On Being Normal

America's First Ladies have, with a few exceptions, made it their business to be ornamental and decorously vague in their public utterances. The quiet, rather private Betty Ford may seem an unlikely candidate to break that tradition, although she has in the past stated some very definite opinions. But last week, after a television interview, newspaper columnists, Baptist divines and Republican elders were earnestly debating Mrs. Ford's ideas about sex and morality.

Mrs. Ford talked with a level candor on CBS-TV's 60 Minutes. A strong advocate of equal rights for women, she repeated her beliefs about abortion--the Supreme Court's decision legalizing it, she said, was "a great, great decision." When Correspondent Morley Safer asked her about marijuana, Mrs. Ford said that she assumed her four children had sampled it and that she probably would have tried it herself when she was young: "It's the type of thing that the young people have to experience, like your first beer or your first cigarette." As for her husband, the imperturbable Mrs. Ford observed that "he still enjoys a pretty girl, [but] he really doesn't have time for outside entertainment because I keep him busy."

It was only when Safer led her into a discussion of premarital sex that some viewers' moral blood pressure really rose. Asked what her attitude would be if her 18-year-old daughter Susan confided that she was having an affair, Betty Ford replied: "Well, I wouldn't be surprised. I think she's a perfectly normal human being like all young girls. If she wanted to continue, I would certainly counsel and advise her on the subject. And I'd want to know pretty much about the young man ... whether it was a worthwhile encounter ... She's pretty young to start affairs, [but] she's a big girl."

Too Honest. Mrs. Ford's forthrightness immediately stirred up a summer storm of old-fashioned indignation. Dr. W.A. Criswell, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, the largest Southern Baptist congregation, declared himself "aghast" and added: "I cannot think that the First Lady of this land would descend to such a gutter type of mentality." Mormon Elder Gordon B. Hinckley called a press conference to support "chastity before marriage and fidelity after marriage." New York's Governor Hugh Carey, a Roman Catholic with twelve children, unctuously observed: "I guess I believe, in the words that Frankie [Sinatra] sings, 'Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage.' "

Jesuit Priest Donald Campion, editor in chief of America magazine, put the emphasis on the publicity involved: "If she did err it was in the area of taste, not morality." But many of those who support Mrs. Ford's views also backed her televised advocacy of them. AT LAST, A REAL FIRST LADY! exclaimed one telegram to the White House, where mail was running about evenly for and against Mrs. Ford's opinions. Added Washington Post Television Columnist Sander Vanocur: "Betty Ford should be banned from television. She is too honest. Mrs. Ford wears her defect like diamonds. And they dazzle."

Mrs. Ford herself took the whole controversy with equanimity as she vacationed in Vail, Colo. Her only regret seemed to be the fact that too many people thought she was advocating premarital sex, rather than simply expressing a realistic, motherly attitude toward the possibility of it. "Our family," she added, "was brought up on the fact that marriage is the greatest thing in the world." As for the person most directly involved in the uproar, Susan Ford said that her mother "did a good job, talked about things people should talk about." She was more reticent about her current boy friend, Brian McCartney, a ski patrolman from Northbrook, Ill. When asked if she had anything to tell her mother, she replied: "Not yet. I'll leave it at that."

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