Speaking of stories without children, I was struck by the fact that New York's fairly rote meditation on whether men should feel okay about committing adultery (blah blah Europeans are more sophisticated, blah blah evolutionary psychology, blah blah polyamory, blah blah porn) contained exactly three references to the fact that marriages often involve, you know, kids as well as spouses. There was one quote suggesting that women should put up with adultery because it's better for the children than divorce; one line noting that "recent analyses of genetic databases reveal that fully 10 percent of people have different biological fathers from the men they name as their fathers"; and one line mentioning "Congressmen Vito Fossella and his two families." Two families - why, it's almost as if the link between sex and children might be an important factor in the whole "why be faithful" debate ...
« Revisiting Children of Men | Main | 1976 All Over Again? » Don't Think of the Children20 May 2008 12:55 pm Comments (93)
I really wanted that piece to be good, interesting, or thought-provoking. And it was none of the above. The lack of discussion of children is an interesting feature I hadn't noticed. My major problem with it was that it felt as though 60% of the story was about the navel gazing of the author and his five closest friends. If, as I suspect, none of those people have children, that may explain the deficiency you're citing. I'd be interested to see data about if having kids makes couples think less about infidelity, more willing to "absorb" infidelity, etc. It seems like a sensible hypothesis to me. 
I pity Fossella's kids more for having a warmongering torture-loving Bushpig for a father than I do for the fact that they now have another sibling. But Ross, of course, is entitled to his genital-based version of morality.
Seems like a great hypothesis. With Children you not only have more to lose, you live in a reality where you have less time to ponder, get involved or even fantasize about any benefit of it (i.e. as a responsible father I find it reality that there is less time, energy, etc. one focuses (or even has to focus) on these things). I find these types of articles pathetic excuses for backdoor arguing toward the reality one wants in their life - its simple rationalization I believe. At a basic level you make choices and good people should accept the responsibility of those choices -- the full responsibility, whether its easy or not. You get married and have kids you should have by those acts chosen to be faithful for the benefit of the children. In fact, by getting married (even without the kids), you make choices to dedicate your life to the other person and not cheat on them because it makes you feel good. My point is this - It should be simple, if you are too weak to live up to these promises DO NOT MAKE THE PROMISES -- no matter what the benefit...security, whatever. Dont try to redefine your choice, argue that it is unnatural and therefore too difficult for you or try to take comfort and persuade yourself that others are doing it or thinking hard about it so it may just be allright. You are not being responsible for your given choices, no matter how many Euopeans, politicians, neighbors may be in the same "to weak to live up to my responsibilities" boat. And to think we wonder how fundamentalist thought gains any traction.
The “don’t think about the children” observation is hardly a one off. The inability to even enter the most vulnerable and impressionable among us into the dialogue is a hall mark of the cultural left. Be it illegitimacy, abortion, divorce, same-sex “marriage”, pornography, polyamory or any issue even tangentially related to the unrestrained adult libido – children are not simply “forgotten”: No, their interests and adult responsibility toward them must be eliminated from the debate. (And so they have been) http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8569.html This work only scratches the surface of how thoroughly the cultural left has eliminated any discussion of children’s interests from our public debate.
Heh. People who "choose" to not have children or even get married perpetually cite the lack of options that having children inflict upon them. Having children is a one way trip, and often adultery is the attempt to reroute the train, so to speak. It almost always fails, and inevitably hurts the children more than it helps the adulterer. Much like divorce, it’s a selfish moment which keeps on giving and giving pain to all concerned.
Excellent point, Ross. Say, where does John McCain stand on this very important issue?
People who try to use Darwinism to prove that we aren't "intended" to do any particular thing really, really don't understand evolution.
Fitz says: "This work only scratches the surface of how thoroughly the cultural left has eliminated any discussion of children’s interests from our public debate." What utter bullshit. The "cultural right" Fitz loves so much fights tooth and nail to preserve the right to beat the holy crap out of kids. It also does whatever it can, whenever it can, to avoid providing hungry kids with food. It's not the "cultural left" that opposes school lunch and breakfast programs - it's the bitter, evil cheapskates that Fitz loves to cuddle with. Finally, it's not the "cultural left" which defends the Catholic Church for covering up an international pedophile conspiracy. It's the Fitzes that do that, and continue to do that. When they say "children's interests" one suspect that they're indeed interested in children, but not in a very healthy way.
"This work only scratches the surface of how thoroughly the cultural left has eliminated any discussion of children’s interests from our public debate." Dear God, Fitz, pray tell us some more news from the Crab Nebula, or wherever it is you're living where there is no discussion of children's interests in the public debate. Here on Planet Earth, one can barely turn around without bumping into Amber Alerts, sex offender registries, standardized testing, FCC fines for indecency, anti-drug PSAs, school lunch nutritional requirements, raids on polygamist compounds, or nutbars campaigning against adoption and parental visitation rights for gays and lesbians.
LaFollette Progressive As Ross observed about the NY article, the conversation about ill-effects on children is scruplously avoided. Almost every example you cite about our "care for children" reflects an incompetent government trying to address problems of failing families and adult responsibility. There are two ways government can provide for children. #1. It can directly create laws, subsidies & regulations protecting them. & #2. It can create laws that protect and promote the intact married family.- the most pro women & pro child institution in society. If you actually took the time to read David Tubbs work & those like it, you would see a forty year campaign to eliminate #2 from our legal & social discourse. The law has routinely supported multiple initiatives that promote the natural family. The “interests of children” has been routinely & ruthlessly ignored as a legitimate state interest by the cultural left. (As a matter of established fact) This of course (as the NY article reiterates) is done in the name of an ideologically blind fetishism for unrestrained sexual license.
One woman is hard enough to keep happy, why try for more?
“nutbars campaigning against adoption and parental visitation rights for gays and lesbians.” I’m not aware of any of us “nutbars” campaigning against parental visitation rights for gays & lesbians- perhaps you can provide a link. If the child is the natural child of a gay or lesbian parent it is very much a part of our worldview to fight for that parents/childs right to know & be known by their actual parent. Perhaps you will elide this by pretending that a non-biological “parent” has legal rights to visitation. This has not been the case with step-parents and presents a tangle of legal problems the courts have avoided. As far as adoption goes, it is well within the law & good social policy to promote placing children with intact married families so these children can have a mother & a father. Re Adoption This last little example of yours seems to be an attempt at portraying your adversaries as unscrupulous & unnecessarily harsh. I believe if you study further you will find that promoting the traditional family is in the best interest of men, women, children & society as a whole.
recent analyses of genetic databases reveal that fully 10 percent of people have different biological fathers from the men they name as their fathers this is about as true as "10 percent of people are homosexual." for upper and middle class americans the true number is closer to 1%.
Dear Fitzy, I understand quite well the point that Ross is making. And while I think Tubbs is a nut and his claims (e.g. liberals have waged a 40-year war against the intact married family) are generally specious, one can certainly make the case that relaxed divorce laws and openly promiscuous behavior are detrimental to the interests of children. What one cannot say, without being completely and utterly dishonest, is that "children's interests" have been "thoroughly eliminated from the public debate." That's laughable. Our politicians and media talk about little else. What really seems to be grinding you is that most Americans don't share your view that it's in the best interest of society to restrict the freedom of childless adults in order to protect your children. As for gay adoption, you're overlooking the crucial point that most of the married couples filing for adoption are not looking for "a child." They're looking for a healthy, white (or possibly Asian) infant. And your numbers would be cold comfort to these children, to give just one example.
LaFollette Progressive I am sure you have dismissed Tubbs as a "nut" without even reading his (or others) extensive documented case record. This is not an area up for interpretation. You have important legal precedent that points to the "interests of children" being overruled by new precedent that make absolutely no reference to the concept of “children’s welfare.” Rather it is passion of the left for adult sexual autonomy that has necessitated a complete abandonment of child welfare arguments. Be it marriage, divorce, pornography or the like we have an established track record of leftist depraved indifference to the interests of children. This is the specific and well documented truth that we point to - Not a spurious and easily asserted "Our politicians and media talk about little else." As I state above it is the #2. “promotion of intact married childbearing” that the left is ideologically incapable of supporting. I am afraid at this point the evidence is clear & irrefutable. Certainly you have been to college and know the worldview of “all family forms are inherently equal”. As much as you would like (politically) to ignore this truth it is too well documented to try and paper over. Re: Adoption: Catholic Charities of Boston had a well established track record of placing some of the most dependent and needy children within married mother/father families. In the name of ideology they were stripped of the ability to promote their mission. The answer for hard to place children is to promote adoption among married couples, especially special needs children. The common troupe that people only want healthy white children is simply another dodge. Presumably if adoption is opened up to same-sex couples they also will not accept special needs children (on the whole) and we will be back in the same position.
How does adultery "harm the children" if there's no divorce involved? If a businessman has a one night stand with a woman he meets at a sales convention 2000 miles from home, or a cop gets a "freebie" from a hooker, or even if a succesful executive in Westchester keeps a mistress in a Manhattan apartment, if the wife doesn't know, or in the latter case maybe doesn't care, how are the children harmed? Of course the conservative family model seems to be that an extramarital affair of any sort is wrong, but it's just fine to divorce your first wife and marry a younger model. And that doesn't harm the kids?
Ross, As someone who cares about how children are affected by infidelity, you can’t help but be frustrated by the article’s omissions; but in a way, the lengthy treatment Weiss provides (not particularly profound IMHO), ironically gives the very issue you regard as so grave a more careful examination than you do. You ought not to let moral indignation crowd out the responsibility to gather data, to listen, if you want to produce an effective analysis of a social issue.
Vanya is touching on the glaring flaw in Ross' post, which is the way it totally begs the question. I'm not saying I even agree with the article, but Ross accuses the author of ignoring harm to children when the article's whole point is that maybe we shouldn't construct our social norms in such a way that adultery is an act with potentially terrible consequences like harm to children.
