Sex and Law: If you've been reading Boudicca's posts on the matter, you know that the next 'flash point' in the morality debate is looming over the horizon in the form of polyamory. That is, multiple marriage partners.
Is this at all surprising? By that, I mean are we surprised that sex is once again the issue that gets our collective danders up?
I think it's time to get to the very heart of the issue here and ask the questions that everyone is dancing around: Is a certain sexual morality necessary for our society to function? If so, how can society best encourage that morality? If not, why not?
Now, if your answer is 'yes,' I want you to explain why, and if your answer is 'no,' I want you to explain why not.
I really want comments on this one, because I think everyone has an opinion - unlike my more abstruse posts on Islamic monetary policy, I think people can relate to this. So, fire away!
Is this at all surprising? By that, I mean are we surprised that sex is once again the issue that gets our collective danders up?
I think it's time to get to the very heart of the issue here and ask the questions that everyone is dancing around: Is a certain sexual morality necessary for our society to function? If so, how can society best encourage that morality? If not, why not?
Now, if your answer is 'yes,' I want you to explain why, and if your answer is 'no,' I want you to explain why not.
I really want comments on this one, because I think everyone has an opinion - unlike my more abstruse posts on Islamic monetary policy, I think people can relate to this. So, fire away!
posted by Joshua @ 11:26 AM
10 Comments:
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Is a certain sexual morality required for our society to function? Yes. What is at issue here is the meaning of a Liberal society. My understanding is that just like Capitalist, Socialist, and Democratic, the adjective Liberal is here referring to a society’s overall leaning relative to other societies. Liberal does not imply complete personal liberty any more than capitalist (or socialist) implies completely state unregulated (or regulated) economies or democratic implies direct voting by the population on every government action. Thus, the debate is(as are the debates on economic and representation systems) about degree. So the question becomes “how much liberty (not freedom, but I’ll post about that later) can a stable (and just) society give on the issue sexuality and in what contexts?”
I see no problem, morally or practically, with allowing consenting adults to do pretty much anything they want with each other, so long as there are no serious adverse affects on other people. Now, the important part of the “adverse affects” clause deals with commitments and obligations both legal and emotional to other people. Two single folks should pretty much be able to do what they like in the privacy of their own home. A married man having consensual sex with someone other than his wife is not okay (although there is some argument rich topsoil in the event that the wife gives consent) because of the aforementioned commitments.
However, marriage is a more complicated matter because it serves many different purposes in our society. Furthermore, the different aspects of marriage’s function, are differently important to different individuals. For instance, imagine a married couple, both of whom agree that they want to include a third person (sexually and emotionally) in their relationship. They might claim that to them, marriage is a matter of mutual respect and joint decision making and that because it is something they both want, no one has any business telling them what they can and cannot have in their marriage. However, were they to have a child, someone might argue that marriage also servers to create a stable and balanced (and some might argue developmentally preferable) environment for a growing child and that this function of their marriage is ruined by the addition of a third individual. There is also the legal issue of property and joint ownership. Marriage has in almost every culture, historically served a economic contractual role, joining families and assets. This issue is confused in a triad such as the De Bruijn trio.
The latter issue is not a problem, conceptually, in the case of monogamous homosexual unions, but the former presents potential difficulties for both homosexual and polyamorous relationships. I don’t want to get into the childrearing issue right now (although I would love comments from people who have thought about/studied/gathered more information about it than I have) but I do think this leads us back to another fundamental question about how we structure societies; namely, to what extent can laws be made with the intent of changing people’s behavior? Put another way, what aspects of our behavior are “human nature” and which fall under the purview of a person’s will or upbringing. If we fail to create systems that take human nature into account, people will break the systems in short order. Likewise, if we believe too absolutely in genetic and/or developmental destiny, then we rob people of their agency and responsibility for their actions, with equally disastrous consequences.
