Our society today is in the midst of confronting the problem of sexual immorality. All across our land, schools. churches and health care organizations are arming themselves with flashy pamphlets, strong words, and broken-hearted stories, all in an effort to wage this sexual war. And when these arsenals begin to lose their affect, we turn to our government to institute rules and laws that will force individuals to be more sexually responsible. Yet, the problems of a sexually decadent society are not limited to just modern day America. This same problem can be found in 17th century Vienna as revealed in Shakespeare's play "Measure for Measure." In both the play and our society today, the problems of trying to mandate sexual morality continue to be a difficult feat.

From the very beginning of Shakespeare's play we are confronted with the problem of how to resolve the sexual decadence that has come to envelop Vienna. Although the citizens would no doubt be made aware of their sexual sins by the church (if they attended), it is obvious by this point that no one is listening anymore. Therefore the solution, as seen by the ruling Duke, is to bring in a Deputy who will enforce sexual morality. Unfortunately, this solution proves to be worst than the problem, as the Deputy chosen for the task is a self righteous hypocrite and in the end the Viennese society as a whole is still left in its same morally decadent state.

In a like manner, some in our society today have begun to push for sexually moral legislation. Convinced that the masses will never really be persuaded by the plethora of paper work this information age has to offer, they believe that the only way to curve sexually irresponsible behavior is to mandate it by law. However, what they fail to realize is that just like in 17th century Vienna, the same problems still exists with trying to force these types of laws on the masses. We, like the Duke, try to appoint good moral leaders whom we believe will aid in moralizing our society's' sexuality, yet we increasing find ourselves ending up with leaders accused of infidelity and other types of sexually immoral behavior themselves. And as we have recently seen in the mass media, we now live in a society where even the chief executive officer himself stands accused of sexually irresponsible behavior. To believe that these same leaders could possibly be able to enforce any kind of sexual morality would be simply ludicrous, and in the end their hypocrisy would only add to the problem in our society.

The problem of dealing with a sexually decadent society is one that presents as much of a challenge to us today as it did to 17th century Vienna. However, trying to forcibly change peoples sexual behavior through the law has not, and probably never will be a viable solution. What we really need to do is change peoples entire thinking about sexuality. It is only when people see their sexuality as a precious gift and not just a horny impulse that they will begin to amend their own behaviors and respect their bodies. The law may be able to temporarily enforce rules, but for real changes to take place one must appeal to the heart and mind of an individual, two places that are beyond the reach of legislation.