So many storylines that went into the NFL championship game last night: from two brothers coaching against each other to a first year starting quarterback versus one who has been dogged by skeptics of his ability to win 'the big one,' to the 'gay bowl' (a Ravens player wanting to use his platform to advance gay marriage versus a 49ers player who doesn't think homosexual practicing men would be very welcome in an NFL locker room).

But even though the game turned out to be a good one, it's hard to say that anything should have drawn more attention than the skank-fest at halftime.  Regardless of whether I'm accused of sounding like a prude, I'm a father of two little girls now, and the perspective that brings makes me not giving a flying flip about being called as much.

What's amazing to me is that Beyonce was just featured in an interview with GQ Magazine (where she appeared half naked on the cover) in which she complained that men got to define what "sexy" is, going on a female empowerment kick that was as fake as it was obnoxious.  Call her Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan with no clothes.  Sorry, but getting naked for a men's mag in order to gain attention doesn't lend itself to a platform for advancing the higher, purer ideals of femininity.

And based on last night's disgusting display of overt sexuality masking itself as some form of entertainment, anyone who would look to Beyonce Knowles Z (I'm assuming that's her last name since she married Jay-Z) for tips on femininity should have her head examined. It makes me wonder if Beyonce's biggest fans, Barack and Michelle Obama, invited the First Daughters in to watch the exhibition?  I wonder if they were impressed.  Is that the kind of behavior they want to see their daughters perform for money?  "Hey Sasha, hey Malia, come watch Auntie Bey do a nationally televised version of Kitty McPeppermint's routine at the local Hip Hugger.  That could be you someday!"

You can issue the standard, "If you don't like it, you can turn off your TV" comment.  And while that's true (I personally chose to leave the room with my girls while my wife continued to watch the male peep show), honesty requires us to acknowledge that Beyonce is but one performer in this unending assault of cultural decadence.  Apart from living in a cave, you can't avoid it.  Shoot, even the Amish get bombarded with it when they go through the grocery store check-out aisle peppered with soft core pornographic magazine covers and headlines screaming out who the latest Bachelorette banged on national television.

And does all this depravity have an effect?  You bet it does.  Contrary to what the cultural elites will tell you, the proliferation of pornography in our country is not a celebration of free speech.  And the peddling of adult entertainment to the masses is not entertainment, nor is it anything remotely close to being "adult."  It's a surrender to the most infantile and juvenile lusts and urges of our depraved nature.  It's licentiousness - the abuse of liberty. 

The embrace and promotion of such evil by the left is yet another example of their antipathy for our founding values.  It was George Washington himself who urged Congress in his First Annual Address to encourage the people, "to discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness -- cherishing the first, avoiding the last."  Last night was another demonstration that American society has inverted that Washingtonian principle.

The Proverbs tell us, "Like a gold ring in a pig's snout is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion." 

Frankly when it comes to Beyonce, I've never found her freakish gyrations and on-stage epileptic seizures all that attractive.  Call me crazy, but full body dry heaves don't turn me on.  But somehow, some way, she has become this generation's icon of sex appeal.  Which means that a new generation of young American girls don't see the pig's snout when they watch the Super Bowl halftime show.  Devastatingly, they see what our culture defines as beauty.

Beyonce wasn't portraying beauty last night.  She was portraying a woman with no discretion who feels she must degrade her body in order to gain fame, money and the attention of unprincipled men.  Call me a prude for thinking that my little girls can aspire to more than that, and that our society is stronger when women aren't inspired to let men objectify them for their exposed body parts.  But watching the perverse celebration of decadence last night, I realized that this is more than just a country that's at stake.  It's the condition of our very souls.

Peter is a public high school government teacher and radio talk show host in central Indiana. Email peter@peterheck.com, visit www.peterheck.com, or like him on Facebook. 

first published 2/4/13 13:48, bumped to 2/5/13  02:00