“Self-control!” Repeated Tom incredulously. “I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. Well, if that’s the idea you can count me out. . . . Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.”
Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization.
Before they blamed the “breakdown of the family” on gay people, they used to blame it on interracial marriage. Of course the character quoted–Tom Buchanan–was running around cheating on his wife, but only breaks out this diatribe when his wife is in love with someone else. Fitzgerald called out this hypocrisy in 1925, and we’re still having it stuck down our throats 81 years later.