I gotta hand it to you adaher: when it comes to tortured rationalizations, you never disappoint.
Firstly, while some participants in the sexual revolution advocated multiple partners and had little trouble with adultery, the sexual revolution was not, for the most part, about legitimizing deception and dishonesty. It was about leaving people free to explore their sexuality in ways that were not constrained by the narrow expectations of heterosexual marriage.
There is nothing inconsistent about supporting the sexual revolution and opposing adultery. Hell, there is nothing inconsistent about advocating 20-person orgies and opposing adultery. I’m not a particular fan of adultery, but i also believe that every single person has the right to engage in whatever sexual practices he or she wants, as long as all parties are consenting and no-one gets hurt.
And if you think adultery was somehow absent, or even uncommon, before the sexual revolution, i’ve got a large section of swampland in Florida that you might also be interested in. There is also no necessary connection, in my opinion, between infidelity and marriage. It is no more or less acceptable for me to cheat on my wife now than it would have been when we lived together but were not yet married.
And the whole battle for gay marriage was less about the sacredness of marriage than about the fact that gay people deserve the same rights in society as straight people. The benefits of marriage are both symbolic (an opportunity to demonstrate one’s commitment to society) but also real and tangible, in terms of things like taxation, spousal benefits, and a whole raft of other civil and political issues. The gay marriage battle did not really change the value of marriage; it simply made clear that, whatever value marriage has, it should apply equally to all people.
Your simplistic binarism of marriage as either sacred or a “valueless compact” is asinine. So is your earlier effort to somehow equate adultery to things like rape, and sexual harassment.
Rape you have a point. Sexual harassment? I think that most women would place their spouse cheating on them well above sexual harassment on the “awful things that can happen to me” scale.
Perhaps, but I don’t see that entering the public policy debate. It’s one thing to say adultery is wrong, another to start prosecuting people for it (again).
But it’s not about which is worse. It’s about whether they can be compared in that way.
If someone sexually harasses you, they are doing something TO you, in a very direct and tangible sense. Adultery is not the same. You can be a victim of adultery, but not in the same way. In fact, if you’re the victim of adultery, it’s precisely because the offender is doing something with someone else.
That doesn’t mean adultery is any less painful. It doesn’t mean that adultery is right. It doesn’t even mean, really, that adultery is less bad than sexual harassment. But it IS different, in important ways.
I should add, by the way, that i reject your basic premise that adultery somehow became more acceptable over the period since the sexual revolution. Adultery is and has always been viewed negatively among the vast majority of the population, even while remaining quite common as a practice. When people find out that someone is an adulterer, they often judge that person for it, and victims of adultery generally get lots of support and solidarity from their friends and family. I’ve seen it happen on quite a few occasions.
Adultery is one of those things that almost everyone agrees is wrong, on some level or another, and yet that some people apparently still can’t resist.
But it’s not wrong in the sense that it will cause any kind of ostracization, the way other abuse of women does. It’s not even a bar to getting elected to public office anymore.
But it’s not considered an example of shoddy treatment of women, thus causing the person’s commitment to women’s issues to be called into question. Not yet anyway. And it’s not just about the wife, men take advantage of their mistresses too, leading them to think that there’s a chance for it to turn into something more.
And when one thinks about it, isn’t white really the blackest color?
And up is even more down than actual down.
Nothing is more peaceful than war. Scalia, by being so conservative, was the most liberal jurist on the supreme court. Martin Shkreli was really saving lives by charging $750 per 60-year-old pill. Gay marriage was an attempt to destroy marriage which actually saved it.
Damn. I’m going to perform charity by stealing from the poor now.
Sure, but it finally caught up with him. He just lost an bid to be governor after being the favorite, and the scandal was a big part of that because it came up in the GOP primary and GOP voters finally noticed.
When did you become female? I find it funny that you have so much to say about women’s attitudes. Adultery is not a “women’s issue”, it was only harder in the past on the woman than a man whose wife cheats because of her economic dependence on her husband which made it hard to leave. That dependence was the real issue, and is for the most part relegated to the past.
Not in Minnesota!
Our state statutes defines adultery as a crime that only a married woman can be guilty of. And it can only be rosecuted based on a claim from her husband. (So I guess married lesbians are safe, too.)