On Fidelity, Or the Lack Thereof

One thing is certain about the same-sex marriage debate. This will not be marriage as we know it. In fact it will be quite different. How do we know this? Because the homosexual activists have told us this. They have made it quite clear time and time again that the ‘oppressive’ and ‘restrictive’ concepts of faithfulness, fidelity and monogamy which is the bedrock of traditional marriage is just really not their thing.

The idea of one life-long partner “till death do us part” is not exactly high up on their list of what they consider marriage to be about. Many have said that the kind of marriage they envisage should be radically different. It should allow for extra-marital outlets as a matter of course.

But don’t take my word for it. Just listen to what they themselves are saying. And I have been listening to them for two decade now, and what they are saying in their own books, newspapers and magazines is often quite different from what they are presenting to the public at large.

Of course some are a bit more honest, and happen to spill the beans in the MSM. A great example of this occurred just this past weekend. I have already written about an incredibly wretched show on Sunday night which was the epitome of bias and blatant propaganda.

The Compass program on ABC TV featuring a “debate” on same-sex marriage was as lopsided and one-sided an affair as you can get. I wrote about it here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2011/07/11/the-abc-should-be-put-out-of-its-misery/

But a few interesting nuggets did emerge from the show. Australia’s leading homosexual activist made it perfectly clear what he thought of those old wasted bourgeois concepts such as faithfulness and fidelity. This is what he had to say:

“I am enormously proud of the fact that I am in a relationship that has been all the things you all want from relationships, with the exception of sexual fidelity which I think is crap for most people and doesn’t exist by and large.”

In case you missed that let me repeat it for you: he regards the idea of sexual fidelity as “crap”. Of course he has been saying this for years, so nothing new here. Way back in 1986 he was saying the same thing: “[W]e don’t find one partner sufficiently fulfilling. People who argue that there would be no problem if all gay men would just be monogamous are ignoring both medical and emotional realities; with an unknown number of people already exposed to ‘the virus’ and an unknown incubation period, such advice is just too restrictive.”

He was quite candid about all this. He went on to say, “it does seem clear that among gay men a long-lasting monogamous relationship is almost unknown. Indeed both gay women and gay men tend to be involved in what might be called multiple relationships, though of somewhat different kinds.”

Altman is not alone in thinking along these lines. Plenty of other Australian homosexuals have said much the same. Another activist is quite clear about rejecting what he considers the straitjacket of heterosexual marriage: “[F]ull recognition for same-sex marriages will encourage all those shallow promiscuous gay men to settle down in Box hill with Mr Right and breed shitzus. Speaking as a shallow promiscuous gay man, I remain sceptical about this.”

He continues, “Straight men, it seems, are quite shameless in their perverted desires, and in their enthusiasm for illicit sex of all kinds. And this after 2,000 years of the civilising influence of Christian marriage! On the evidence so far, I think it will take more than the Ontario Supreme Court [and its support of same-sex marriage] to get the majority of gay men to get married and settle down.”

Such quotes can be multiplied at length. Add to them quotes from overseas and you can quickly fill a book. Let me start with just one recent example. A very telling comment came from a Toronto homosexual magazine editor who said, “Ambiguity is a good word for the feeling among gays about marriage. I’d be for marriage if I thought gay people would challenge and change the institution and not buy into the traditional meaning of ‘till death do us part’ and monogamy forever. We should be Oscar Wildes and not like everyone else watching the play.”

There are hundreds of such admissions one could appeal to here. Let me conclude with a very interesting article which appeared in The New York Times just this month. Mark Oppenheimer wrote a lengthy piece about this topic called, “Married, With Infidelities”. The entire article is well worth looking at but let me offer just a small portion of it:

“[W]e think about how hard monogamy is, how hard marriage is and about whether we make unrealistic demands on the institution and on ourselves. That, anyway, is what Dan Savage, America’s leading sex-advice columnist, would say. Although best known for his It Gets Better project, an archive of hopeful videos aimed at troubled gay youth, Savage has for 20 years been saying monogamy is harder than we admit and articulating a sexual ethic that he thinks honors the reality, rather than the romantic ideal, of marriage.

“In Savage Love, his weekly column, he inveighs against the American obsession with strict fidelity. In its place he proposes a sensibility that we might call American Gay Male, after that community’s tolerance for pornography, fetishes and a variety of partnered arrangements, from strict monogamy to wide openness. Savage believes monogamy is right for many couples. But he believes that our discourse about it, and about sexuality more generally, is dishonest.

“Some people need more than one partner, he writes, just as some people need flirting, others need to be whipped, others need lovers of both sexes. We can’t help our urges, and we should not lie to our partners about them. In some marriages, talking honestly about our needs will forestall or obviate affairs; in other marriages, the conversation may lead to an affair, but with permission. In both cases, honesty is the best policy.

“‘I acknowledge the advantages of monogamy,’ Savage told me, ‘when it comes to sexual safety, infections, emotional safety, paternity assurances. But people in monogamous relationships have to be willing to meet me a quarter of the way and acknowledge the drawbacks of monogamy around boredom, despair, lack of variety, sexual death and being taken for granted’.”

It is always nice to get a bit of honesty like this from these leading homosexual activists. And as I said, I could produce plenty more such quotations. It is quite clear that when most homosexuals talk about marriage, they sure don’t have in mind what most people think of when discussing marriage.

Even though there are plenty of problems in heterosexual marriages, most begin with the assumption that it should be an exclusive, live-long union which involves commitment, faithfulness and fidelity. Very few couples enter into a marriage subscribing to the idea of an “open marriage” where anything goes.

And the statistical data confirms all this. Oppenheimer cites a study from the University of Chicago undertaken last year which showed that 86 per cent of women and 80 per cent of men remained faithful in their marriages. A major 1994 study also conducted by the same university found the same sorts of figures. So these patterns have been fairly consistent over the years.

The truth is, homosexuals want all the symbolism and benefits of traditional marriage, yet they want to retain their swinging, promiscuous, multi-partner lifestyle. There are plenty of other reasons why we must say no to the oxymoron of homosexual marriage, but clearly this is a sufficient reason in and of itself to withstand this push.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/magazine/infidelity-will-keep-us-together.html?pagewanted=all

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