HOW EXACTLY DID THIS HAPPEN?

A friend of mine whose spouse works for a public school was telling this story to our friends. Now, I may not have all the facts straight, but that doesn't matter because it's the story I thought I heard that got me thinking. I heard her say, "The kids in Andy's class asked him, 'What is free love?'".

My head started to turn around and didn't stop until it was back facing forward again. I realized immediately why teachers are so biased - there is no way I could answer that free of my conservative, Catholic, intelligent bias. My answer would have gone something like this:

"Free love is the thought process that divorces sex from responsibility. It is directly or indirectly the cause of the rampant explosion of STD's, the AIDS "crisis", the 50% divorce rate in this country, porn being the only profit making segment of the internet and 75% of all black children being born out of marriage just for starters."

Aside from my rant and the bad/good it would have done for these kids, a bigger question resides in my mind -

How the H.E. Double-toothpicks did all this happen?

Seriously, how? In 1958, every standard of free love and the "Me" generation would have been scorned and laughed out of the town. By 1968 - only ten years later - it was the accepted norm. How did this happen so quickly? How did hundred's of years worth of good, moral thought get tossed out with the baby water?

I would really like to know. Honestly.