HuffPo's Cheatin' Heart -- More Anti-Monogamy Propaganda
Summer is approaching, and wedding season is kicking into high gear. And the Huffington Post is celebrating by declaring war on marriage (of the traditional variety, it has no problem with gay marriage), arguing that monogamy is impossible and that cheating is desirable.
The Huffington Post has developed an obsession with cheating, and has spurned the very concept of monogamy. Contributors “condemn the expectation of monogamy,” argue that “marriage forces love into a single, finite, unforgiving, inflexible model,” and complain that “monogamy is failing men.”
HuffPo’s most recent celebration of infidelity was Eric Anderson’s May 19 piece “Is Cheating a Rational Choice?” Anderson is a sociologist whose stated desire is to “challenge homophobia, sexism, heterosexism, and monogamism in order to help improve standards of equality for everyone.”
Anderson’s piece dripped with indignation that open relationships and cheating were stigmatized. He declared “I condemn the expectation of monogamy,” lamenting: “Few, however, highlight the obvious answer to the dilemma of monogamy and cheating: sexually open relationships. Here, in an egalitarian manner, a couple reserves emotional fidelity, while structuring in rules for extra-dyadic, recreational sex.”
This wasn’t Anderson’s first HuffPo foray into pro-cheating territory. Vicki Larson conducted an uncritical interview with Anderson on Jan. 4, titled “Why Men Need to Cheat.” In that interview, Anderson argued that “monogamy is failing men” and claimed that “An undiscovered affair allows them [men] to keep their relationship and emotional intimacy, and even if they're busted it's a lot easier than admitting that they wanted to screw someone else in the first place.”
Larson, like Anderson, displayed a fondness for cheating. In her April 21 post “Why Men Should Take a Lesson from Women in Cheating,” Larson argued that men should take a lesson from women and cheat more discreetly: “So, just imagine how the Secret Service scandal might have played out if after the big booze fest, each man slipped off solo, hit up a hooker and quietly took her to his room (and paid her the asking price, obviously; you mean we're getting underpaid here, too?). No scandal, no disgrace, and his sweetheart at home would be none the wiser. Now, that's the way to cheat!”
Other HuffPo contributors unabashedly promoted cheating as a positive good. On May 10, Susan Shapiro Barash wrote “Why Women Cheat: How Women’s Infidelities Can Save Marriage,” and claimed that women’s affairs could actually save marriages: “Of the wives with whom I've spoken, close to half believe that the 'other man' can actually help them to stay in an unhappy or suboptimal marriage because they find their happiness with the lover.”
To prove this dubious claim, Barash cited her own “study” of “nearly sixty” women engaging in extramarital affairs, derived from first-person accounts of cheating women. In other words, Barash’s research took as gospel the claims of a non-representative sample of cheating women. Her study ignores the inconvenient fact that infidelity is a leading cause of divorce.
Donna Flagg even argued in an April 17 post that marriage was on some level anti-human: “The problem is that marriage forces love into a singular, finite, unforgiving, inflexible model that allows no room for any other kind. There is one expectation imposing what you can feel and what you can't. Period. In some ways it prevents us from being human.”
The “cheating is good” and “monogamy is impossible” mentality seems to be part of the modus operandi of the Huffington Post. After all, HuffPo has become a billboard for cheating website Ashley Madison, and even created a divorce section before setting up its marriage section. Anderson, Larson, Barash and Flagg merely reflect the site’s pro-cheating stance.
The Huffington Post’s assault on monogamy exhibits the growing divide between two radically different, competing moral visions. The “progressive” vision argues that biology dictates infidelity, that monogamy is an unnatural and undesirable state, and that cheating is normal and even healthy for relationships.
The other, traditional vision argues that monogamy is possible with effort and mutual communication, that infidelity harms committed relationships, and that couples are happier and more fulfilled in exclusive, committed relationships than otherwise.
The media has embraced the vision of monogamy as an unnatural chain – even supposedly mainstream news outlets have expressed similar disbelief about the feasibility of monogamous marriage. And the Huffington Post is leading this charge against fidelity.
- Paul Wilson's blog
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Comments
You see the libs
Submitted by hbnolikeee on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 3:54pm.
have killed the family in the black community. But they're far from done. They are chipping away at all those things that have made us great (starting with the family).
Isn't herpes...
Submitted by Annie Ashe Fields on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 3:58pm.
...the war on women that keeps on giving?
HOW is promiscuity HELPFUL to women? Is it helpful to her to contract herpes (or some other choice unpleasantness) from a philandering husband?
I would regard this ethos as DEMONSTRABLY more hostile to women than anything the Left THINKS the Right is up to.
Good grief.
It's not about women
Submitted by Tugboat Phil on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 4:41pm.
or as most libs refer to them, "breeders." Promiscuity to libs means multiple male, anal partners.
If marriage is not to be respected
Submitted by octavioj on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 3:59pm.
Then why all the fuss about gay marriage? According to their thought marriage is irrelevant. It does not make sense.
It's only relevent to them from two perspectives . . .