The key, I think, is to “trust in Allah, but tie your camel”. That is, take the fundamentals of human nature (patterns which are mostly readily apparent to anyone who reads a little history or observes the world around them) into account when structuring human institutions, but also assume people to be responsible (and accountable) for their own actions. The point is that human institutions do not exist simply to allow people to follow their natural inclinations. In fact they are often designed (or rather serve - “designed” has connotations of teleological purpose which are misleading) to protect and encourage those aspects of human nature beneficial to collective welfare (childrearing, education, collective security), while curbing (marriage vows, anti-murder and theft laws) or productively channeling (capitalism) those aspects detrimental thereto. I would even go out on a limb and suggest a sort of darwinesque (although I shudder to bring the often misunderstood and misapplied ideas of evolution and natural selection – ample fuel for many future posts fear not!) whereby societies which develop institutions structured in such a way that they do NOT mitigate some of the excesses of human nature, inevitably fail to endure.
What does this have to do with the marriage issues at hand? Well I think that jealously is a fairly well documented and universal human trait, as is the need for companionship. Furthermore, the often tragic interplay between these two traits is similarly well chronicled. From what I know of people and their emotions, I don’t consider it likely that there will ever be even a sizable minority of people capable of maintaining stable polyamorous relationships which adequately perform all of the functions of traditional marriage. Then again, someone might argue that there are a fair number of traditional marriages which don’t adequately perform all of the functions of traditional marriage. Not an easy issue.
One final ancillary issue, and then I will leave you all with more questions than before and very few definitive answers, as is my wont. I dislike the use of the term “slippery slope” as it carries with it the implication first that the descent proceeds by some inevitable gravity once the initial steps are taken and secondly that the destination is some undesirable pit. I’m arguing against myself here, but I prefer the image of tunneling one’s way from one cave to another. Creating the connecting takes continuous and concerted effort and even once the new cave is accessible, (ie gay or poly marriage is legal) habitation of it is still completely optional. Okay, that’s a terrible metaphor, but it does illustrate (however crudely) what I think are the misconceptions caused by talking in terms of slippery slopes.
What do you all think?
this wouldn't otherwise be an anonymous post, had blogger not forced me to log-on, which would require me to actually have some blogging site detailing the rather banal and trite events of my life. as a first post, i'd have totally responded to the Islamic Monetary policy if i had in fact seen it first. okay, all that aside, here's how i respond to C.R.'s post above-- keeping in mind, i'm on a schedule here, i want to mention two points. On the subject of children, an important point to consider in relation to raising children v. polyamory, without needing to bring up David Archard's already well theorized points on the subject of children's rights (eps in a multicultural society), is that this issue is a dangerous one for what it assumes is necessary to the guidance of free-thinking, autonomous adults. The proof for why you would want free-thinking, autonomous adults, notwithstanding. Can/Should we assign a number to who can raise a child to such standardz? We'd be burdened to defend why a single parent v. a couple or moreover a heterosexual couple v. a homosexual couple might be more or less capable of raising a child-- and perhaps relying more on psychology as a dictate of what a "healthy" person is rather than on principles of the "I" who is capable of interacting in a free society. But we cannot deny that home life impacts a child, and we need to determine whether there is in fact a question of harm where a child gorws up in an environment w/ several parental figures-- begging the question of what is harm? I'm prepared to answer that question, but I've got limited time and want to hear what other people think.
Also, C.R.-- dude a slippery slope is a slippery slope because it's a chain reaction not because it assumes there's some sort of automatic gravitational pull. -DRawlsian
And now for some civil-libertarian claptrap!
Like any aspect huddled near the center of our lives, sex will play a role in society, and notably, social politics. Thus, it is inevitible that society will clamor for a few ground rules to be followed, enforcable by the state and punishable when broken. As with any subject, the laws created should aim for the ideal that one's rights extend - and are protected - to the limit of their encroaching on someone elses rights. All other governance is then left up to personal responsibility. At the crux of accountability and protection comes the concept of consent, and is thus really the ONLY necessary basis for any governmental role in sexuality. Consent-based laws cover rape, harrassment, and the guy on the playground in an overcoat, but leave the swingers and leather clubs free to do as they wish.
I'm sorry if this is condescending or pedantic, but I'm getting to my point.
Polyamory, like Gay Marraige - and actually, polygamy is multiple spouses, polyamory is just multiple lovers - is practiced only by a minority, but is still only fought with through bigotry. Now I'm separating bigotry from ignorance here, because I'm certain that alot of the bigots know exactly what their doing, but the issue still breaks down like this: in a free society, we only limit our rights and the rights of our neighbors in order to protect and preserve the greater rights, e.g. we lose the right to murder but gain the right to be free from murderers. These laws remove the rights of a small minority, yes, but at no gain toward society or, indeed, anyone, and more insidiously remove those right specifically to disinfranchise the unpopular group. That's bigorty, and that's evil, no matter how dressed up in family values it is.
