Time is running out....

When I was young, there were more sins than there are now. That's just how it was.

In our house, it was clearly a sin to play cards with "playing cards" - their kings and queens and (gasp!) jokers representing some sort of minions of the dark prince. Mere possession of these 52 tickets of carnality was enough to put you on the slippy slide to hell via the state penitentiary.

Movies, too, were verboten. Disney flicks like 101 Dalmatians were not sins per se, but they were made in Hollywood, California - the veritable ground zero of licentiousness - and therefore those lovable bespotted puppies were damned by association.

Such benign flicks were also aired in movie theaters where pornos like Dr. Zhivago were screened. Given the depravity of the owners of the backslidden bijous, they were apt to switch projectors and show open-mouth kissing when Snow White was on the marquee. The summer that my sister was obsessed with getting to see Grease at the drive-in was a summer of unprecendented spiritual brouhaha in my house.

At some point, however, the statute of limitations ran out and these things ceased to be among the seven deadlies. Family foursomes of the Hasbro game Rook were replaced with euchre without explanation. My aunt took us to the drive-in to see Song of the South and That Darn Cat. The sin had simply expired.

Before long, there was mixed bathing (also known as passes to the public pool) and the words "crap" and "dangit" peppered my father's conversation. I got a small black and white TV for my bedroom and watched Soap, a scandalous sit-com (with one of TV's first gay characters). Of course, I kept the volume practically inaudible just to avoid confrontation.

I have to wonder if some of the heart-burning transgressions that are on the current roster of mortals and venials will also suffer the same unceremonious discharges that allowed Walt Disney and the Queen of Spades their shock parole. Will the same goofy gusses that break into hives at the idea of queerness not even raise an eyebrow in a decade or so? Of course that will happen. Of course it will seem like way too long in coming. But come it will. Their time is running out.