Porn and Adultery

Riffing on these comments from a Fox News sexpert, which raise the idea that "using porn, at least beyond a magazine like Playboy, is the equivalent of having an actual affair," Julian Sanchez writes:

This is tossed off as though it ought to be obvious to the ordinary reader. It strikes me as obviously insane. I can think of any number of valid concerns one might have about what sort of porn one’s partner is consuming, or the extent of it. But the proposition that one of them is any similarity between porn viewing and “having an actual affair” would not have occurred to me. Is this view held by any significant number of sane people?

Well, look at it this way: Is there any similarity between "having an actual affair" and having sex with a prostitute while you're married? I think most people would answer yes. Then consider: Is there any similarity between having sex with a prostitute while you're married and paying to watch a prostitute perform sexual acts for your voyeuristic gratification? Again, I think a lot of people would say yes: There's a distinction, obviously, but I don't think all that many spouses would be inclined to forgive their husbands (or wives) if they explained that they only liked to watch the prostitute they'd hired. And hard-core porn, in turn, is nothing more than an indirect way of paying someone to fulfill the same sort of voyeuristic fantasies: It's prostitution in all but name, filtered through middlemen, magazine editors, and high-speed internet connections. Is it as grave a betrayal as cheating on your spouse with a co-worker? Not at all. But is it on a moral continuum with adultery? I don't think it's insane to say yes.

Comments

Ross,

You've already said you would vote for Vitter , you're fine with a man who dumped his disabled wife for a younger, prettier version and then called that version a cunt, and you would have voted for Giuliani if it had come to it.

Given that, how exactly is your sanctimonious nonsense of any value, exactly?

Posted by James | June 19, 2008 10:45 AM

"Not clearly insane to say it's on the same moral continuum" is a far cry from "equivalent."

You feel the need to come out and say "I don't like porn, it reminds me of prostitutes," which is fine, but Sanchez is right and the Fox person is wrong in the actual discussion at hand.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | June 19, 2008 11:04 AM

Saying that viewing pornography is "on a moral continuum with adultery" is not to say very much. The question is where on the continuum these things lie, and your slipping from adultery to sex with a prostitute to watching a prostitute to viewing pornography traverses quite a lot of distance on this continuum. If we went a bit further I'm sure we would find oggling women and going to Scarlett Johansson films on the very same continuum.

Posted by Kenny | June 19, 2008 11:14 AM

Where on this "moral continuum" does fantasizing about one's co-worker or a movie star (or a porn star, for that matter) fall into? Is it more moral than watching porn on TV but less moral than paying to watch a prostitute have sex?

And how, effectively, is fantasizing about someone different different from watching pornography on TV or on your computer?

I think the moral continuum is a wrong way to think about it -- you either commit adultery or you don't. Watching porn falls into the don't category.

Posted by scritic | June 19, 2008 11:15 AM

It's also on the same moral continuum with looking at the cover of the SI Swimsuit Issue for more than two seconds; in other words, the whole concept of 'moral continuum' is a very weak one on which to ground an argument. (And recall that the original argument was about moral 'equivalency', not 'same spectrum')

And why does Playboy get some special exemption? Is it because they sell martini glasses and also pay people for good prose?

This legalistic approach to sexual moralizing is silly and useless, unless one already happens to be e.g. a Catholic. In a more general situation, if a married person is using hardcore porn, the thing to do is not to tell them that they're basically having an affair (an implausible contention which they can easily dismiss), the thing to do is ask whether their spouse knows about it and assents. If so, then that's the end of the discussion. If not, then there's an issue of deception to address.

Posted by lampwick | June 19, 2008 11:17 AM

What if I watch this hardcore pr0no with my partner? is that adultery?

Posted by rickm | June 19, 2008 11:20 AM

Oh my — people sure do done like der porn!

Posted by Matthew Dallman | June 19, 2008 11:28 AM

I'm with Sanchez.

Is there a moral continuum between watching professional boxing on television and participating every Tuesday night in an underground, bare-knuckle fight club? I suppose there is, but that doesn't mean the people who assert a moral equivalency between the two are anything approach rational.

It's the difference between nerf guns and nuclear weapons.

Posted by southpaw | June 19, 2008 11:34 AM

. . . people who assert a moral equivalency between the two are anything approach rational. . .

. . .anything approaching rational . . .

sorry.

Posted by southpaw | June 19, 2008 11:37 AM

Ross, you should think about joining the 21st century sometime. It's a pretty nice place.

