'I think it's perfectly possible to become the sort of man who can have female friends . . .'

". . . I just don't think it's desirable," says my friend Helen Rittelmeyer, with implications I am not going to think about right now. She's making the case against coed dorms, which her alma mater Yale may soon adopt.

Yale only went coed about 40 years ago, and I think it was a bad decision. In fact, I am prepared to make the case against coeducation at any level, on the premise that boys and girls are different and that it is an absurdity to pretend otherwise.

As for the case against coed dorms: What sort of sadistic spoilsport would deprive a young man of the after-visiting-hours frisson of sneaking into a girl's dorm, or sneaking a girl into his dorm? Part of the fun of being a bad boy is the feeling that you're getting away with something.

This coed dorm stuff is closely related to another baleful trend of our era, the destigmatization of fornication. If you're going to sin, do you really want to forfeit the hot, steamy thrill of knowing it's a sin? Millions of American youth are fornicating their way to hell without any of the old-fashioned sense of wicked depravity that's really the only fun in the matter.

The vogue of adult nonjudgmentalism has deprived young people of the sense of evil joy that once accompanied carnal corruption. So instead they become mass murderers . . .