Despite my libertine leanings, I think Ross makes a perfectly valid point that you can't treat this issue without discussing how the children are affected. I would note, however, that the assumption that the children are automatically better off if the parents stay married and keep their intense desires suppressed, even if they want to have sex with other people, isn't one that I would make. I would also not make the opposite assumption that it's great for the children for the husband to run off with the mistress or marry the trophy wife. It may also be that in some cases, a marriage that permits some extracurricular activity might be best for the children. The point that I think the New York piece gets right and religious conservatives get dead wrong is that this stuff is really complicated. Sex is very important to a very large number of people. And different people have different expectations and different sexual desires. There is a tendency to assume that every person who isn't getting satisfaction from the person that they married or who bore their children is simply in need of therapy to repair their marriage. But that's just an attempt to avoid the deeper, harder truth-- that our traditional arrangements for containing sexuality don't really work all that well for many people. The best approach to take on these issues is to try and create the cultural space where different people can live different lives, while at the same time encouraging people to act responsibly with respect to the children they bring into the world. The religious right and the couples therapy industry are two pretty big obstacles to us ever getting to that point.
"How does adultery "harm the children" if there's no divorce involved? If a businessman has a one night stand with a woman he meets at a sales convention 2000 miles from home, or a cop gets a "freebie" from a hooker, or even if a successful executive in Westchester keeps a mistress in a Manhattan apartment, if the wife doesn't know, or in the latter case maybe doesn't care, how are the children harmed?" This is a very perceptive point. The truth is under the logical positivism of the left one has to "prove" a "discreet & demonstrable harm" to argue against any number of topics from pornography & promiscuity to divorce & family breakdown itself. You do a service by pointing out that (absent divorce) infidelity doesn’t hurt anyone in the way the left always insist that traditionalists prove. The truth of the mater is that adultery in any form, be it prostitution or a kept mistress or serial divorce doesn’t discreetly harm an individual- rather it harms the institution. The institution is properly seen as the socially acceptable domain for sexual activity & child rearing. Any affront to that bond is (and has always been traditionally labeled in the law) a threat to family stability. Of coarse this same argument applies to any deviation of the marital standard from same-sex "marriage" to divorce, to promiscuousness and so forth. The real human truth is that society through both law & culture needs to set high standards for everyone and build the kind of culture that encourages them to meet those standards. Its good to see a thread were the legacy of divorce is finally brought up and assumed to be the social disaster it’s been. However during the height of the "no-fault" divorce revolution a typical troupe dragged out by the libertines was... "How do to people down the block getting a divorce effect YOUR marriage" Well, at that time the divorce rate was below 10%. The "we can have a menu approach" to sexual relations is a utopian fantasy of the left that has failed on multiple fronts. The social constructivist idea is that traditional standards are overly "rigid" & if we could just get past these silly taboo's we would have a world were different people could live different lives while at the same society could secure that they act responsibly with respect to the children. 70% illegitimacy rates among the underclass should have dispelled such fantasies a long time ago. However it was a sexual "revolution" and like all such revolutions it first needs to eat its young.
Look, everbody it's "I've read Freud AND Darwin, so everything is related to the genitals, don't you know" MoeLarryandDumbass, Vanya "If we only defined deviance down, you know made it so that [insert deviant behavior] wasn't against social norms, then there wouldn't be any negative consequences!! Yay!!!", and Dilan "traditional arrangements for containing sexuality don't really work all that well for many people, so let's just do away with them, duh"...Man, brilliant, guys, brilliant. You are a credit to armchair intellectuals all over the Internet.
Bushpig! That might be be funnier than Repiglicans!
Dilan "traditional arrangements for containing sexuality don't really work all that well for many people, so let's just do away with them Philip, if you are going to mock my position, at least state it fairly accurately. You won't see me advocating that we do away with heterosexual marriage. (Gays should also have marriage or a fully equivalent arrangement, because discrimination against gays is a grave evil.) I think there are plenty of good reasons why people should be able to form a stable legal bond with a domestic partner. What I am criticizing is the view that marriage is the only acceptable, appropriate, workable, or moral form of human sexual interaction. So we have to make space for alternatives, because there are other ways to live that work better for some people. In this debate, one side wants to enforce its religious beliefs on nonbelievers and make the heathens conform. The other side thinks marriage is great when it works but wants to make sure there are other models available for people whose sexuality doesn't neatly conform to what the religious right thinks is the only way. Or more simply, one side lives in the realm of fantasy, the other side lives in the realm of reality.
Bushpig! That might be be funnier than Repiglicans! I'm having trouble thinking of analogous terms for the other parties. DemoRats? LiberCanaryans? Damn, I'm bad at this.
So, because the reality is that many humans are weak and depraved (and that works for them!), we should make it socially acceptable for them to cheat on their spouses? Sorry, don't buy it. It's always nice to see secularists abandon any pretext of caring about virtue. But, wait, who am I kidding? Secularists have never given two shits about virtue.
Tom is LITERALLY the only person on this thread who is making any sense.....
So, because the reality is that many humans are weak and depraved (and that works for them!), we should make it socially acceptable for them to cheat on their spouses? Sorry, don't buy it. It's always nice to see secularists abandon any pretext of caring about virtue. But, wait, who am I kidding? Secularists have never given two shits about virtue. Virtue has nothing to do with genitals, Phillip. It's not my fault that you believe that an imaginary being commands us to care about unimportant things more than actually important things. Look, cheating on spouses, defined as betraying them by playing around without tacit or explicit consent, should not be socially acceptable. But again, what your side wants to do is use that as an excuse to deny any social space for ANY relationship other than a traditional heterosexual marriage. There's plenty of middle ground here, but because you want to impose your hallucinations about God on people who aren't required to accept them, you refuse to recognize the reality of varied experiences of sexuality.
Philip Marlowe is a big sheep: "Sorry, don't buy it. It's always nice to see secularists abandon any pretext of caring about virtue. But, wait, who am I kidding? Secularists have never given two shits about virtue." For torture-loving warmongering cretins like you, Philly, "virtue" is a meaningless word. What you really are is a receptacle for the bilge your leaders pump your way on a daily basis, and nothing more. Go suck the pus out of your dittohead, boy. The sexual virtue you morons promote is the last thing you actually care about - it's just a tool you use selectively to bash your enemies. Thus when Newt Gingrich commits adultery you ignore it, as you did when Dumbya's pappy carried on a 20 year affair, and as you're doing with serial adulterer John McCain and his HOMEWRECKING WHORE Cindy. (Note to cretinous wingnuts - I don't CARE that Cindy's a WHORE. I think it's funny and utterly meaningless as it pertains to the fitness of her Bush-sucking senile hubby's pursuit of the White House. But it's the sort of thing you'd convince yourselves was truly important if it applied to a Democratic nominee and spouse, so I'm rubbing your bestial snouts in it.)
But, MOOEEE, you forgot "REPIGLICANS"!!! Hahahaha. Seriously, Moe, please don't ever tell your shrink about your posts on this site. He may up the meds, and then we would all be deprived of the insanity. That was fantastic.
There are competing notions of virtue, not a single consensus standard. Yet certain passionate social conservative commenters who always post on here repeat the contrary narrative, which inhibits much in the way of communication or learning. To cite only one possible conflicting account of the relevant issue, someone who cheats on a spouse in a mutually painful marriage, but is not ready to leave it, but badly feels a need for the solace and connection of the new, perhaps temporary relationship while still working on the marriage, is not necessarily doing the worst thing in the world. It may be a mistake; I would even venture to say that other things being equal, it is a mistake. But we on the outside do not know whether other things are equal. Social trends one may deplore in the aggregate do not always lend themselves to facile judgments about individual cases, not at any rate among those for whom one important constituent of a moral life is a reticence or humility about judging others, grounded in respect for the sovereignty, privacy, complexity, and (to some extent) the unknowability of other human lives.
Ross must be proud he started such an intellectual conversation. Seriously though, good topic Ross. Others. If you seriously thought about what you wrote and your parents didn't have to unlock your computer for you to do it, you would probably wish you could erase it from the public record.
Dilan, ol' boy, I'm just glad you admit that adultery should not be socially acceptable. The fact that you are surprised about this shows one of the great intellectual deficiencies of many devoutly religious people. You guys assume that there's religious morality and then there's moral relativism. In fact, there's plenty of secular morality out there. And when you see us arguing that, for instance, a wife who is no longer interested in sex and authorizes her husband to take a lover can be the correct move for particular circumstances, you assume that this must mean that we have no moral principle at all and that all cheating and adultery is perfectly ethical. In fact, adultery is dishonest. It violates promises made to the spouse that were part of the inducement to form the marriage. Adultery can also lead to the transmission of STD's. It can lead to a child being conceived out of wedlock. It can lead to personal embarassment to one's spouse and children. There's no need to bring organized religion, the Ten Commandments, that Catchecism of the Catholic Church, or the teachings of James Dobson into this to see this. But you see, lots of other sex acts that you claim to be "unvirtuous" involve no dishonesty at all, no likelihood of STD's, no likelihood of pregnancy out of wedlock, and no likelihood of personal embarassment to the spouse and children. You just call them unvirtuous, which translates as "I hallucinated that a nonexistent supernatural being told me that particular uses of one's genitals are wrong". It is perfectly possible to condemn dishonest sex acts and betraying one's partner while permitting a much broader space for consensual activities that fit the lives of particular persons better than the snake oil peddled by organized religions.