Posted by How Insane Is John McCain? | June 19, 2008 11:40 AM

Where does closing my eyes while I masturbate and imagining that my wife is performing sex acts that she would never do on this moral continuum? Is it "equivalent" to adultery, since she'd never do it, and I'm basically imagining a wife-clone?

Posted by M | June 19, 2008 11:40 AM

This is so asinine that a rebuttal is tedious? Is this the product of contemporary pomo higher education, in which metaphor is supreme?

Posted by Miande | June 19, 2008 11:41 AM

Is it as grave a betrayal as cheating on your spouse with a co-worker? Not at all. But is it on a moral continuum with adultery? I don't think it's insane to say yes.

As someone else already pointed out, that's still a far cry from "equivalent," and even if you accept this premise as true, the distance between those two points on this obnoxious, backward, Victorian-era moral continuum you've constructed is about the same as the difference between slapping someone across the face and beating them to death with a tire iron.

Seriously, go back to the 1700's where you belong.

Posted by Jeff | June 19, 2008 11:44 AM

According to the Bible it is not only on the same continuum, it is actually equivalent behavior. (Matthew 5:27-28). (One of the reasons I consider myself a Christian of only a very heretical sort, if a Christian at all.)

Posted by Tel | June 19, 2008 11:46 AM

Tel, the point of that bit from Matthew is that true righteousness is being our reach. We might think we are righteous if we don't commit adultery, but Jesus is saying that this still isn't true righteousness, if we look at a woman lustfully. But every man does this. That's the point: no one is truly righteous on his own merits. Hence the need for grace, and hence the injunctions against judging others.

Posted by Richard Hershberger | June 19, 2008 11:58 AM

hahahahahahahahahaha

Posted by lol | June 19, 2008 12:02 PM

You paid thousands of dollars to go to Harvard and you think this is logic? You owe some people their tuition money back. An elementary school bully and Milosevic were both violent, yet they are nowhere near equivalent. We wouldn't exactly be sending the bully to the Hague.

Posted by Reality Man | June 19, 2008 12:12 PM

It may be that this continuum is a fine example of old time Catholic thought in its capacity to obfuscate the distinction between thought and deeds. The result is that thoughts become the equivalent to deeds for the most important moral purposes. Once that's the case, you're on the road to controlling and eliminating bad thoughts to the same or a similar extent as you would do so for bad deeds.

Condemning and seeking to eliminate such subversive or sinful thoughts ends, needless to say, with a significant contraction of one's mental, moral, and spiritual horizons. There are good reasons one may want to "think" about things one would never do -- think of imaginative literature, for example. I would wonder how one would reconcile this way of thinking with post-Reformation, post-Enlightenment freedom of consciousness.

Posted by leo | June 19, 2008 12:28 PM

Um, Mr. Douthat, I think we differ on the definition of "equivalent". It means "equal to" or "having the same valence as". By saying that it is "on a continuum with" or "there is a distinction", you are precisely conceding Mr. Sanchez's point. If you said "it lies at the *same place* of the continuum" or "there is *no* distinction", then you would be disagreeing. But...you don't. Punching someone in the gut is on a continuum with shooting them. But the aren't *equivalent*.

Posted by Minos | June 19, 2008 12:37 PM

Richard - completely understand and agree with the underlying point of the scripture. But with that particular example, what are faithful with a (completely normal, natural, and God-given) wandering eye supposed to do? Avoiding sin, while it isn't sufficient to salvation (according to most sects of Christianity), is the strategy most religions take to help the spiritual well-being of their congregations. What the people take away from that passage, is that they're supposed to neither commit adultery, nor even look at a woman lustfully. If that isn't unrealistic enough, the next passage suggests they might pluck out their eyes if this continues to be a problem!

While your point is a valid interpretation of the scripture, in the actual practice of Christianity most people only hear (and at least some pulpits only teach) the prohibition. All sorts of problems flow from that - obsession over "proper" dress and behavior, issues with body image, and a resistance to the presence of any nudity or any sexuality in art of any kind, to name just a few. By trying, in excess, to fulfill that kind of prohibition, the people end up causing more evil than they avoid. In reality they (and sadly, often their priest or minister) have missed the point - very much like the Pharisees Jesus was always arguing with.

Posted by Tel | June 19, 2008 12:41 PM

I have to say I find something refreshing, endearing and quaint in Ross' prudery. Especially since he belongs to the generation that, more or less, gave us the hookup culture, best friends with benefits, etc.

