By Gail Binkly

It has become fashionable among conservatives of late to blame every ill that has befallen our society in the past few decades — from high divorce rates to offensive rap lyrics to President Clinton’s af-fair with Monica Lew-insky — on the 1960s. Any time a woman gets pregnant out of wedlock, someone is mugged, or an actor snorts a line of coke, it’s the fault of the ’60s.

For instance, syndicated columnist Brent Bozell recently linked Jerry Garcia and Alan Ginsberg with "the senseless deaths of thousands to the ravages of AIDS," and former drug czar and Secretary of Education William Bennett has marked that decade as the slippery slope that led to what he perceives as our present moral bankruptcy.

But was that fabled era really so wanton and dissolute? Would we truly be better off if the ’60s had never happened, or if they had happened in some other fashion — say, if they had closely resembled the ’50s, the dream decade of the ultra-right?

Between the Chubby Checker "Twist" craze of 1960 and the anti-war march by a quarter-million protesters in Washington, D.C., in November 1969, American society experienced a number of upheavals and metamorphoses. Disturbing and chaotic as they may have been, they were frequently necessary and even overdue.

Consider, for instance, the Sexual Revolution.

Conservatives have long decried the sexual freedom that was wrought by a combination of factors, including the widespread availability of the Pill and the rebelliousness of a generation unwilling to accept their parents’ mores. Say what you will about "immorality," but the Sexual Revolution made it possible for men and women to discuss sex openly; for "good" women to demand sexual satisfaction right along with "bad" girls; and for unwed, pregnant women to have choices other than a shotgun wedding or a back-alley abortion.

It ended the double standard that allowed men to have a fling or three before marriage, while women had to be "pure." It freed people to marry for love and not just because it was the only way they could get regular sex.

Today, people are free to abstain before marriage if they choose, but they don’t have to. Yes, sexually transmitted diseases are a danger. They always have been. But returning to the days when sex was discussed in whispers and ignorance was rampant isn’t the way to prevent HIV, herpes or anything else.

Besides sexual freedom, another "scourge" brought about by the ’60s, as conservatives see it, was drug use. They talk about the "drug culture" of that era as if there were no drug culture ever before.

Yet America was awash in drug use prior to that time. Some 60 percent of adults were nicotine addicts when the Surgeon General issued a warning about cigarette-smoking in 1964. Alcohol abuse was rampant: Three-martini lunches were popular and businessmen often gulped several more drinks at home before dinner. High-strung housewives and keyed-up executives frequently turned to prescription tranquilizers such as Soma and Milltown for a little relief.

Was it so shocking, then, that the next generation chose to experiment with mind-altering substances such as marijuana and LSD that seemed to offer enlightenment rather than stupefaction? Was such drug use inherently more heinous than cigarette-smoking and bourbon-guzzling? Or was it simply that one drug culture was being replaced by another?

Beyond all the lurid talk of sex and drugs, however, the ’60s wrought a number of changes that were clearly good. The decade was a time of great idealism, a time when many Americans, young and old, sincerely believed they could make a difference in the world.

And they did. Among the legacies of the ’60s:

• Great strides in civil rights. Thanks to the dedication of activists such as the three slain in Mississippi in 1964, Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, which banned discrimination in jobs, voting and public places; schools were desegregated; and people of color slowly began to be accepted into society as equals.

• An end to knee-jerk wars. The widespread, bitter protests over the Vietnam War made it forever unfeasible for politicians to entangle the United States in similar military conflicts for such spurious causes as "fighting the Domino Effect."

• Meaningful environmental regulations. No one, not even the most conservative Republican, wishes to return to the time when American rivers were so polluted they could be set on fire and children living next to highways got lead poisoning from breathing the air.

• Feminism. In 1963, Betty Friedan published "The Feminine Mystique"; the women’s liberation movement would come to flower in the ’70s, giving women a whole panoply of options in life they hadn’t had before. It’s a far different matter to stay home and raise children because you want to than because that’s the only choice you’ve been given.

• Greater freedom of dress. The generation that once garbed itself in beads, caftans and bell-bottoms has refused to be crammed into girdles and high-heeled shoes or gray-flannel suits and wingtips.

Sure, the ’60s, like any other period that sparks great change, had its excesses, but on balance, it laid the foundations for much of the social progress that makes many lives much better today.