In the modern age in America, monogamous sex no longer kills women at the rate it once did. Think of the change: 150 years ago, in the time of Abe and Mary Todd Lincoln: "if half of one's offspring survived adolescence, the couple was blessed. . . . The churchyards were crowded with headstones of women who perished in childbirth. It was terrifying to think that marital sex was often a death sentence; it must have given sensitive men pause."* Technology has now mostly conquered that old problem of death in childbirth, and the attendant evolutionary and socio-psychological effects that might be related. Between birth control on the one hand and better OBGYNs on the other, and with video conferencing and vibrators for long-distance relationships, I'd say we're now the best-equipped for monogamy we've ever been. Quit your zipper problems and be faithful, if that's what you've promised. * - The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage, by Daniel Mark Epstein. Reviewed and quoted in the WSJ, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121124613390205785.html?mod=opinion_journal_books
Dilan writes: "In fact, adultery is dishonest. It violates promises made to the spouse that were part of the inducement to form the marriage. Adultery can also lead to the transmission of STD's. It can lead to a child being conceived out of wedlock. It can lead to personal embarassment to one's spouse and children. There's no need to bring organized religion, the Ten Commandments, that Catchecism of the Catholic Church, or the teachings of James Dobson into this to see this. But you see, lots of other sex acts that you claim to be "unvirtuous" involve no dishonesty at all, no likelihood of STD's, no likelihood of pregnancy out of wedlock, and no likelihood of personal embarassment to the spouse and children. You just call them unvirtuous, which translates as "I hallucinated that a nonexistent supernatural being told me that particular uses of one's genitals are wrong"." You're a whole lot more patient with the wingnut brigade than I am, Dilan. How long have you been dealing with the freaks? I've been at it since 1979, when I ran into my first Campus Crusader as a college freshman. It's been a long, strange trip ever since. I admire your efforts but try lashing out every once in a while and see how you like it - the poor stupid beasts have thick hides, just like their skulls, and they won't be hurt by it.
Dilan, I don't see any of the social conservatives on this argument making recourse to religious arguments to defend their positions, so your shrill anti-religious ranting is off-base in addition to being uncivil. Christopher Hitchens is on line one, and he wants his illogic and puerile, offensive rhetoric back. And I say that as a fellow secular person (agnostic). My two cents on this issue: Firstly, let us dispense with the idiotic notion that because we have an evolutionary predilection to a certain behavior, it is therefore morally justifiable. Human beings have evolutionary predilections to racism, greed, aggression, selfishness, and many other behaviors which any reasonable person would agree are morally bad and which are indisputably socially disruptive and harmful to others. We cannot evaluate the morality of a behavior based on whether it is part of human nature; we must look at the effects it has on society and others. So, does adultery qualify as a harmful behavior? You yourself admit that it does. It's a betrayal of trust which leads to broken marriages and broken homes. It is harmful to both individuals (betrayed spouses, children) and society (which is often left helping to pick up the pieces when it comes to raising the children of broken homes). You suggest that it could be made less harmful by making it more socially acceptable. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that this is so. While the findings of evolutionary biology certainly support the conclusion that men particularly have a predisposition to promiscuity and often find monogamy difficult as a result, they equally well suggest that humans of both sexes are predisposed to desire a monogamous mate. Human nature is to want the freedom to screw around yourself while simultaneously denying your partner that freedom. This is borne out by the scientific data; one would expect there to be relatively few men and women who are willing to accept an open marriage or similar type of arrangement, and indeed it is so - even the great majority of those enlightened Europeans want their spouses to be faithful to them, and those who cheat do so on the sly. As such, most men who want to continue to sleep around after marrying are going to have a tough time finding a woman who will willingly allow them to do so (the opposite is true of women who want to continue to cheat, as well). This makes it, in most cases, impossible to be both polyamorous and honest. So which should a moral person give up? Given that cheating harms other people - one's spouse, one's children, if one has any, and society - whereas sexual deprivation harms only one's self (and that much more debatably - there are lots of healthy monogamous or even asexual people), I think the answer should be pretty obvious. People have a moral responsibility, when they marry or otherwise enter into a committed relationship, to remain faithful to their partner unless they can find one who doesn't have that expectation. If someone is too weak to control his or her sexual urges, s/he shouldn't get married unless s/he finds someone who's okay with being screwed around on. Period. There are no laws which say you have to get married, or that if you do you're not allowed to have an open marriage if the people involved so choose, so this has nothing to do with legal sexual freedom or what kinds of relationships the state chooses to sanction. It's all about personal morality. Entering an ostensibly monogamous union, breaking the promises thereof, and then attempting to rationalize bad behavior by appealing to Darwinian necessity, the naturalness of one's desire, etc. is nothing more than egocentrism and base moral cowardice.
I've been at it since 1979, when I ran into my first Campus Crusader as a college freshman. It's been a long, strange trip ever since. I must say I'm surprised. Considering the non-stop vitriol, pique, and judgmental self-righteousness of your posts, I would have guessed that you couldn't be more than 13 years old, or 14 at the most. I guess age is no substitute for maturity.
Xeynon writes: "Dilan, I don't see any of the social conservatives on this argument making recourse to religious arguments to defend their positions, so your shrill anti-religious ranting is off-base in addition to being uncivil. Christopher Hitchens is on line one, and he wants his illogic and puerile, offensive rhetoric back. And I say that as a fellow secular person (agnostic)." I guess you missed Marlowe bitching about the "secularists." And you also miss the fact that some of us have been arguning on this site for quite some time and we know how to read between the lines. The religious nuts don't need to drop the J word or cite Corinthians for us to know what's up. Agnostics are just atheists with no balls, by the way. You either have a religious belief (which makes you a theist) or you don't (which makes you atheistic). Is that too complicated for you? Your inability to be honest with yourself is not my problem, and I don't respect it. If you were to say that for the time being you're an atheist, but you're open to evidence that would justify becoming a theist, that would be a position that would make sense. In the meantime, shove this "shrill" nonsense up the chute of the nearest sky fairy. It's funny too how you can use such language while complaining about someone else being "uncivil." Grow up, you silly child. And Hitchens may be an ass but he's worth 100 of you on this issue.
I don't agree with Fitz on much of anything, just wanted to make that clear. It's definitely a nice thing that the divorce rate back in the 1950s was 10%. But we also had less contraception, fewer rights for women, less female participation in the workplace, less personal freedom for both men and women, and no tolerance not just for extramarital but for premarital relations as well. DOn't forget that the flip side of the Victorian era was widespread prostitution. I don't think many people would want to go back to the 1950s sexual morality, and I would agree with them. That doesn't mean that the opposite extreme is good either, nor does it mean that adultery is OK. I'm reasonably tolerant of the idea that if two people just cannot, in the last extremity, make a marriage work, they should be able to have a divorce, and I don't particularly have a problem with unmarried people in a committed relationship living together or sleeping with each other or whatever (hopefully in a relationship that will tend towards marriage eventually). There's no excuse for adultery, or casual sex, or pornography or prostitution and things of that nature. Whether they be 'natural' or not (and such things as pornography are definitely very un-natural.) If you enter a committed relationship with someone then you need to honor your commitment. And if you are sleeping with your girlfriend and do get her knocked up then you really ought to make an appointment at the local church and get ready to stay together and raise the kid together.
Oh - Indeed
Situational ethics that have no moral resonance for the institution itself and no conception on how standards effect behavior. What you have is no COHERANT collective ethic concerning sexual behavior much less one that you have been able to apply socially with any integrity. You can’t “deliver the goods” as they say. Those very real discernable social goods like husbands for wives, wives for husbands – mothers and fathers for their children, security and certainty for the institution as a social reality. This has been the reality to the point of 42% illegitimacy rates. This has been the reality that comes down with blunt force on women, children & the poor. Half baked grasping at a half ethic in crafted hypotheticals has been no replacement for the world’s oldest social security. http://www.amazon.com/Culture-Narcissism-American-Diminishing-Expectations/dp/0393307387
Fitz shits: "What you have is no COHERANT collective ethic concerning sexual behavior much less one that you have been able to apply socially with any integrity." Talk to the fundies and your buddies in the Buybull Belt, Fitzy. They're the ones with the sky-high divorce rates, not us blue-state rationalists. And it's "coherent." And your ethic isn't.
Look, cheating on spouses, defined as betraying them by playing around without tacit or explicit consent, should not be socially acceptable. But again, what your side wants to do is use that as an excuse to deny any social space for ANY relationship other than a traditional heterosexual marriage. There's plenty of middle ground here, but because you want to impose your hallucinations about God on people who aren't required to accept them, you refuse to recognize the reality of varied experiences of sexuality. But note that if those people don't call those relationships marriages, almost no social conservatives I can think of have any interest in reducing the _legal_ space for those people. That is, nobody with any following wants to criminalize non-marital sexual relationships. That people fight to reduce _social space_ for arrangements that they find harmful to human dignity and happiness is not exactly surprising or controversial -- or avoidable, except via some sort of totalitarianism of tolerance. Many sexual liberals and conservatives try to reduce the social space for verbally abusive relationships, even if the abused in some case aren't particularly complaining (and there's no physical harm to make it a legal concern). You probably don't object to that.
TMoC writes: "But note that if those people don't call those relationships marriages, almost no social conservatives I can think of have any interest in reducing the _legal_ space for those people. That is, nobody with any following wants to criminalize non-marital sexual relationships." While that may be true now, it's a comparatively recent development, and rationalists don't trust you knuckledraggers much in this department. And while you may not want to criminalize it for now, you certainly want to stigmatize and marginalize them, and if an occasional head or window gets broken it's not something that bothers you much, if at all. Meanwhile we've had gay marriage here in Massachusetts for a few years now, and there hasn't been any big rip in the social fabric, and families here are still more stable than they are in Asswater, Oklahoma, or Batpist Boil, Texas. How do you like them apples?