Still, I'm with consensus opinion here. Watching a prostitute do stuff vs. doing stuff to/with her -- that's a difference in kind, not degree.

If Monica Lewinsky had only stripped for Bill Clinton in the Oval Office...and he dissembled about it under oath...would there have been an impeachment?

Posted by Bart Acocella | June 19, 2008 1:00 PM

"If Monica Lewinsky had only stripped for Bill Clinton in the Oval Office...and he dissembled about it under oath...would there have been an impeachment?"

Yes. Republicans wanted any reason at all to impeach, this would've been enough.

And for the record, no, watching porn is not the same as having an affair, not even close.

Posted by Cols714 | June 19, 2008 1:08 PM

It seems to me like sex with a prostitute is actually worse than a long-term affair. It's not worse _for your wife_ but it's worse in an absolute, teleological sense. In the sense that it represents more of a deviation from the sexual act in context of a long-term, monogamous romantic relationship- it is farther away from the ideal context of the act, and therefore more of a violation.

I share Mr. Douthat's opinion of pornography, and I certainly don't consider myself "prudish or anything of the kind. I'm not sure what any of you would maintain are the good things that porn brings into this world.

Posted by Hector | June 19, 2008 1:15 PM

So Ross, will you not vote for a candidate who looks at pornography? Because it's similar to having an affair? Unless he/she is a Republican, of course, in which case it's excusable.

The more you post on these issues, the more you make yourself out to be an enormous hypocrite.

Posted by Dave | June 19, 2008 1:16 PM

Or to put it a different way I would classify adultery as "crimen secundum naturam' and pornography as 'crimen contra naturam' in terms of the _nature_ of the act. Adultery is a sexual act wrong by its circumstances (i.e. that you're married to someone else); pornography is wrong by its essential nature.

Posted by Hector | June 19, 2008 1:18 PM

"But I say to you, whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart." Matthew 5:28

OLD FASHIONED????

Posted by ken | June 19, 2008 1:18 PM

"But I say to you, whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart." Matthew 5:28

OLD FASHIONED????

Posted by ken | June 19, 2008 1:19 PM

Shouldn't this be a personal thing anyways? If you want to look at porn and your wife/significant other, doesn't care, then how could it be the same as having an affair?

These are personal choices, someone may think that it's like having an affair, someone may think otherwise.

Who cares?

Posted by Cols714 | June 19, 2008 1:24 PM

So when exactly did they stop teaching basic logic at Harvard? Yikes.

Posted by Steve Balboni | June 19, 2008 1:25 PM

I look at porn because the gays are getting married.

Posted by southpaw | June 19, 2008 1:28 PM

I agree with Ross that there's a continuum. At one end of the continuum is going to dungeons to spank Nazi pr-stitutes, at the other is daydreaming about having s-x with people other than your spouse and looking at fully clothed passersby "for your gratification."

How much of that continuum is forbidden in any given marriage is primarily an issue for the spouses, IMHO

Posted by J Mann | June 19, 2008 1:29 PM

Cols - I think it depends on *why* a person considers having sex with someone other than your spouse to be wrong. If you think it's wrong based solely on the deception involved, then you might not think something like an "open marriage" would be necessarily wrong. Both parties agree that sleeping around is okay, therefore there's no deception, therefore there's no wrong.

But if you think that having sex with anybody other than someone you're married to is objectively wrong, that's a different story altogether. You could get as much informed consent as you wanted, it would still be wrong, period, end of story.

Posted by Tel | June 19, 2008 1:38 PM

Porn is a good thing -- maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies.

I'm with everybody against Ross on this one. Continuum or no, porn in general is in no way equivalent to cheating.

On the other hand, not to defend the Fox News sexpert (does that make her a "Foxy Sexpert"? Sounds kind of porny...) or anything, it does not seem unreasonable to me to say that if you are addicted to porn to the extent that it is affecting your life and your relationship in negative ways that this is in important respects similar to cheating.

Note, though, that this is not a unique characteristic of porn, but rather of addiction. If your behavior indicates that you love heroin or video games or reading Ayn Rand novels more than you love your sig. other, you've got issues. And those issues are akin to the issues of cheating.

Posted by Andy Dufresne | June 19, 2008 1:42 PM

Hector: "Adultery is a sexual act wrong by its circumstances (i.e. that you're married to someone else); pornography is wrong by its essential nature."

