Adultery is Good, You Say?

If only your marriage was 'a little gayer,' the NYT says, it would be happier too! By 'gayer' they especially mean more welcoming of adultery.

One distinctive strength of male couples is that their tendency to candidly discuss respective preferences extends to sexuality as well, including choices that may startle some heterosexuals. For example, while the extent of non-monogamy in gay-male partnerships is often exaggerated, openly non-monogamous relationships are more common than among lesbians or heterosexuals. Many gay couples work out detailed agreements about what kinds of sexual contact are permissible outside the relationship, under what circumstances and how often.

Longtime readers will recall that this was not only expected here but fielded as an argument in favor of civil partnerships instead of 'gay marriage.'

This is exactly what we should do: create a separate institution for non-marriage partnerships that can be judged by its own standards. Thus, if for example adultery should prove to be less of a concern in partnerships containing only men -- as many "same sex marriage" supporters openly proclaim -- we don't end up with a watering-down of the protections against adultery in traditional marriages. (If anything, those are far too watery already.) Let them do the things they want, just keep a distinction so we aren't forced to collapse the categories when we come before courts of law. It's only sensible to believe that the needs of these kinds of unions might come apart, so we ought to have the ability to address that in the law.

Now we are at the point that the categories have collapsed. In a traditional, heterosexual marriage, showing that your partner was an adulterer was not only grounds for divorce but for the judge to grant you favorable terms in the division of property. Now we must instead learn that adultery should be negotiated, so that in all marriages it is neither grounds for divorce nor for a punitive division of property. The "Rule of Law" means we must all play by the same rules; there is only one set of laws governing all marriages, and these marriages "work better." We must all learn the new lessons.

Along the way, let us pause to notice the expected conclusion that heterosexual men are the only bad actors:

Researchers recently asked three sets of legally married couples — heterosexual, gay and lesbian — to keep daily diaries recording their experiences of marital strain and distress. Women in different-sex marriages reported the highest levels of psychological distress. Men in same-sex marriages reported the lowest. Men married to women and women married to women were in the middle, recording similar levels of distress.

What’s striking, says the lead author of the study, Michael Garcia, is that earlier research had concluded that women in general were likely to report the most relationship distress. But it turns out that’s only women married to men.

Maybe it's heterosexuals in general who can't get along, but women do all the suffering; those darned heterosexual men end up happier (though not as happy as the men who can avoid dealing with women entirely)! Clearly gayness for everyone is the best, preferable solution: human segregation by sex should become the ordinary norm. If you still want some heterosexual sex in your new gay union, that's ok; just include some arrangement for it in your 'detailed agreements about what kinds of sexual contact are permissible outside the relationship, under what circumstances and how often.'

UPDATE: You could also read the findings as anti-woman: after all, men who are married to women are no happier than women who are married to women. Women who marry men only get angrier. True happiness only comes when you can finally get rid of the women. That’s why they’re called “gay”!