Moe -- I wasn't actually thinking of gay "marriage" (which I am not in favor of, unsurprisingly), but of the kinds of things Dilan is talking about more generally. Most social conservatives are opposed to creating "space" for people who (A) are "married" and (B) (openly) have sexual relationships with people other than their spouses. There is, of course, demographic and ideological reason to expect (see Andrew Sullivan's comments at times) that gay marriage is likely to increase this space, but in part it is an orthogonal issue. My main puzzlement on gay marriage is the strategic blundering -- I suppose patience is not in the cultural left's bones, but it seems that in, say, California, left to their own devices the people would quite possibly have voted down the constitutional amendment and (in five or ten years, perhaps, or fifteen at most) voted in actual gay marriage in name as well as substance. After the court decision, I suspect the constitutional change will pass, and it'll actually be longer before the state has gay marriage. On this issue, where public opinion is trending liberal, I'm not sure why the push for the courts was seen as a good move by so many.
That is, Roe was probably a "smart" move -- it helped increase public acceptance of abortion in various ways, and it was at the Supreme Court level so there was no way to trump the raw exertion of political power by democratic means. While the gay marriage push in the courts looks to me to have the effect of creating a state or two (MA, maybe somewhere else) with gay marriage imposed by courts, and a sea of states with constitutional amendments that will be difficult to overthrow ruling out gay marriage. CA is quite likely to have a few months of gay marriage followed by a constitutional amendment. Why? It seems clear that a slower strategy had a much higher probability of maximizing states with gay marriage by 2020.
Ross Douthat is Maude Flanders in "Soldier of Decency" Starts Friday everywhere.
TMoC writes: "My main puzzlement on gay marriage is the strategic blundering -- I suppose patience is not in the cultural left's bones, but it seems that in, say, California, left to their own devices the people would quite possibly have voted down the constitutional amendment and (in five or ten years, perhaps, or fifteen at most) voted in actual gay marriage in name as well as substance. After the court decision, I suspect the constitutional change will pass, and it'll actually be longer before the state has gay marriage. On this issue, where public opinion is trending liberal, I'm not sure why the push for the courts was seen as a good move by so many." Hey, it worked for interracial marriages. I'll bet we still have a state or three where it would be touch and go if a ballot question would allow THOSE. Will this constitutional amendment pass in CA? We'll see. I hope the bigots aren't crazy and numerous enough to saddle their constitution with such an odious bucket of shit, but then I'm still stunned that Dumbya carried the 2004 election.
M of C "Look, cheating on spouses, defined as betraying them by playing around without tacit or explicit consent, should not be socially acceptable." You bring up a important point regarding the level of legal enforcement social conservatives are willing to tolerate. In doing so however you miss Dilans tacit degenerate push when it comes to marriage. Here we are discussing the harm infidelity has on children and he has managed to slip into the conversation that "optional consensual marital fidelity" ought to be socially accepted. There are only a small number of non-negotiable that make marriage "marriage" in any historical sense. One of those is its male female nature. Another is its exclusivity. Before the paint has even dried on their dream of genderless utopia already you have a cultural leftist calling for a social ethics of "open marriages". The open insistence that all sexual acts are socially harmless as long as consensual is an established orthodoxy in the leftist cannon. They have not and cannot defend morality, the family, children or marriage against the forces of degeneracy. You need to accept that your adversaries are not liberals who hope to explore intellectually what is in the common good but rather open social subversives looking for any opportunity to undermine the dominant paradigm.
It’s not a strategic blunder, you underestimate their respect for the rule of law when you write “and a sea of states with constitutional amendments that will be difficult to overthrow ruling out gay marriage” . They were well aware that the popular resistance to redefining marriage would lead to State Amendments. After all the 61% ballot initiative is less than ten years old in California. Any sop to federalism is newly minted, erstwhile, and temporary. As in Row the Modus operandi is to drive it through by any means necessary and sit on the results (Mass.) As soon as a U.S. Supreme Court majority can be cobbled together the other shoe will drop and same-sex “marriage” will be imposed on the entire country. Perhaps there will be a Bowers before there is a Lawrence, perhaps not. The “revolution” gets its name because it keeps coming around again. The important thing is that any liberal discussion or intellectually sophisticated critique of the proposed change remains verboten in elite leftist circles.
Fitz shitz again: "There are only a small number of non-negotiable that make marriage "marriage" in any historical sense. One of those is its male female nature. Another is its exclusivity. Before the paint has even dried on their dream of genderless utopia already you have a cultural leftist calling for a social ethics of "open marriages". The open insistence that all sexual acts are socially harmless as long as consensual is an established orthodoxy in the leftist cannon." Well, that would be "canon." Fitz's congenital literacy makes me wonder who his real father was. He's a disgrace to the Irish, so I hope his true father was English. Meanwhile Fitzy just has to go to his trusty Buybull to find plenty of non-exclusive marriages. Do the names Abraham, David, or Solomon mean anything to old Fitzy? But that's DIFFERENT! Yahwho changed the rules when Mary dropped her frog in a manger, says Fitzy! What a silly little mind you have, Fitzy. Maybe I'll take your commentary on sexuality seriously if you can convince me you've ever been to second base. If you know what I mean.
The responses to my post from the social conservatives here haven't really advanced the ball any, so I am not going to make a detailed response. Suffice to say that the problem with the social conservative position (other than its origins in theology that agnostics and atheists and non-Christians and Christians of other denominations aren't required to accept) is that it is just clearly wrong in particular circumstances. For instance, let's say that Jane and John are married. John is a servicemember who then goes to war, and comes back a quadriplegic who is unable to have sexual relations. Jane devotes her life to taking care of his needs. Caring about Jane, and hearing her expressed concerns about the fact that they can no longer have sex with each other, he tells her that he'd like it if she found a lover who could satisfy her in that area. She does so. Now, our social conservatives are going to say that there's no difference between that and a guy cheating on his wife without her knowledge with a prostitute picked up on Sunset Blvd. But there clearly is. Indeed, our social conservatives don't seem to even be able to say that there is something different about two guys who love each other and want to marry each other and our cheating husband cruising Sunset Blvd. It's all "unvirtuous" sex. So the problem here is what I said before-- 1 side actually cares about the actual circumstances people are in and wants to craft ethical rules that make sense in particular circumstances. (And by the way, somebody here completely blew the definition of the term "situational ethics". Tailoring ethics to particular situations is not situational ethics. Situational ethics is where you advocate inconsistent rules depending on whether it serves your interests to violate them.) The other side thinks that anyone who doesn't conform to their narrow conception of what it is acceptable to do with one's genitals constitutes someone with no "virtue", regardless of the circumstances.
Now, our social conservatives are going to say that there's no difference between that and a guy cheating on his wife without her knowledge with a prostitute picked up on Sunset Blvd. But there clearly is. No, Dilan, at least not this one. What utter nonsense, what a piece of insulting, dishonest, nonsense. No difference? No, I'm not going to say that, St. Paul wouldn't say that, and Pope Benedict wouldn't say that. We might say _both are wrong_ but last I checked all wrong things are not equivalent. I have, once or twice in my life, improperly used office supplies in a way that was wrong. I have done much worse things. Charles Manson, Stalin, and Eliot Spitzer all did wrong things, but they're not cases where there is "no difference." I'm not much a fan of the idea of people with "no virtue" or even the basic idea of "bad people" precisely -- there are things that are wrong, and sinners, and public policy should perhaps not be devised to endorse heartily and equally all approaches to life, but you're flat out a liar and a fool Dilan if you think you've described my approach to things, and I think you know that. Have you ever even read any Christian theology or moral thinking? Are you a knave or a fool? Or just uninterested in any debate beyond misrepresenting the other side unfairly? I mean, come on, does your little caricature capture, say, Eve Tushnet well? She's a "social conservative" with policy positions (and views) not radically different from mine as far as I know.
Actually, perhaps I'm being unfair. Maybe DILAN's worldview is just too simplistic and idiotic to grasp that one might (A) think two things are both wrong but (B) not treat them the same or imagine there is no difference between them. I mean, he seems to have this notion that if you can _understand why someone might do something_ (or think in the same case you might end up doing it yourself) you can't possibly think it is wrong. That seems to be a not uncommon (slightly insane) view of reality, not limited to liberals.
TMoC is dense: "I mean, come on, does your little caricature capture, say, Eve Tushnet well? She's a "social conservative" with policy positions (and views) not radically different from mine as far as I know." Don't be an ass, TMoC. Dilan said "our social conservatives," by which he meant Fitz and you and that moron Marlowe. He may have been (slightly) wrong about you, but if there's some nuanced thinking going on with the other two dopes I've missed it. BTW there's no "quadriplegic exemption" in Catholic teaching about adultery that I'm aware of. And you left Pope Ratzinger, notorious accomplice to child rape, off of your list of people who have done wrong things. I would suggest that he's a much bigger scumbag than Eliot Spitzer ever has been. Though we don't know everything Spitzer has done, I don't think he ever reacted to the rape of children by issuing a cover-up plan. And you continue to defend the bastard, which is why I think your silly-ass claims to having a morality superior to that of anyone who posts here is a bad joke.
Moe, of course there's no "quadriplegic exemption" -- I think the scenario Dilan describes is wrong, but it's not as wrong as what he claims it has "no difference" from -- you're making the same idiotic assumption that saying something is understandable in the sense that we can see why it is done and have pity means we can't also say it's wrong. You guys must have trouble reading fiction and understanding these strange things called motivation. Tragedies must just drive your little minds insane! If it wasn't the Catholic church, which reminds you somehow of your father or something, I really don't think you'd give a rat's ass about child rape, Moe. I mean, I guess you would in general (I don't think you're some horrible monster) but you wouldn't give it this level of thought. It's a little annoying. Someone like Rod Dreher who interacted with the bishops and the thugs in the American Church has every reason to obsess, and is right about many aspects of the scandal -- but you use it as a little football to avoid actually discussing things. And Moe -- Hector and I are both, by Dilan's lights, social conservatives, and I think what he said above, with respect to us, is obviously false and flatly stupid and insulting.
