Sexual morality is one of the most important elements in forming culture. That is why those who seek to destroy existing paradigms often subvert cultural status quos through transgressive sexual advocacy, normalization, and/or behavior.
For good and ill, that was how the Sexual Revolution was won. Even so, until recently, sexual bonding was all but universally considered to be a primarily a matter of “pairing,” meaning people—whether straight or gay, married or single—coming together as couples.
We only need look at recent stories and columns published by the New York Times to see how far the polyamory push has advanced already. Once known as “the Gray Lady,” when it comes to sexuality as it interacts with culture and politics, the Times is anything but staid and sober. Indeed, the Times wields its news and opinion pages as cultural cudgels attacking what still remains of traditional Judeo/Christian morality.
Other recent Times’ pieces have more explicitly endorsed polyamory. Last year, the paper published a long photo essay entitled, “Polyamory Works for Them,” painting the relationships of the featured polyamorists—known by the nonjudgmental term, “ethical non-monogamy”—with the warmth of an autumn fireplace.
That, of course, would be the point. Spar writes, “Once we start imagining, and then living in, a world of fluid parenting, it becomes increasingly likely that we will also undo or at least revise our centuries’ old conviction that procreative unions—like Noah’s animals—come only in pairs. Maybe our species’ new ark is composed of a motlier crew; of threesomes and foursomes, old and young, men and women and across the spectrum of gender identity, reproducing with whomever they choose and loving as they desire.”
What to do? This is a hard movement to defend against in a free society. Unrelated consenting adults should be able to engage in “domesticity” in whatever combinations they please without fear of criminal penalty. So, fear of the law is out. Most might, as I do, think it is highly immoral. Shunning might be appropriate—although we are so afraid of being labeled “judgmental” these days, that isn’t likely to succeed.
At the same time, I strongly believe there should be a strong public pushback to the polyamory push while it remains in its embryonic stage. The idea is to persuade people not to yield to sexual temptation. In this regard, we need to relearn how to make moral arguments again, and this issue could provide the opportunity to recharge that form of suasion.
At the same time, we should never yield politically and legally to the polyamory imperative. Such groupings should never be recognized as a valid social institution by the state. Group marriage—polygamy--should never be legalized. Nor should inheritance rules recognize these unmarried polyamorous members as legally related.
When same sex marriage was being debated, some opponents warned that legally recognizing such unions as a valid marriage would lead inexorably to normalizing polyamory. After all, the argument went, once a venerable institution like marriage is redefined so dramatically, what is there to stop the remaking of other cultural and sexual norms?
That process has now clearly started. But that doesn’t mean it will succeed. Hopefully, former political contestants on that contentious cultural and moral issue can put aside their past differences and join together to disprove the opponents’ “polygamy warning” by insisting that monogamy be maintained as the sexual and child-rearing norm for society.