Which is what, a supernatural synonym for "I have no actual argument against it"?

What's good about porn? I don't even know where to start, because it's almost as if an alien made of solid rock had landed and asked, confused, what good eating was.

Where to start?

First of all, there's no defense of pornography that exploits or endangers its actors, and of course a great deal of the pornographic industry has done just that. But then, how much of that is really the fault of the particular social underworld that pornography was forced into, and how much is intrinsic? Now that we live in a more enlightened age, however, a lot more of porn production is on the up and up, and doesn't necessarily hurt anyone (doubtless you wouldn't agree, but then doubtless you have a very very different idea about what "hurting" someone means).

Porn saves marriages: allowing sexually unfulfilled partners (men and women) to "get off" without placing that burden on their spouse who may be temporarily or even permanently unwilling or unable. It means there is an avenue of sexual fulfillment, granted a generally inferior one, to that breaking up or cheating.
Porn is an aid to masturbation, which is both pleasurable and meets a human need that can otherwise become overwhelming and distracting if not met.
Porn is often mutually enjoyed by couples.
Porn in some cases has been a noted CURE for sexually aggressive behavior in real life: a sublimation of urges.

All of which is not to say that porn cannot be misused, overused, taken to excess, or what have you. As can anything. But the vast vast majority of men, and quite a lot of women, enjoy porn, and live complete lives with porn that do not hurt anyone, and indeed even enrich their lives.

And here's the thing.

The basic idea expressed by Jesus: the obsessive and grossly excessive criminalizing of thought and fantasy, the endorsement of guilt for feeling any sort of sexual desire, is far far more vile a stain on humanity than any woman masturbating on camera is on her own reputation or anyone elses.

As with the denigration of gay people, those words by Jesus have caused more suffering, more evil, more twisted screwedupedness from sexual self-repression and hatred, than I can even begin to catalog. It's certainly more suffering and needless, utterly pointless evil than I can bare to contemplate for long.

To sit around and condemn pornography is one thing: there are many things to criticize about the porn industry, the culture in which it takes place, it's implicit messages (when it sends any), as with virtually any human endeavor.

But to condemn it on the basis of that particular religious impulse is more morally obscene, in light of its vast and seemingly never ending harms, than anything that naked human bodies have ever shown a camera.

Posted by Bad | June 19, 2008 1:48 PM

I look at porn because the gays are getting married.

When my wife caught me looking at gay porn I told her I was only doing it because the gays are getting married. Not sure she bought it.

Posted by eh | June 19, 2008 1:50 PM

By the way, I can't believe how many people are completely failing to read the quote Ross is responding to here.

Key phrase: "But the proposition that one of them is any similarity between porn viewing and “having an actual affair” would not have occurred to me. Is this view held by any significant number of sane people?"

Yes, the Fox person said "equivalent." But Sanchez, whom Ross is responding to, responded to that term by going way far in the other direction: he claims that there is no similarity. Ross thinks that THAT is a bit silly.

And it is. Lots of spouses DO consider the use of porn to be a form of cheating. And it's not insane to feel that way. Different partners have very different boundaries about what, emotionally, hurts their feelings, inspires jealousy and so on. That many don't discuss these issues with each other ahead of time, map out boundaries, is yet ANOTHER crime to lay at the feet of sex-negatives. But is neither criminal nor insane if someone feels that their partner viewing porn is a form of cheating on them emotionally and even physically.

Posted by Bad | June 19, 2008 1:59 PM

Very well, Bad, you are correct: the author that Ross is replying to did, in fact, say "any simularity".

However, it's clear that this is hyperbole since it's trivially obvious that there are some simularities. I could note, for instance, that both involve nudity, or that both involve sexuality gratification. It's not necessary to construct a fine chain of logic involving continuums of moral behavior to dispute the literal claim.

If we put the hyperbole of the claim aside, it's fairly obvious that the real question is whether or not there is a non-trivial simularity between watching porn and having an affair. I'll agree with the majority of posters that Ross' continuum argument doesn't suffice to make that claim.

Now, if Ross really is trying to argue against the precise claim that there is no simularity, I would have to say that Ross is just engaging in sophistry since it's implausible that the person he's responding to is speaking literally.

In short, context matters.

Posted by Andrew Lias | June 19, 2008 2:36 PM

"Lots of spouses DO consider the use of porn to be a form of cheating. And it's not insane to feel that way."