"Actually, perhaps I'm being unfair. Maybe DILAN's worldview is just too simplistic and idiotic to grasp that one might (A) think two things are both wrong but (B) not treat them the same or imagine there is no difference between them." I think your being to harsh.(& I believe the post was addressing yours truly)Rather than simplistic and idiotic a better pair of terms would be non-existent and opportunistic. There’s no there, there. The cultural left has never posited ANY ethical stance on human sexuality beyond consent & adults. While simplistic it also has the added benefit of ease of use. What it can’t do is be accountable for their consequence, that’s the important thing. It’s easier to destroy than to create. The opportunistic hypothetical abound while any sense of self sacrifice or integrity unravels. That’s why the presence of the “child” as the natural product of sex is so problematic. Be it adultery, abortion, divorce or what not. It has to be a disposable commodity – disposable in the name of unfettered adult desire and felt need.
Marquis of Carabas The above comment was addressed to you. Along with my response to your post at May 21, 2008 2:00 PM. I was hoping you would respond directly to my observations about... #1. Dilan's "optional consensual marital fidelity" (in general not his horrible hypothetical) The better hypothetical is the impotent, sterile loving husband who’s Wife yearns/has yearned for a pregnancy/child of her own. #2. The strategy of same-sex “marriage” advocates via the judiciary. The latter is studied and accurate.
Bingo, Marquis, bingo. It's hilarious how the bipolar Moe (or is it borderline personality disorder?...could be both, I guess) just thinks he can yell "Catholic Church!", "Pedophiles!", "Child Rape!", and the debate is over. Moreover, he assumes that I love Bush (never voted for him), support the Iraq War, condone torture, etc., which of course I do none of these things. It doesn't matter, this is why he's on medication. As far as Dilan,again, Marquis, thank you. His silly, half-baked utilitarianism is really kind of laughable, if it weren't so damn sad.
I guess you missed Marlowe bitching about the "secularists." That's an epithet that certainly has a certain connotation, and an unpleasant one. But it's not the same as appealing to an argument from the bible or some other religious source. And you also miss the fact that some of us have been arguning on this site for quite some time and we know how to read between the lines. Yes; you, in particular, seem to have nothing better to do with your time. Agnostics are just atheists with no balls, by the way. You either have a religious belief (which makes you a theist) or you don't (which makes you atheistic). Is that too complicated for you? This is formulation is so absurdly simplistic that I don't know that it's worth trying to explain this to you, and nothing in your posting history leads me to believe you've got the patience or subtletly of mind to understand these distinctions, but here's the thing: the world is not always, or even usually, divided into discrete either/or categories. There are millions of Buddhists, Unitarians, and Jains, among others, who do not believe in anything one could call a god, yet indisputably possess religious beliefs. They are atheists but not agnostics. Conversely, there are a lot of people who believe in a god but make a distinction between belief and knowledge - while they believe, they acknowledge that they don't know. Hence they are agnostics but not atheists. There are also people who don't believe, but who think it's foolish to equate the absence of positive belief with the presence of positive unbelief because they consider the question of whether God exists fundamentally unanswerable. Your inability to be honest with yourself is not my problem, and I don't respect it. Your respect is really the last thing in the world I covet (well, maybe it's not quite far down as gum disease or toenail fungus, but it's close). Hence, I take that as quite a compliment. Thanks. It's funny too how you can use such language while complaining about someone else being "uncivil." Grow up, you silly child. I hate to break it to you, but "uncivil" and "shrill" are not insults here in the real world. They're descriptors, albeit negative ones, but they're not insults. On the other hand, childish ad hominems, your stock in trade, are insults. As are contemptuous insinuations of the sort Dilan was engaging in. Considering that by my calculations you must be nearly 50 years old, and your idea of a good time is going online to call people names, I think you could stand to take your own advice.
TMoC replies: "If it wasn't the Catholic church, which reminds you somehow of your father or something, I really don't think you'd give a rat's ass about child rape, Moe. I mean, I guess you would in general (I don't think you're some horrible monster) but you wouldn't give it this level of thought. It's a little annoying. Someone like Rod Dreher who interacted with the bishops and the thugs in the American Church has every reason to obsess, and is right about many aspects of the scandal -- but you use it as a little football to avoid actually discussing things." Well, no, TMoC - I bring it up with you because you're still defending the rapist-enablers i your Church, just as you did (quite ineffectively) in the first interaction I recall having with you. You know, the one where you claimed I couldn't substantiate Ratzinger's involvement in the cover-up effort. When I immediately did so, you cravenly ignored the significance of it. Like almost all conservatives you have a special ability to dismiss as unimportant the atrocities committed by your leaders. Ross can't even bring himself to address the Iraq war on most days, and I think you two are very much alike.
Xeynon replies: "This is formulation is so absurdly simplistic that I don't know that it's worth trying to explain this to you, and nothing in your posting history leads me to believe you've got the patience or subtletly of mind to understand these distinctions, but here's the thing: the world is not always, or even usually, divided into discrete either/or categories. There are millions of Buddhists, Unitarians, and Jains, among others, who do not believe in anything one could call a god, yet indisputably possess religious beliefs. They are atheists but not agnostics. Conversely, there are a lot of people who believe in a god but make a distinction between belief and knowledge - while they believe, they acknowledge that they don't know. Hence they are agnostics but not atheists. There are also people who don't believe, but who think it's foolish to equate the absence of positive belief with the presence of positive unbelief because they consider the question of whether God exists fundamentally unanswerable." I actually agree with some of this, but equating atheism with "positive unbelief" is equally simplistic to anything I said. I don't positively state that there is no god - ever. But I still refer to myself as an atheist, not just because of my lack of belief in a god (or gods) but also because of my lack of adherence to any religious system. And of course most Unitarians do believe in some sort of god, as do many Buddhists, even if these conceptions of god are limited or unusual by mainstream standards. I'll hold by my opinion of the label "agnostic" as essentially useless. "I hate to break it to you, but "uncivil" and "shrill" are not insults here in the real world. They're descriptors, albeit negative ones, but they're not insults. On the other hand, childish ad hominems, your stock in trade, are insults. As are contemptuous insinuations of the sort Dilan was engaging in. Considering that by my calculations you must be nearly 50 years old, and your idea of a good time is going online to call people names, I think you could stand to take your own advice." "Shrill" is most certainly an insult in the real world, chuckles, but then I've seen your haircut and that's also an insult. I don't think I call people names that are unjustified - I think "Repiglican" is highly descriptive and grounded in observation, for instance. Whining about "ad hominems" is a tedious activity, but if it floats your boat, enjoy. And use the word "vitriol" some more, the Repiglicans love it.
"I think 'Repiglican' is highly descriptive and grounded in observation, for instance." Moe, it is also uproariously funny! I tinkle my pants almost every time I see it!
Moe, of course there's no "quadriplegic exemption" -- I think the scenario Dilan describes is wrong, but it's not as wrong as what he claims it has "no difference" from -- you're making the same idiotic assumption that saying something is understandable in the sense that we can see why it is done and have pity means we can't also say it's wrong. You guys must have trouble reading fiction and understanding these strange things called motivation. Tragedies must just drive your little minds insane! Moe, calling someone an idiot is not an argument. You want to hold onto the notion that the quadriplegic is acting wrongly, but there's no basis for that. Indeed, it is quite clear that it would be wrong to force Jane in my hypothetical to make a choice between her marriage and her sexual fulfillment. The point of the hypothetical is that the only reason it strikes you as wrong is because you are assuming that there is an ironclad rule that has no give in it as to how one's genitals may be used. But I have a suggestion to you-- when your rule yields repugnant results, that isn't a situation where you congratulate yourself on standing on principle in the face of a bad result. Rather, it's a good indication that your rule is a bad rule. (This, by the way, is a great fault of Antonin Scalia's jurisprudence-- he is very self-congratulatory about screwing people over, because it shows (to him) that he is willing to stick with his principles no matter what.)
Excuse me, that last post was directed at Marquis, not Moe.
Dilan says: "Excuse me, that last post was directed at Marquis, not Moe." I would hope so. For one thing I've never thought that publicly labeling an idiot as such was a form of argument. It's more of a public service. Arguing with a Fitz is totally pointless. He's no more capable of serious communication than a nematode is. Treating a Fitz rudely is an investment in the future - just in case some proto-Fitzes are watching, they may catch on to the fact that becoming a fully-vested Fitz has no future in a civilized society.
Dilan, I don't know anyone who would say that the case of the quadriplegic and the case involving the prostitute have 'no difference'. God judges each of our actions in light of our strengths and weaknesses, and our temptations, and our circumstances. All sins are not equal in God's eyes nor in mine. I don't even know _for a fact_ that your quadriplegic case is a sin- God is more merciful than we can imagine- but I'm not prepared to say it isn't a sin either. Your quadriplegic couple have legal recourse, you know. Divorce is legal in all 50 states. And even before no-fault divorce, denial of conjugal rights or impotence was a ground for a divorce (at least in Puerto Rico, not sure about the mainland US). I don't think it's OK to stay married and cheat however. I don't think you should have your cake and eat it too. If you can't be faithful then don't get married, and if you can't stay faithful then get a divorce. (Not that divorces are good things). Nor do I think hard cases and exceptions are what we should base our laws and moral systems on.
