I've been having a nagging loneliness lately—the kind that, if I'm not vigilant, can devolve into open self-deprecation and self-pity. So I've done a few things to get my mind off it (cue French horns; we are now reverting to point-form):

• Thanked God for saving me from real loneliness.


• Made plans to have dinner this week with my good pals Kittybeat and Michael Lynch to discuss the next installment of our POP GEAR! dance night at Rififi (Dec. 13).


• Bought a pair of the sexy knee-high black leather boots I've wanted for years—and, since they were half-off, bought a second pair too.


• Signed my name to the "Stop Abercrombie & Fitch" online petition.

Since when did I ever desire to waste any brain cells on Abercrombie & Fitch? Since when did I ever allow myself to pronounce the name of that preppy bastion? Since when could I ever conceive of why anyone would see some shapeless gray sweater in its window and think, "My life will be enhanced if only I spend $150 on this item"? When God delivered me from the copy desk of Women's Wear Daily, I thought that Abercrombie & Fitch could be safely relegated to my mental graveyard along with Federated Department Stores, Tom Ford, Pillowtex, "earnings before interest, tax, dividends, and appreciation," and Suzy.

That changed the other day when I heard WMCA "Good Guy" Kevin McCullough exhort listeners to read his WorldNetDaily editorial and join the "Stop Abercrombie & Fitch" campaign. The campaign is in protest of the chain's new Christmas "magalog," which follows its path of recent years by including several dozen photos of partially or totally nude teens and youths. Teens on teens, gay, straight, every which way, naked as jaybirds. Marketed to teens (though supposedly only for those 18 and over), the magalog boasts on its cover of "Group Sex" and includes articles advising teens entering college to have as many sexual partners as possible—and that's the mildest of its many sex tips. McCullough's call to action sounded like just another boycott, but I was curious enough to visit the Web sites he mentioned.

Notice I wrote, "just another boycott." Fundamentalists like the Rev. Donald Wildmon have been trying to clean up pop culture for years, and, like most people, I ignore them. I believe in free speech—short of shouting "theater" in a crowded fire—and I generally think it's useless to try to stem the flood of immoral trash that overwhelms our airwaves, theaters, TVs, computers, bookstores, and newsstands. Moreover, there are gems in that trash—even Playboy had a good interview with John Lennon once—and self-appointed censors aren't known for their grasp of nuance. I'm old enough to remember how Randy Newman was hung out to dry for "Short People."

With that in mind, I viewed the "Stop Abercrombie & Fitch" Web site with suspicion. However, I was soon won over—not just by the campaign's techniques, which eschew Wildmonesque intimidation in favor of a grass-roots petition initiative, but by two words in the petition: "moral relativism." It said, "With over 50 pictures featuring nude or partially nude youth models and a clear message that sexual immorality must be embraced to be cool, A&F has clearly become one of our culture’s most aggressive promoters of sexual hedonism and moral relativism to America’s youth."

My first reaction was laughter. It's quixotic enough to think that one can stop pornography with a petition. How can one even presume to stop moral relativism, which is the religion of our age? Just the idea of telling people that a catalogue promotes moral relativism is like telling a cigarette manufacturer that their products cause global warming. They probably do, but the causal relationship, and the drop-in-bucket effect if the offending action were stopped, seems too minor to contemplate.

But when I thought about it, I realized that the The National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families, which sponsors the "Stop Abercrombie & Fitch" campaign, had the right idea. We should unmask moral relativism as the real agenda behind this particularly heinous kind of advertising. We should refuse to pay obeisance to the god of our age. And we should give teenagers the message that they deserve to be loved for who they are inside, and they should save their love for someone who will treat them as more than just a body to be used and discarded.

In a letter notifying Abercrombie & Fitch of the petition campaign, National Coalition president Rick Schatz writes, "You diminish the values of many of the catalog’s readers with a philosophy that says personal restraint is a hindrance to happiness."