In all our apprehension about the marauding mob at State Fair last week and the developing pattern, we need to address what I believe is a major cause of this uncivilized chaos. Permit me to summarize it with three words: sex without marriage.

Milwaukee has long been notorious for its high teen pregnancy rate, especially in our inner city. This has far more than economic consequences. Most of these children are raised by single mothers. And while many of these mothers struggle valiantly to overcome the odds against them in raising decent, productive children, there are too many others who seem to have no clue how to do so - often because they were raised in that same environment.

Irresponsible sperm donors and females who have sex with males who they know will never play a husband's or father's role - this is a sure recipe for social decay and chaos. How many members of the mobs undermining our local civilization come from such a background?

WTMJ-AM (620) host James T. Harris phoned in to Charlie Sykes' radio program the morning after the State Fair incidents and emphasized, "It's the culture." Can we agree on that and address that issue?

I know an inner city pastor who repeatedly gave sermons addressing sexual immorality, since he recognized that this was a huge cause, if not the main cause, of the serious problems plaguing these neighborhoods and their people.

What are we to expect when we have teens who are the third and fourth generation of kids raised apart from an intact family? What are we to expect when the basic moral foundations are absent from what passes for families in so many "homes"? Marauding mobs are all too predictable.

Thumbing our noses at God's restriction of sex to marriage will reap an awful harvest. Our reaping days have arrived in Milwaukee. What will be our response?

Will community leaders and pastors directly, aggressively and persistently address this matter? Will parents admit, individually and collectively, that this cannot continue and consistently do all in their power to ensure that? Will news organizations join in this battle?

After all, this is not just an inner city issue. Our entire society has long been proclaiming and promoting "sexual freedom" and has predictably become imprisoned by its dreadful consequences: divorce, sexually transmitted diseases, ballooning welfare costs, educational and employment woes and the destruction of the family - the God-designed building block of any society.

Now our president belligerently and illegally refuses to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act. And homosexual unions are accepted, acclaimed and legally declared to be "marriage."

"Do not be deceived; God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows," God tells us in the Bible (Galatians 6:7). Fortunately, he is also a forgiving God. Pursuing his Gospel and then living by his law are our only hope.

Jonathan Rupprecht of Milwaukee is a church administrator. Email jhr12447@aol.com