Just because someone's spouse is insane doesn't mean they're right.

Posted by Reality Man | June 19, 2008 2:40 PM

And just because they're insane doesn't mean they're NOT right either, Reality Man -- just ask my wife...

Posted by AD | June 19, 2008 2:49 PM

Eh, I can kind of see Ross's point here. To the extent that one's wife or significant other could feel betrayed by one's viewing of pornography, it is sort of like cheating. I wouldn't say that similarity is particularly moral in nature, though.

Posted by vg | June 19, 2008 2:51 PM

Heh.

Julian Sanchez wrote "tossed off."

Heh.

Bemusedly, I remain

Ross Douthat's Hair

Posted by Ross Douthat's Hair | June 19, 2008 2:55 PM

Oh my god, these people are crazy!

I've used porn. I watch porn with my boyfriend. We read erotica together. I have to tell him, when company's coming over, to make sure he hides all the porn on our xbox in case I want to watch a G rated video with my friends. Once, I found a handful of dirty magazines in his overnight bag and was shocked... for about ten seconds. Then I laughed at the one called "Phone babes." When I'm not up for sex (which is often enough), I want him to have a safe, non-cheating way to satisfy himself.

If porn is the equivalent of having an affair, we have the equivalent of an open relationship.

(Guess what? We don't!)

Posted by Maggie | June 19, 2008 3:09 PM

What Andy Dufresne said. There are a lot of different levels of porn consumption. If a person's use of porn is so intense and time-consuming that it interferes with obligations to spouse and family, or if it leaves the spouse without any sexual outlet of her/his own, then there's a big problem. I wouldn't say it's exactly like an affair because there isn't a real, live other person to come around and make trouble, but at the extreme it gets pretty close.

It may be like alcohol in that respect. A drink now and then isn't usually a problem, especially not if one's partner likes it too, but some people manage to conduct life-long "affairs" with the bottle that interfere with all their human relationships.

Posted by M.C. | June 19, 2008 3:27 PM

"If we put the hyperbole of the claim aside, it's fairly obvious that the real question is whether or not there is a non-trivial similarity between watching porn and having an affair."

I'm not sure why people have such a hard time seeing Ross' point here. If you would pay a prostitute to "do stuff" in front of you, or slip dollar bills into a particular stripper's underwear every other night, and you can agree that your wife wouldn't be too happy with that, why is that really any different than watching a movie of the same. Because it's impersonal? You think prostitution is personal?

That just seems like a denial based on cultural obliviousness, not objective dissimilarity.

The point is that they are on a continuum. And at the same time, what spouses consider cheating is on a continuum. Many spouses are pro-porn. Many are dead set against it. Neither are "insane." It's a question of what hurts them or doesn't: how they think of it. Which is one reason why healthy relationships do best by talking this stuff out to some extent and figuring out where the boundaries really are.

As I note in my now comment-turned blog post, even sex-collumnist Dan Savage knows and says that it's very very common that women consider porn to be a form of cheating.

And yes, if your wife says it is, then insane or not, she's right! (oops, did I give away my marital status?!) :)

Posted by Bad | June 19, 2008 3:29 PM

This is like the guy who begins with a tennis ball and by incrimentally trading it for more valuable items ends up owning a boat or a house. The fact that you can reasonably jump between two items in the sequence does not mean that the first and last are equivalent.

Posted by Vermando | June 19, 2008 3:35 PM

I think everyone is missing one very important point: Ross only says it's cheating if you're paying for porn. In this day and age, who pays for porn?

Posted by matthew | June 19, 2008 3:36 PM

I think everyone is missing one very important point: Ross only says it's cheating if you're paying for porn. In this day and age, who pays for porn?

Quite right. Moreover, if you're watching amateur pr0n for free, it's like you're simply supporting someone else's expression of love and devotion. Nothing wrong with that!

Posted by coeruleus | June 19, 2008 4:53 PM

"The fact that you can reasonably jump between two items in the sequence does not mean that the first and last are equivalent."

Well good: lucky for Ross he never argued that they are. In fact, the Fox person never really even argued that they are: she's just describing how some people feel in the context of an article on recognizing the signs of porn addiction.

Posted by Bad | June 19, 2008 5:10 PM

Monogamy is a good idea in principle, but terrible in practice. Men typically have a far stronger sex drive than women, and it's common for the husband to turn to porn as a form of tolerated release in place of a spouse who is always "tired" and, even when ready, totally uninterested in the act.