Dilan, Sorry I was rather cranky and insulting yesterday, but your characterization of "social conservatives" moral systems was such nonsense that it really irritated me. On reflection, I think your comments on the quadriplegic case show that our differences here may boil down to two points that are somewhat "we can't talk to each other and get anywhere"ish. You are, as far as I can tell, nearly a pure utilitarian, with some few random principles tossed in (women's rights may be a point you'd defend even if somehow convinced it made people on average less happy -- other freedom-as-primary points might also get this treatment). I will use consequentialist reasoning once in a while (it can be narrowly useful) but its not the basis of my morality. I'm more "after virtue", so we're not going to have much to talk about there. And perhaps, rather than just dishonest mischaracterization, your "no difference" arose from what I think of as a Protestant understanding of these matter -- long ago, when I was a little Protestant boy, I'd hear adults in church say that "all sins are the same in the eyes of God." Now, at the time this seemed nonsense to me, and it still does. It's not Catholic teaching, which judges matters on the gravity of the offense, the freedom of decision, and the degree of reflection involved. It's not common sense, and it's not scripture. I'm not really sure where it comes from, other than as a weird distortion of a narrow point of Calvinist theology. But it seems to be "true" in the minds of some number of American Protestant believers, and a "characteristic" of the moral ideas of Christians in the minds of some unbelievers or former believers.
Marquis: Thoughtful comment. I do think you have captured some of our disagreement, though I would note that while the Catholic Church has some very valid criticisms of utilitarianism, in truth, we are all conseequentialists on some level. The consequence that something is an offense against God, after all, is still a consequence. And plenty of Catholic and conservative Christian morality makes explicit appeals to consequences-- gay marriage and abortion being two examples. What I would argue is that many times "virtue" is being used as a shorthand for (and this time I will try and be nicer about it) "things I want to say are categorically wrong even in the face of strong and persuasive consequentialist arguments". And what I would say is that either (1) conceptions of virtue must sometimes yield to sufficiently strong consequentialist reasoning, e.g., think of the person in a war zone who has the choice between looting a store (violating numerous prohibitions against theft in Christian theology) and dying of starvation; or (2) if a conception of virtue is at odds with consequentialist reasoning in a number of situations, that is an indicator that the moral principle being argued for is not in fact an example of virtue. The other thing I would say is while I think you defend the Catholic position on gravity of sin effectively against protestant objections, I don't think it resolves the deeper objection, which is that in my hypothetical, there is no reason to think that the adultery is sinful at all. What you want to say is "well, it's technically a sin, but it's not nearly as bad as the guy cruising Sunset Blvd. with his wife having no knowledge". But why would anyone condemn a couple for working out an arrangement in which they can stay married and care for each other but the wife's sexual needs are also satisfied? (Note, in this context, Hector's answer-- he says they can just get divorced!) It seems to me that the right answer is to say there's no sin at all there, but you are afraid to go there because you don't want to compromise what you see as an important principle. But even important principles have exceptions (see, e.g., Catholic just war doctrine).
This principle, I think, has no exception. For one thing, unlike you, I don't think sexual needs are such that we may abandon more important things to them at will -- and the sexual fidelity of the marriage bond is (in fact) more important than the sex itself -- even if the people in the marriage don't value it properly. You're right that we all act like consequentialists, and also it's true that those of us who (to a large extent at least) aren't utilitarians are forced to mostly engage in utilitarian argument. Have you read Alasdair MacIntyre? I think AFTER VIRTUE covers this ground quite well, noting that we all act like "liberals" in this sense, even when we're not. But the idea of a human nature and natural law isn't really, at root, just another form of consequentialism, with "annoying God" added as a consequence, as MacIntyre notes -- it is based on a quite different way of looking at moral actions, based on what one _is_. It is less temporal and causal and more reliant on analysis of what a person or thing "is" and what it is "for." That requires commitments, of course, that most post-Enlightenment thinkers are loathe to make. But it's also true that utilitarianism in the end always evaluates down to commitments to prefer certain outcomes (happiness, pleasure, orgasms, money, food, living) to others (death, obligation, duty, suffering). Those commitments are just as dubious, they're just easier to "trick" everyone into commonly agreeing on, then getting upset when it turns out that some of us don't give them the same weight or even consider some of them inherently preferable. As a side, it also partly boils down to a preference (motivated by political and metaphysical preferences, I suspect) to either prefer to simply say "eh, no absolute there, we base it on outcomes" in order to weaken/destroy principled prescriptions and replace them with more fluid and _always-negotiable_ (this in some sense being the crux of the Enlightenment -- we can bargain and trade _everything_, including truth) notions, vs. a preference (mine) for restating or examining the moral principle and making sure that those things that are genuine "exceptions" are coded into the rule itself. I'd say it's the difference in physics between shrugging and saying "well, sometimes the law doesn't hold, so we just watch what happens then" and trying to change your hypothesis to fit the observed data. Of course, you and I don't agree on what the observed data is, either.
This principle, I think, has no exception. For one thing, unlike you, I don't think sexual needs are such that we may abandon more important things to them at will -- and the sexual fidelity of the marriage bond is (in fact) more important than the sex itself -- even if the people in the marriage don't value it properly. I think I'll go off on this because it gets to something that I think Griswold v. Connecticut-- for all the criticism it takes-- gets fundamentally right. Marriages come in all shapes and sizes. Let's leave aside the marital arrangements that you consider sinful. Let's just consider traditional heterosexual marriages: 1. Some are sexless, some feature occasional unfulfilling sex, some fulfill the sexual desires of only one partner, and some are filled with passionate, fulfilling sex. The points is, when you make the statement "the sexual fidelity of the marriage bond is (in fact) more important than the sex itself -- even if the people in the marriage don't value it properly", which of the above marriages are you talking about? Are you talking about all marriages? Some of the above? Isn't sexual fidelity much more important in some types of marriages (the ones where the partners married for love, for instance), than in other types of marriages (arranged marriages, marriages for tax purposes)? Now one move you can make is to say that a lot of the above marriages shouldn't exist. That's essentially the religious right's argument against gay marriage. But of course, unlike gay marriage, you have millions of marriages that do exist that don't fit into Catholic / conservative Christian parameters. So while it seems to me you can make your comment about the Catholic ideal of marriage (or perhaps the sacrament of marriage), your comment seems wholly inapplicable to huge numbers of marriage as actually practiced. What does this have to do with Griswold? Well, in talking about marital privacy, the Court spoke very persuasively about the inability of the legal system to be able to peer inside marriages and figure out what makes them tick, which is necessary in order to make the kind of moral judgment that supports the ban on contraceptives. Note that this isn't the broader standard argument that I accept that the government shouldn't be in the business at all of enforcing religious dictates on people who don't accept them. Rather, it's a claim about marriage, and marital privacy. Peer inside any marriage, and it may or may not bear any relationship to the model of marriage that condemns nonprocreative sex. Thus, you can't impose that sort of a burden on married couples without a huge state intrusion on whether married couples are living in their marriages within certain narrowly defined limits, and since we all know that so many marriages contain so many different, personal decisions on these issues (especially personal when it comes to decisions about sex), the state shouldn't go there. Marquis, I think that what you miss is what Griswold gets right-- that we really can't live in a world where outsiders peer into the lives of married couples and pass judgment, narrowing the permissible scope and purpose of marriage and placing many of the purposes that couples use it for out of bounds. I would suggest to you that the same space that Griswold created for couples to be able to decide not to use their marriages for procreation is also a space that can tolerate couples who decide that the principle of sexual fidelity is inapplicable for some reason that is mutually agreed to and seems right to them. Indeed, couples make these arrangements all the time, because-- and this is crucial to Griswold's reasoning-- they know their situations better than we do. You don't have to like it, or agree with it, or conduct your marriage in the same way. But the principle of marital privacy, the ability of the two people in the marriage to make basic choices about their goals, activities, agreements and understanding, should, properly understood, provide the opportunity for other couples to make different choices in their own marriages.
Isn't sexual fidelity much more important in some types of marriages (the ones where the partners married for love, for instance), than in other types of marriages (arranged marriages, marriages for tax purposes)? Nope. Any more questions? To elaborate: Dilan, I'm not sure I think any of the kinds of marriage you note above are prima-facie invalid or shouldn't exist (some I would at least question the wisdom of, and where a party is completely _coerced_ into marriage neither the church nor the law, to my knowledge, find this to be a marriage at all). Now, to the actual point. Also, the weird thing here is that you seem to be arguing about the law. I do think in US Constitutional terms Griswold was badly done, but is unlikely to go away (and I'm not that interested in getting rid of it, really), but I'm not sure this is relevant. You don't have to like it, or agree with it, or conduct your marriage in the same way. Well, precisely. I have no interest in pursuing any legal responses to the quadriplegic couple you talk about above -- doing so would involve gross violations of marital privacy and serve no public interest significant enough to justify it. I suppose I wouldn't profoundly object if one party later decided to complain about adultery (I don't have a big problem with anti-adultery laws), but if I'd think it was a failure of justice if the agreement of that party wasn't taken into account in such a case. But what's this got to do with carving out a social space? I would pity these people, and their situation. I would think they are making a bad choice -- if asked about it abstractly, I would say "this is wrong." If I were their priest, I would counsel them against this and note that it is a grave sin, and ask the wife (at least) not to take communion until she repents. If I were their friend, I would politely and trying to indicate my sympathy note that this seems wrong, were they rude and peculiar enough to feel the need to inform me of this choice on their part. But I'm not after a legal response. You seem to assume that if one thinks something is wrong and should be condemned by people you must want to invoke the fury of the law against it. Heck, Dilan, I don't like racism, but I think hate speech crimes are a bad idea, too.
