WHAT'S FIDELITY GOT TO DO WITH IT? Maggie Responds

Dale, with all due respect I think you are too quick to treat Eve's question as essentially rhetorical or strategic. The answer you give to the question of why marriage and marriage alone of all relationships, is supposed to be exclusive is first of all social expectations. In other words, no particular reason that is just the way marriage has always been. Tradition isn't holding up as a very good reason these days and in any case, it is not really an answer to why tradition holds only THIS intimate relationship as requiring one to "forsake all others."

Answer two is of course an answer, but it is also circular: By forsaking all others sexually you invest more in the relationship. But why does one relationship "intrude" on another in this relation but not in almost any other intimate relationship? What is the good that excluding love with others creates? And why, might I add, is this not merely a social expectation, but a legal one?

The poverty of the way you and most of the legal profession these day approach the procreative dimension to sexuality is also I am afraid deeply revealed. Many couples do not want children Voila! The fact that sex makes babies is irrelevant.

Maybe it's the fact that I had a baby at 22 that makes this reasoning seem so shallow and preposterous to me, whereas it seems so strong and ironclad to you. I dunno. Thinking doesn't have that much to do with makin' babies, Dale.



posted by maggie at 7:11 PM | link

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