Women need to understand that their male partners are probably more interested in sex than they let on. If they start ruling out porn as an option, then get ready for more affairs and dogging and whatever the hell else you call stepping out on the marriage.

PS Dan Savage, cleanup on aisle 9. Your advice is sorely needed in this thread.

Posted by Tim | June 20, 2008 10:04 AM

Tel - You may be right about what "most Christians" are hearing from the pulpit, but that just means they need to find better pulpits (or rather, better occupants thereof).

I am Lutheran. The interpretation of that passage from Matthew is so ingrained in Lutheran theology that I would expect it from any Lutheran pulpit, whether ELCA (the more liberal American Lutheran church body) or LCMS (the more conservative). Were I to hear otherwise, I would wonder how the seminary professors failed so badly.

As much as anything, I was responding to your aside "(One of the reasons I consider myself a Christian of only a very heretical sort, if a Christian at all.)" Theology matters. This is an unpopular opinion in many circles, where "theology" is imagined to be pointless bickering and hair splitting that serves no purpose. Genuine theology affects actual teaching and actual practice. If most Christian churches you have attended teach bad theology, you should go looking for something better.

Posted by Richard Hershberger | June 20, 2008 10:48 AM

Looks like Ross and Jimmy Carter agree on one thing at least.

There was a great bit on This American Life last weekend about an evangelical, who like many other evangelicals took a Biblical verse about lust being the same as adultery itself very seriously.

The guy then goes on to describe the living hell he goes through to avoid being attracting to women, including skipping swimming pools, immediately out tossing Sears cataloges and nearly drving off the road to avoid looking at a beer billboard.

There is even a whole industry devoted to help men kill their naturally developed instinct.

What a nightmare your life must be to wracked with so much guilt over sexual guilt.

Posted by am | June 20, 2008 11:55 AM

Looks like Ross and Jimmy Carter agree on one thing at least.

There was a great bit on This American Life last weekend about an evangelical, who, like many other evangelicals, took a Biblical verse about lust being the same as adultery itself very seriously.

The guy then goes on to describe the living hell he goes through to avoid being attracting to women, including skipping swimming pools, immediately out tossing Sears cataloges and nearly drving off the road to avoid looking at a beer billboard.

There is even a whole industry devoted to help men kill their naturally developed instinct.

What a nightmare your life must be to wracked with so much guilt over sexuality. Adulters should feel guilty because they betrayed and hurt someone they love, not because sex is inhertly bad -- a destructive belief built into Catholicism.

Posted by am | June 20, 2008 11:59 AM

am, you forgot the punchline of the episode. The guy, a virgin, went to a sex addiction help group and basically got a whole lot of shocked, confused looks. Then he went to his pastor for help. His pastor's advice? Go masturbate. And he did. And then everything was okay, and he went on to be a normal human being.

Posted by Bad | June 20, 2008 1:05 PM

Porn is not infidelity. It never was. It never will be. Infidelity is being married to someone but engaging in sexual relations with someone to whom you are not married. Porn is nothing of the sort.

It may not be a nice thing to do (looking at porn if you are married) and it may even be grounds for divorce for some people, but it is not, nor will it ever be, cheating. If a spouse looks at porn as cheating, then that spouse may need to talk to someone. They are living in their own dream world. You cheat by having sex with a real, living, human being, flesh and blood. You dont cheat by looking at images or pictures. Shame on Ross for making that connection.

Posted by paul | June 20, 2008 2:34 PM

Interesting to frame this discussion in context of emerging concepts such as "mirror neurons." The theory suggests that, as far as certain parts of the brain are concerned, "watching" is literally the same as "doing." This is a useful phenomenon for social beings to have evolved. Now me, I gave up on Christianity once I got an education, though I have to say, science is seeming to side with religion on this one (see above quoted passages where thought and deed are made tantamount). Funny how a human might intuit that knowledge in the absence of science...

I also have watched a fair amount of pornography in my life. My use has been steady since I was old enough to obtain it for free. I'm 24 now and am only recently seeing it in a less positive light--as more of a distraction, a crutch, an addiction, or a drug. My girlfriend, I should also mention, abhors it, and can scarcely fathom how I willfully subject myself to it. For her it means my heart is not hers. She gets jealous and doubts the sincerity of my love for her. I try to plead my case, but I certainly see her point. This is me. This is my relationship to pornography and how it enters into my life. I have my own ideas about what constitutes adultery and I will work them out with my loved one. I'm sure you do too. This is what's important. It's all subjective, there are no standards, but what er artificially create.