I don't know if anyone has seen it, but the movie 'Kinsey' is very relevant here. The future Mrs. Tacitean and I watched it recently and highly recommend it.
For you Amazonians, a link can be found here:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007PALGG/qid=1136475767/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-8451963-4054547?n=507846&s=dvd&v=glance
Prometheus, I think many people within the Liberal paradigm agree with what you have said concerning personal choices and behavior. However, the real issue is not things like sodomy law (which are rediculous in the extreme), but the issue of marriage. Marriage exists in a number of dimensions, one of them legal, and in that repsect we cannot simply say "whatever floats your boat and doesn't rock others'".
Letting people have threesomes is fine. A three way marriage cannot be so simply accomodated because it does not fit into the current legal structure. The legal structure can be changed, but that merely opens the debate anew as to why that structure is the way it is in the first place.
I've been slow to comment on this post because I know in my heart that a marriage of more than 2 people is wrong, but for the life of me, I can't find a logical reason why that must be so.
I don't buy the argument that just because a person is bisexual means that said person must have a legal union with both a man and a woman. As mentioned in a post on Andrew Sullivan's website, even heterosexual or homosexual people are attracted to a wide variety of "types." I've had crushes on all sorts of types of men, but that doesn't mean that I need to have a legal arrangement that recognizes my associations with each. Nope. I've been able to narrow it down to just one.
Consenting adults should be free to do whatever, but I don't think that the government should feel compelled to recognize every such arrangement.
Also, as Socratic mentions, there is an entire legal framework built upon the notion of a marriage being between two people. Think about what must happen to tax law, health insurance and pension coverage, immigration law, to name a few. With that in mind, yes, our government and society rely on this certain sexual morality to function.
I have no problem at all with a redefinition of marriage so long as it only involves two people, but I do think that is child's play compared with redefining the number of people involved.
Taking this away from the strictly 'legal' side for a second - I think Socratic and Boudicca have both produced very solid arguments there - I will don the hat of a moral traditionalist to answer Prometheus's important 'original reasoning or lack thereof' critique.
Implicit in the idea of society is the notion that individuals give up the freedom to do whatever they want to gain a measure of protection from other individuals doing whatever they want.
Monogamous marrige fits nicely into that paradigm. Each partner gives up the right to sexual exploration outside of the marriage, but in exchange gains the far more worthy benefits of enjoying true love, help raising children, companionship in old age, (traditionally) membership in two families, and the like. Note that inherent here is the equality of partners: each are given the same 'rules' to follow.
Polyamory is discomfiting from a traditional standpoint precisely because it's based on the contravention of these rules. It's a pursuit of individual desire at the expense of the strength of marriage bond. I personally find it a bit unnerving because the lack of equality.
Indeed, in the example cited in the Kurtz article, it seemed more to me that the men in the polyamorous relationships really wanted sanction to cheat on their spouses. Isn't that a recognition that his original wife no longer interests him?
Polygamy in the traditional Islamic sense is allowed but only under exacting regulations that ensure each wife is treated equally. To those who say it's nearly impossible to treat each wife equally, well, that's the point.
Polyamory even mocks these polygamous restraints. What is to say that our Dutch friend in the article may not decide his two wives are insufficient for his desires and seek a third? I find it staggeringly hard to believe that the earlier two wives would be 'okay' with this, despite what they say. Even more so, what if the third wife wanted to bring her husband into the union, but the husbands remain staunchly heterosexual? Would he be delighted at the prospect of sharing his three wives with another man? We cannot simply will away jealousy because we think it unenlightened and inconvenient.
It seems to me that if someone wishes to explore their sexual desires with a cast of multiple changing partners they have every right to remain single and do just that. But let's not confuse such hedonism with ideal marriage. Marriage is a commitment to another person, not a commitment to one's self and not to be taken lightly.
Here's some more stuff about polygamy and polyamory:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110007775
http://instapundit.com/archives/027911.php
Kurtz continues the polyamory debate here.
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