The next issue of New York Magazine is devoted almost entirely to the promotion of polyamory, including a lengthy feature story titled “A Practical Guide to Modern Polyamory: How to open things up for the curious couple.”
I just wrote about why polyamory doesn’t work in response to a New Yorker article promoting polyamory here, so I am not going to go into another in-depth explanation of how humans are hardwired to form committed pair bonds through physical intimacy and that jealousy is, therefore, a completely natural reaction to our spouses spending precious time giving others their inherently limited attention.
I will note, however, that polyamory has only gained in popularity since the Supreme Court created a right to same-sex marriage in 2015. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority decision itself is an homage to monogamous marriage, but sizable elements of the LGBT movement have always taken offense to that opinion as being overly heteronormative.
Obergfell v Hodges could have been an opportunity for the LGBT movement to embrace monogamy and help society properly channel sexual desire through the institution of marriage. But that does not seem to be what has happened or what they intend to do going forward. Here is Dan Savage, one of the biggest promoters of same-sex marriage, talking with Ezra Klein:
“There’s a really interesting study out of the Netherlands looking at marriage. Netherlands is the place that’s had marriage equality for the longest — gay marriage for the longest. And interestingly, they found, despite people’s assumptions, that gay male couples are the least likely to divorce; straight couples were more likely, lesbian couples most likely. Lesbian couples and straight couples most likely to be monogamous; gay couples least likely to be monogamous…
“And you look at this study, and you read it, and you think, well, maybe gay couples are doing something right here, and I think, as more gay people have come out, and more straight people have gotten to the gay people that they knew, or gotten to know gay people who they didn’t know, they’ve seen that at work in our relationships. And more straight people have at least entertained the thought of there being different possibilities, which, in a way, ironically, is the stated fear of social conservatives from the ‘70s and ‘80s, when I was a kid — that gay people led these hedonistic lifestyles, and straight people were going to be tempted to adopt gay, hedonistic lifestyles. And we’ve kind of seen that come to pass.”
Now Savage isn’t nearly as clever as he thinks he is. The study from the Netherlands doesn’t show that gay couples divorce less; it shows that gay male couples divorce less. Gay women couples are actually more likely to divorce than straight couples. So it’s not as if sleeping with someone of the same sex is some magic way to prevent divorce. It’s just that men find it easier to separate physical and emotional intimacy than women do.
But by normalizing gay male promiscuity within marriage, Savage and his monogamish fellow travelers are weakening the institution of marriage for everyone. Men and women are just built differently. The rules that may work for male-male relationships are not going to work for male-female relationships.
Take Savage’s adage that all married people should be “good, giving, and game.” “Good,” as in we should strive to be good in bed for our partner (no argument there). “Giving,” as in sometimes you give physical affection to your partner without expecting anything in return (again, sounds reasonable). And then “game,” as in we should be game for whatever our partner wants us to do in bed. This last item is most definitely not reasonable, especially considering what Savage says should happen if your spouse is not “game” for your every kinky desire. “If you are expected to be monogamous and have one person be all things sexually for you, then you have to be whores for each other. You have to be up for anything.”
In other words, if one spouse, almost always the woman, doesn’t want to do what her husband wants or doesn’t want to do it as often as her husband does, then Savage says the husband should be allowed to meet his sexual needs with someone else.
That is a recipe for emotional abuse and a lot of divorce.
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To the extent that the LGBT wants to participate in marriage, they should adopt heterosexual norms of monogamy and fidelity. No, straight people aren’t perfect. But there is a big difference between stigmatizing sex outside of monogamous marriage and normalizing it.
To the extent that the LGBT community is trying to normalize sex outside of monogamous marriage, they are betraying the institution and undermining the foundation of civil society.