Visionaries,
Jan asks, “how can one person swear to be monogamist to more than one person? Is this not an important part of marriage?” This is the point. We used to think so. But then, we used to think that marriage involved a man and a woman. Why do we retain what we retain and why do we jettison what we jettison? By what standard?
And multiple partners is not necessarily the same thing as polygamy. You could also have polyandry, or multiple homosexual partners. And if the whole business is consensual, on what basis do you deny them a license down at the county courthouse? On what basis do you intervene in the private sexual lives of this cute little seventeen-some?
Jan raises a host of practical questions, which obviously need to be anticipated in those handy-dandy-all-purpose private secular contracts we’ve been talking about so much lately. That’s all marriage is anymore, right? A matter of practical law? Such conundra would provide a good deal of work for attorneys and so on, but I am sure we can get the bugs worked out. After all, our primary concern should be to get the government out of the bedroom. I am astonished that Chad and Jan are still interested, after all these years of enlightenment, in trying to impose their own arbitrary code of ethics on the private sexual practices of consenting adults who don’t agree with them. This is astonishing. I am, as they say, boggled. But I will try hard to compose myself.
Cordially,
Douglas Wilson
Apologetics in the Void” are repostings from an on-going electronic discussion and debate I had some time ago with members of our local community, whose names I have changed. The list serve is called Vision 20/20, and hence the name “visionaries.” Reading just these posts probably feels like listening to one half of a phone conversation, but I don’t feel at liberty to publish what others have written. But I have been editing these posts (lightly) with intelligibility in mind.