Marquis, it isn't just about the law. It's about ethics. In other words, I don't think that the sort of broad based rules about what's right and wrong in marriage really work. A few years before Griswold was decided, there was a much stronger social consensus against nonprocreative sex. Indeed, that's how bans on contraceptives got passed. Even now, there's a social consensus in some states strong enough to get laws prohibiting the sale of sex toys passed. My point is that we have no more business assuming that the sort of consensual adultery that I set out in my hypothetical is wrong than we do assuming that a couple who is using a sex toy to improve their sex life is acting wrongly or that a couple that has decided to have sex for pleasure rather than childbearing is acting wrongly. These sorts of bright line rules don't work when applied across the spectrum of marriages, because "marriage" encompasses a whole bunch of relationships that are all so different from one another. It may make sense, within the closed systems of certain religious conceptions of marriage, to talk about principles that govern them all, but secular marriage is so broad and varied that it doesn't lend itself to those sorts of rules. Indeed, a larger problem with religious arguments against gay marriage is that they really are pining for ALL marriages to be like THEIR marriages. In other words, there's a jump between saying that the SACRAMENT of marriage can only be between men and women and therefore concluding that CIVIL marriage, which encompasses almost all religious marriages plus a whole bunch of partnerships that would never be sanctioned by a conservative Christian or Catholic Church, should also be restricted to opposite-sex couplings. Religious conservatives really need to leave room in their ethical worldviews for marriages that do not conform to the dicates of their religion but nonetheless make sense for the participants.
This discussion has entered some very interesting territory. I would add to what has Dilan said the idea that privacy is to many of us not merely a convenient habit of social relations but a moral value in its own right, and that the same is true of autonomy. To say this is not to deny that experience and reflection will provide people with opinions in some cases about what particular choices ought to be preferred, and what choices foregone, in the realm of family, relationships, and sexuality. But we also think efforts at persuasion, social pressure, and (especially) legal prohibitions on the basis of these opinions should at the very least be undertaken only with great hesitation and caution. As I wrote upthread, “Social trends one may deplore in the aggregate do not always lend themselves to facile judgments about individual cases,” because particular lives are impacted by a largely unknowable confluence of circumstances, and even when we do have opinions about individual cases, many of us believe, again, that there is independent moral significance in the notions of privacy and autonomy. So we try to tread lightly.
You need to check your facts on the legal resoning of the Griswold case. No one doubts that there are true privacy rights in the Constitution, especially in the Fourth Amendment, which protects against "unreasonable searches and seizures" and ensures that warrants issue only upon a showing of probable cause that a crime has been committed. (Indeed, these rights prevented any kind of aggressive enforcement of the laws struck down in Griswold.) But the justices in Griswold produced a non-text-based and generalized right to "maritial privacy". This “Privacy” right was later transformed & is now functioning as a euphemism for immunity from those public-morals laws deemed by people to reflect benighted moral views. The Griswold Court was careful to avoid justifying the invalidation of the law by appealing to sexual liberation or individual rights of any kind. On the contrary, Douglas's opinion defends the putative right to marital privacy as necessary to preserve and protect the institution of marriage. In Douglas's account of the matter, it was not for the sake of "sexual freedom" that the justices were striking down the law, but rather to protect the honored and valued institution of marriage from damaging intrusions by the state.
Dilan, The context you mention of looting in time of starvation was discussed by, among others, St. Thomas Aquinas, who concluded that in such circumstances looting the store would be justified. I believe that he was following some of the early Church Fathers but I'm not sure. "On the contrary, In cases of need all things are common property, so that there would seem to be no sin in taking another's property, for need has made it common. "I answer that, Things which are of human right cannot derogate from natural right or Divine right. Now according to the natural order established by Divine Providence, inferior things are ordained for the purpose of succoring man's needs by their means. Wherefore the division and appropriation of things which are based on human law, do not preclude the fact that man's needs have to be remedied by means of these very things. Hence whatever certain people have in superabundance is due, by natural law, to the purpose of succoring the poor. For this reason Ambrose, Objection 3 says, and his words are embodied in the Decretals: "It is the hungry man's bread that you withhold, the naked man's cloak that you store away, the money that you bury in the earth is the price of the poor man's ransom and freedom." "Since, however, there are many who are in need, while it is impossible for all to be succored by means of the same thing, each one is entrusted with the stewardship of his own things, so that out of them he may come to the aid of those who are in need. Nevertheless, if the need be so manifest and urgent, that it is evident that the present need must be remedied by whatever means be at hand (for instance when a person is in some imminent danger, and there is no other possible remedy), then it is lawful for a man to succor his own need by means of another's property, by taking it either openly or secretly: nor is this properly speaking theft or robbery.....In a case of a like need a man may also take secretly another's property in order to succor his neighbor in need."
In other words, Dilan, Christian ethics from the time of the apostles recognized (at least in principle) that the right to property was conditional on the duty to succour the poor, so your challenge to Christian morality in the matter of theft is not that much of a challenge at all. Not being a Catholic, I am not asked to believe that divorce is always immoral, so yes, I think I would encourage John and Jane to get a divorce rather than have an adulterous marriage. Either their marriage 'works' or it doesn't, and if it doesn't I think it's better not to blur the boundaries of the social institution of marriage. Divorce is certainly less wrong than adultery, in my opinion. Ultimately if I were their friend I would express my opinion that adultery was wrong, in the abstract, but I would also point out that ultimately it's between them and God. Marquis, I should also point out that my descent is from a culture in which arranged or semi-arranged marriages are still the norm and divorce is uncommon. This hasn't exactly worked out well for South Asian women. Hindu cultures in South Asia have achieved an impressive degree of family stability but at the price of locking men, women and children into unhappy and sometimes abusive relationships, usually arranged by their parents, and generally retarding social progress. America could do with rolling back some aspects of the sexual revolution, true, but traditional cultures like India very badly need a (partial) sexual revolution of their own. (Ironically abortion is legal and popular in India and has been wholeheartedly appropriated to serve the cause of patriarchy).
Religious conservatives really need to leave room in their ethical worldviews for marriages that do not conform to the dicates of their religion but nonetheless make sense for the participants. If you want to argue that, and push for it, and try to get it democratically enacted -- fine, and I'll do the same from my side. But you seem sometimes to want to steal all the bases and make that a secret, invisible principle of law. And that's wrong (moreover, done aggressively enough, I think it would justify overthrowing your civil order). But also -- how much room? What points do we draw the line on, and what principle do we use to do so? Anything anyone wants to call a marriage? Polygamy? I think you might be at least consistent here, in essentially defending a strong "sweet mystery of life" approach where we let everyone do whatever the heck they want as long as there is consent and no physical harm to anyone that's otherwise prohibited, but I doubt the public has much taste for that, and in fact so far the courts don't either -- they just like to pick what pleases the social class that creates judges and lawyers, and pretend it is a principle. I do think that by proposing divorce as a "solution" to the quadriplegic couple Hector is being a little odd. Divorce with remarriage seems to be as great a harm as the acceptance of adultery, in this case. I'll admit that the Eastern Orthodox, who I respect, seem to take a bit laxer stance on such, but I really don't see where they get this from scripture or tradition (it's one of the points that keeps me from seriously considering "going over" if I ever tip further on my views on some of the Eastern objections to some aspects of Roman practice and theology, which are attractive in some cases).
The Griswold Court was careful to avoid justifying the invalidation of the law by appealing to sexual liberation or individual rights of any kind. On the contrary, Douglas's opinion defends the putative right to marital privacy as necessary to preserve and protect the institution of marriage. In Douglas's account of the matter, it was not for the sake of "sexual freedom" that the justices were striking down the law, but rather to protect the honored and valued institution of marriage from damaging intrusions by the state. Fitz, I was talking about Griswold and not the later cases that expanded the right to privacy. And Douglas does indeed lay out the right to marital privacy as being based on the factors I set out. Now, they were a little more decorous in those days, but Douglas certainly raised the spectrum of gross intrusions into a married couple's marriage and sex life to enforce the law. I understand the criticisms of Griswold. And I certainly understand the criticisms of cases that follow it. But when Douglas asserts that the marital privacy right is one of the fundamental rights of humankind and is older than the Constitution, it seems to me he's right about that.
Polygamy? Marquis, polyamory is already legal, at least in jurisdictions that don't prohibit fornication. I would argue that people in polyamorous relationships among equals should be given social space as well. (The FLDS oppresses women, so that's a different ballgame. The government has the right and obligation to stamp out that sort of polygamy.) But polyamory is not marriage. Marriage, to work, has to be a partnership, because all sorts of rules, from decisionmaking powers to rights of succession, depend on there being only one spouse. Further, unlike the phony state interests asserted on behalf of opposite sex marriage, there really is a state interest in promoting monogamy. So polyamory requires a social space, and it needs to be legal, but it doesn't need to have a marriage contract. On the other hand, two gays should have the same right to form a partnership
Marquis, I can't speak for the Eastern Orthodox, not being one. I didn't say divorce in that case would be a _good_ thing, but that it would be preferable to adultery. I would interpret the Dominical saying about marriage being lifelong in the same light as where He says 'Give all ye have to the poor and come, follow me.' It expresses an ideal, a standarrd that we should follow if we are to live perfect lives. Jesus also forbade us to say 'You fool,' but I see that you've called Dilan a fool in this very thread, for which I don't particularly blame you. I think that concessions need to be made to the fact that this is a fallen and imperfect world where we can't always live perfect lives, and I would make some provision for divorce on that basis.
Marquis, Likewise, the teachings about divorce and contraception are some of the things that persuade me not to cross the Tiber on the occasions where I get fed up with the Anglican church.
I think Douglas is right about that, too. I'm not sure that reasoning from that to "thus the state can't ban contraceptive devices" is a little peculiar, though. And yes, I think that, depending on what it means, "personal autonomy" is not really very high in my moral vocabulary. This is not to say I despise freedom, as such -- in fact I probably want more freedom to do certain things and think certain things and live free of restraint and oversight than Dilan does, in certain aspects of life. But I don't think the right to "define normal" is a right, really.