I guess I'm just rambling... The bottom line here is that the stupid "sexy" blog at Fox News which was created to generate advertising money whilest subtly (almost tacitly) imposing a conservative ideology, wrote something unsurprising about pornography. Is this not what we expect from a right-wing ideology machine like Fox News? Let them have their opinion, and let us each have ours. Do I believe they're wrong in saying this? Yes. But I inhabit a different moral universe than Fox News. One where religion, marriage, adultery, morality are concepts invented by humans for survival's sake. As society evolves so must these concepts. It's mutate or die. I think we're just seeing some pressure to mutate here.

Is it really surprising that Fox News is resisting evolution?

Posted by unfocused | June 20, 2008 3:17 PM

As I'm sure has been pointed out many times right now, why do people presume that the porn-watching is done without the knowledge or consent of the other partner, or that both partners do not watch porn?

Second, the main reason adultery is an ethical issue is that it has the risk of potential consequences to the spouse that the spouse is not aware of and did not consent to, primarily STDs and pregnancies, but also legal consequences in the case of prostitutes. There is no such risk from porn, and hence the obligation for disclosure and consent is proportionally lower.

With regard to the live voyeurism issue, the big difference is the strain on trust. People are not physically capable of copulating with a screen, so you don't need to take it on trust that there's nothing more going on than the voyeurism. In a private hotel room with a prostitute, there are no such assurances. To bring it around, I don't especially think a spouse has any pressing right to be involved in a decision to go to a strip club or live sex show, because those are generally pretty well-regulated places with oversight that prevents anything beyond actual voyeurism, so no, I don't think that voyeurism under controlled circumstances could reasonably be considered cheating by any sane person.

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Posted by ceqdz xuhvrbco | June 21, 2008 9:23 AM

Ultimately, porn is a stimulus used in masturbation. So, is masturbation cheating? The multi million dollar "porn industry" could really be called the "masturbation industry" but we don't say that because we can talk about porn more easily than we can talk about masturbation. Maybe the question "is porn cheating" is laden with a bit of residual masturbation guilt, you think?

Posted by joe | June 21, 2008 4:44 PM

There are those among us who believe that the immoral aspect of cheating isn't the "having sex" part, but rather the "Dishonesty" and "Disregard of feelings" part.

I masturbate and look and porn. So does my girlfriend. Do either of us regard it as cheating on the other? Hell no. It's an acknowledgement that we both get horny on occasion when the other isn't around. Conversely though, if that wasn't something well understood between us and we did it anyway, it could cause a problem.

Were either of us to go behind the other's back and sleep with someone else though, that would cause problems. That would be cheating, in my mind at least.

Alternatively - if either of us had a strong desire to be non-monogamous, I like to think that we'd be able to broach the subject and work out an arrangement where we could explore that. I wouldn't call that cheating.

Both the swinging and polyamorous communities provide models for how consensual non-monogamy can work, and I'd be hard pressed to consider those activities (done with the full knowledge and consent of all involved) can be considered cheating or even immoral.

The whole concept of "adultery" and "cheating" really stems from an era where "sex for pleasure" was taboo, and we had much less control over pregnancy, and men in particular could only guarantee paternity by ensuring his wife's faithfulness. These ideas are outdated.

Further, there's a mountain of sociological research - compounded by simple observation - that human beings are not naturally 100% monogamous. Men and women alike have instincts that drive them towards sex with people who aren't their primary partners. For many, porn is probably an outlet that lets them satisfy these urges. But in either case, it's something that every couple probably ought to acknowledge and consider when discussing their relationship boundaries.

Posted by Eric | June 22, 2008 4:52 PM

To steal a phrase from Larry Miller, the difference between adultery and watching porn is the same difference between shooting a bullet and throwing it.

Posted by john | June 23, 2008 10:51 AM

"So, is masturbation cheating?" Joe

TR: This might not have simple yes/no answer. The context of the act probably matters.

For example imagine a married man who runs into an ex-girlfriend at the supermarket. He calls her up, e-mails her, and starts feeling things about her again. Then they have phone sex.

Essentially phone sex is just masturbating. So is this situation cheating, not cheating, or something in between?

Posted by Thomas R | June 23, 2008 1:43 PM