Submitted by Galvanic on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 4:13pm.
1) NORMALCY. By recognizing same-sex marriage, they take a big step toward social acceptance of homosexuality as merely an alternative to heterosexuality.
2) $$$$$$$$. Surviving spouses benefit financially through Social Security and many (most?) pensions. In the armed forces, for example, a surviving spouse of a retired military member can continue to collect 55% of that retiree's pension after the retiree has died (provided they had participated in the Survivor Benefit Plan, or SBP).
From time to time, gay activitists will be honest enough to mention these, but it seems that more often, they fall back on the "Government can't tell you who you can love" schtick, because they don't want folks thinking any deeper about it. I don't think anyone beside them has ever claimed that the government licenses love.
I'm glad you asked!
Submitted by stage9 on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 5:16pm.
"The fact is, a committed, monogamous g a y relationship is very rare. Sometimes good friends make a commitment to share a home and care for and support each other, but as g a y literature itself tells us, these relationships characteristically include an understanding that there will be outside s e x u a l relationships.
"In The Male Couple, by David McWhirter and Andrew Mattison, the authors-a g a y couple themselves- could find no g a y relationship in which fidelity was maintained more than five years. In fact, the authors tell us, "the single most important factor that keeps couples together past the ten-year mark is the lack of possessiveness they feel. Many couples learn very early in their relationship that ownership of each other s e x u a l l y can become the greatest internal threat to their staying together." -- "Reparative therapist", Joseph Nicolosi
________________________
Activist Paula Ettelbrick, once policy director for the National Center for L e s b i a n Rights, formerly legal director of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund (formerly the Lambda Legal Defense Fund), is tactically "for" same-s ex "marriage," but shares these caveats:
"Being q u e er is more than setting up house, sleeping with a person of the same g e n d er, and seeking state approval for doing so....Being q u e er means pushing the parameters of s ex, s ex u a l i t y, and family, and in the process, transforming the very fabric of society....
As a l e s b i an, I am fundamentally different from non-l e s b i an women....In arguing for the right to legal marriage, l e s b i a n s and g a y men would be forced to claim that we are just like h e t e r o s e x u al couples, have the same goals and purposes, and vow to structure our lives similarly....We must keep our eyes on the goals of providing true alternatives to marriage and of radically reordering society's view of reality."
________________________
Both the National Center for L e s b i an Rights and the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund are considered, not "fringe," but "mainstream" g a y activist groups. Former Lambda Legal Defense Fund president Thomas Stoddard also expresses lukewarm support for same-s ex "marriages":
"I must confess at the outset that I am no fan of the "institution" of marriage as currently constructed and practiced....Why give it such prominence? Why devote resources to such a distant goal? Because marriage is, I believe, the political issue that most fully tests the dedication of people who are not g ay to full equality for g a y people, and also the issue most likely to lead ultimately to a world free of discrimination against l e s b i a ns and g ay men."
________________________
Activist Donna Minkowitz says:
"We [g ay and l e s b i an activists] have been on the defensive too long. It's time to affirm that the Right is correct in some of its pronouncements aboutour movement. Pat Buchanan said there was a "cultural war" going on "for the soul of America" and that g a y and l e s b i an rights were the principal battleground. He was right. Similarly, [h o mo]'phobes like Pat Robertson are right when they say that we threaten the family, male domination, and the Calvinist ethic of work and grimness that has paralyzed most Americans' search for pleasure.
Indeed, instead of proclaiming our innocuousness, we ought to advertise our potential to change straight society in radical, beneficial ways. Het[ero s e x u al]s have much to learn from us: first and foremost, the fact that pleasure is possible (and desirable) beyond the sanction of the state. Another fact gleaned from g a y experience-that gender is for all intents and purposes a fiction-also has the potential to revolutionize straight lives."
________________________
Writing in "Out magazine", regular contributor Michelangelo Signorile (quoted supra) has described a strategy in which h o m o s e x u a ls
"fight for same-s ex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely...to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution....The most subversive action lesbians and g a ys can undertake-and one that would perhaps benefit all of society-is to transform the notion of 'family' entirely."
"If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Hefner." — Malcolm Muggeridge
"The media has embraced the
Submitted by redfish on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 4:23pm.
"The media has embraced the vision of monogamy as an unnatural chain."
If we're being totally honest, being able to have sex freely without worrying about there being a pregnancy (or dangers of unsafe birth control methods) is unnatural, actually. People complain about conservative values being strict and repressive, but its actually only very recently that people have had the luxury of having liberal values without worrying about consequences.
"“The problem is that marriage forces love into a singular, finite, unforgiving, inflexible model that allows no room for any other kind."
Again with the "sex = love" thing.
Right.
Submitted by panzerakc on Tue, 05/22/2012 - 12:16am.
“Few, however, highlight the obvious answer to the dilemma of monogamy and cheating: sexually open relationships."
Sounds like the pro-choice folks answer to the squeamish about abortion: call it a "fetus' rather than a baby, or an unborn child.