So polyamory requires a social space, and it needs to be legal, but it doesn't need to have a marriage contract. On the other hand, two gays should have the same right to form a partnership Why doesn't it need a marriage contract? Are those relationships somehow less worthy than partnership-based ones? On what principle (or even solid utilitarian argument that's more than handwaving or anti-Muslim bigotry) do we assert that partnership is so special? Empirically speaking, we have much more experience with successful polygamous marriage (polyamory in general less so) than gay marriage.
"Fitz, I was talking about Griswold and not the later cases that expanded the right to privacy. And Douglas does indeed lay out the right to marital privacy as being based on the factors I set out." No he doesn’t- he predicated it on "the dignity of the material bed" "Douglas certainly raised the spectrum of gross intrusions into a married couple's marriage and sex life to enforce the law." Exactly: rather than predicating it on individual sexual autonomy or appealing to sexual liberation or individual rights of any kind. Rather it was the privacy inherent in marriage as a institution immune from state interference. "when Douglas asserts that the marital privacy right is one of the fundamental rights of humankind and is older than the Constitution, it seems to me he's right about that." Of coarse he was, that is why your use of Griswold is so problematic. It is this case that affirms the pre-political legal significance of marriage law as immune from State manipulation. It is further court manipulation of this right that has disrupted the idea that "fundamental rights of humankind and is older than the Constitution" In its Goodridge decision the Massachusetts court states in the outset of its opinion "quite simply the State creates marriage" flatly contravening Douglas and established court precedent. It is precisely the idea of marriage as a pre-political institution that makes both marriage and the natural family immune from judicial manipulation. It is the right of the married couple against the State that is asserted when assaults to marriage are made judicially or even legislatively. Neither you nor Douglas can have it both ways.
Fitz and Marquis: 1. Marital privacy has nothing to do with the issue of who can get married. It might be implicated if someone was trying to force a church to recognize gay marriages, but of course, nobody is doing that. 2. The Connecticut statute barred MARRIED persons from obtaining contraception. That's how Douglas gets from marital privacy to striking down a ban on contraception. 3. Marital privacy can both be older than the Constitution and and also not inconsistent with the state creating marriage. The state doesn't create marriage as a sacrament-- and such church-recognized marriages have been around for a long, long time. And there generally is a privacy right in those marriages. But the state does create civil marriage. A state is not required to marry anyone. And if it marries people, it decides whom can marry. You are simply conflating the marital privacy right with the issue of who gets to get married, but they are two separate issues.
Dilan “ Marital privacy has nothing to do with the issue of who can get married. It might be implicated if someone was trying to force a church to recognize gay marriages, but of course, nobody is doing that.” False – “marital privacy” is predicated by Douglas on the natural right of marriage endowing the married couple (as opposed to say: business partners) with a special privacy right associated with the unique stauts of marriage. “The Connecticut statute barred MARRIED persons from obtaining contraception. That's how Douglas gets from marital privacy to striking down a ban on contraception.” Yes, but I believe Marquis point is how you get from the valid aspects of marital privacy to an opinion that prevents the states from regulating the sale & use of an external medical device. “Marital privacy can both be older than the Constitution and also not inconsistent with the state creating marriage.” No it can’t, nor does Douglas (or anyone else) make this distinction. Rights are those asserted against the State- If marriage is a right & not created by the State, the State can no more redefine this right than it can redefine, “Speech” “Arms” “Religion” “The Press” and so forth. Your religious examples are quite beside the point & seem to be included in an attempt to confuse. “You are simply conflating the marital privacy right with the issue of who gets to get married, but they are two separate issues.” Hardly, as I (& DOuglas) say above: a “right to marital privacy” is predicated on marriage itself as a right. The question of “who can get married” implicates the very nature of the right itself when (in the case of same-sex couples) that assertion disrupts the very definition of the right in the first place.
You are simply conflating the marital privacy right with the issue of who gets to get married, but they are two separate issues. No, I'm not. Maybe Fitz is. I dunno. I'm just saying I always thought that the reasoning from "there is a long-standing, common law, pre-Constitutional notion of marital privacy" (no real argument here, though I think common law tradition and judicial review interact badly, as Bork argues -- not that I'm an expert, but he surely is) to "thus the state can't prevent married couples from buying contraceptives" doesn't quite hold water. That is, there is a right to marital privacy, and my marriage might work better with literal fireworks in the bedroom. But the state might still be able to say I can't buy fireworks. Obviously there is a public safety argument here, but I'm not sure how you draw a line -- saying "ah, well, there might be public arguments (natalist, moral, safety concerns) about contraceptives, BUT these cannot prevent that purchase because contraceptives might be essential to your notion of marriage" while not saying it about other things seems... weird. I mean, maybe my marriage would work better if I paid the maid less than minimum wage, if I had a maid. Maybe that is part of my sweet mystery of life. But I think the state can probably reasonably tell me to go fish there. Similarly, while I think contraception bans are a bad idea in the US for the reasons Aquinas discusses when noting that law doesn't always have to enforce morality, particularly where the practice of most people differs, I don't see how marital privacy (which might have legal force -- laws against withdrawal as birth control would certainly violate it!) gets you the full Griswold result with sort of just reaching out for it.
Marquis, I think you are belittling the fact that the issue of whether or not to procreate is right at the center of many marriages. (Indeed, isn't it your side that is always telling us this in the gay marriage debates?) And it is a private decision, and it is tied in with another, even more private activity, marital sex. Look, as I said, I am aware of criticisms of Griswold. But really, if marital privacy extends to anything, it's going to extend to the decision whether or not to have sex and whether or not that sex will be procreative.
Look, as I said, I am aware of criticisms of Griswold. But really, if marital privacy extends to anything, it's going to extend to the decision whether or not to have sex and whether or not that sex will be procreative. I think that's reasonable and correct -- I actually think consistency with Griswold's notion of marital privacy would, as you note, tend to lean towards procreation (or not) as a key issue here, which is granting my side quite a bit. I just don't see why the state thus must not ban selling certain products, since sex (procreative or not) can be had without them.
Marquis: I don't get it. Without the ability to purchase contraceptives, some couples who don't want to procreate will conceive. And some couples who want to have sex and don't want to procreate will be forced to abstain. In other words, banning contraceptives doesn't prevent all contraception, but it certainly interferes with the private decisions of married couples. Isn't that enough to call the statute's application to married couples (the issue in Griswold) into question?
By the way, here's an article about the Church's restrictions on certain sexual positions in the Middle Ages: http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article05190801.aspx
Dilan & The Marquis of Carabas "In other words, banning contraceptives doesn't prevent all contraception, but it certainly interferes with the private decisions of married couples. Isn't that enough to call the statute's application to married couples (the issue in Griswold) into question?" The justifications for the ban on contraceptives however were not limited to married couples but all couples. Furthermore; even while granting the legitimacy of marital privacy in Toto - the major justification for bans on contraception (& this is widely suppressed by the left for obvious reasons) was it represented a threat to the institution of marriage & the family. How so? The (completely secular) and widespread justification in support of the various Comstock laws was that contraception, by blocking the natural correlation between sex & procreation would cause sex in society to be regarded as merely a recreational (rather than primarily procreation) act. This in turn (it was argued) would lead to family breakdown and disrespect for the institution of marriage as the sole province of socially legitimate sexual relations. The decision was written at a time when legitimacy rates and divorce rates where low, In hindsight however: the effects of widespread contraception did in fact lead to the breakdown of marriage & the family and its attendant social consequences. Re: article's about the Church's restrictions on certain sexual positions. This is also interesting: Multiple evolutionary biologists posit that what is (still) called the “missionary position” was a advance of evolution that is attributed to creating greater pair bonding and intimacy among mated pairs of humans. This in turn is said to have contributed to the survival of those who practiced it by establishing greater paternal connection to the mother & greater efforts in the male for protecting and providing for his mate & offspring.
Fitz: First of all, on the contraception issue, correlation is not causation. Lots of things besides the availability of contraception caused the sexual revolution-- industrialization, the popularity of feminism (it may seem like an academic matter now, but Betty Friedan really spoke to a generation of post-war women who felt trapped by housework), the automation of housework which reduced domestic duties, the mass media, the Kinsey report, globalization, etc. Indeed, these contraception laws were never enforced (to the point where an challenge 4 or 5 years earlier was rejected by the Supreme Court in Poe v. Ullman on the ground that the case was hypothetical), which should show you that the attitudinal changes were happening in society anyway. Second, I think a majority of sexually active women (and plenty of men as well) would tell you that the missionary position doesn't work for them as well as other activities in the bedroom. And certainly your view goes against the view of just about every sex therapist out there who has studied human sexuality (having sex in varied positions is almost always said to be good for a relationship or marriage). Third, I really don't know where you are going with these arguments. You are claiming that (1) contraception bans are justified as an action to prevent the sexual revolution and force people to direct their sexual activities towards reproduction alone, and (2) church restrictions on sexual positions are justified because the missionary position is superior to other positions in bringing couples closer together. All I can say is that the implications of these sorts of arguments, if they are relevant at all, are to impose all sorts of severe restrictions on people's liberties. You really think it is a good thing for society to try to force people to conceive children when they have sex? You really think it is a good thing for a major religious denomination to force its adherents to have sex in a particular position? There isn't any personal autonomy at all left in your vision. It would appear that the only aspect of even marital sex that is left private under your outlook is whether to turn the lights off or not.
"All I can say is that the implications of these sorts of arguments, if they are relevant at all, are to impose all sorts of severe restrictions on people's liberties." That’s one possible implication, but it is not my intention. My only intention is to defend traditionalism (sexual ethics, religion...) from those who would dismiss its reasoning as devoid of merit or humanity.
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I am so sick of being told to "think of the children". There's a reason this type of "concern" is satirized on shows like the Simpsons through characters like Maud Flanders.
Posted by TH | May 20, 2008 1:17 PM