everly divorced three times; brother Don, twice. Peddling the pallid tunes of Lawrence Welk, who never divorced, would be more Thomas’ speed.

Though he didn’t refer to it, evangelicalism, with its ever-urgent mandate to Christianize the world, is really Thomas’ frame of reference here; and part of that mandate definitely demands opposing the sexual revolution. I wonder, though, how far he would be willing to go in protesting it — as far as censuring contraception?

In reading his column, I was reminded of an encyclical published by Pope Paul VI in 1968 titled “On Human Life.” Part of that document speaks of the exact things Thomas decries — marital infidelity, the objectifying of women, and divorce — in the Catholic mind, all too frequent consequences of the use of artificial contraception by fertile couples.

Though an agnostic-atheist, I think the pope’s logic is sound: exclude the procreative dimension from the sexual act and pleasure becomes the sole motivating factor. Still, there is about as much chance of a large-scale reconversion to an anti-contraceptive mentality in today’s world as there is of igniting interest in big tent revivalism and the tunes of Lawrence Welk.

William LaRochelle, Lewiston