In an opinion piece for The Week Wednesday, Damon Linker asks the question, “Is monogamy on the way out?” His answer: Despite the rise in polygamy advocates, probably not—but America's “peculiar mix of unfettered sexuality and stern disapproval” will keep producing a culture “marked by moral confusion, anxiety, and self-loathing.”
Linker begins by noting that some social conservatives argued last decade that gay marriage would undermine fidelity in marriage:
Many of them argued that homosexuals were much less inclined than heterosexuals to valorize the ideal of monogamy. Allowing gays and lesbians to marry would therefore introduce a polyamorous option into the institution, and adultery would come to be viewed as an acceptable option for all marriages.
Linker points to a “spate of recent articles explicitly making the case for polyamory” that seem to suggest the social conservatives were right:
The latest example appeared a few days ago in The New Republic (reprinted from the New Statesman). Three and a half years into a relationship with a woman, author Rosie Wilby finds that "other people act as our kindling. Love breeds love." The experience leads her to ask rhetorically: What if we all came to view "our relationships as a pyramid structure with our primary partner at the top and a host of lovers, friends, spiritual soul mates, colleagues, and acquaintances beneath that?"
Linker says that arguments like Wilby’s essay are “perfectly congruent” with the social conservative prediction: the polygamous movement is based on the notion that the “only valid moral consideration in a sexual relationship is individual consent.” But while this seems to spell doom for monogamy, Linker points to a recent Gallup poll that found that 91 percent of Americans disapprove of marital infidelity—a rate “higher than the rate of disapproval for human cloning and suicide.”
So what is the disconnect betwen the rise of "unfettered sexuality" and Americans' strong belief in the importance of faithfulness in marriage?
Linker argues that there’s a difference between people’s ideals and actions that largely comes from the country’s Judeo-Christian foundation, which teaches that “due to sin, temptation, and weakness of will, human beings will often, even usually, fail to live up to the moral ideals they profess.” This leads Linker to his closing thoughts: Monogamy will probably survive despite the rise of “unfettered sexuality,” but due to their Judeo-Christian values, Americans will remain in a state of moral confusion and self-hatred:
I can't say precisely why Americans believe so strongly in the ideal of monogamy. But they do, and the mere presence of temptations and an attitude of permissiveness in our culture shouldn't be taken as evidence (by either the advocates or opponents of sexual liberation) that they're on the cusp of rejecting that ideal.
On the contrary, I'd say that America's peculiar mix of unfettered sexuality and stern disapproval is much more likely to produce a culture marked by moral confusion, anxiety, and self-loathing. It certainly won't be the free-loving, happy-go-lucky, hippy-commune culture that the polyamorists crave and the social conservatives dread.
Image via CNN.
