[john_b]

Except that shooting someone is generally illegal, whereas having an affair is not. Allocate your sympathy as you wish, but don't pretend that a person deserves to be the victim of a crime because you or anyone else find their behavior distasteful.

[josinalvo]

To cheat, to break your word given to a life partner, is not just distasteful. It is wrong. It makes the world a darker place, and not only to you and your partner (and that is what wrong means)

I know this kind of statement is viewed with distrust. And I see why this is so. But I think some moral discussion might be good (rather than just the bland 'lets not judge')

First, I am not saying that I think all marriages need to be monogamical or 'till death'. Both ideas are probably bad on average (i.e.: make the world a darker place as well, cause needless suffering). I, for one, think that promissing monogamy is a bad idea.

But to break the promice of monogamy is, indeed, bad. First, it is inherently unfair: One partner (Pa) might be resisting temptations, to the benefit of the other (Pb). Pb gets benefits from increased marriage security, increase sexual availability from Pa, increased emotional availability... But does not offer the same.

I mean, it would be clear that withdrawing all the money from a joint savings account is bad, right? That is the same thing... One side is doing a lot of effort to keep a mutual benefit working...

To cheat is a form of exploitation.

[fnordfnordfnord]

The time, place, and manner of sex or other activity that occurs between two consenting adults is none of my business whatsoever unless one of those people is my spouse. When one of those people is my spouse and the other is not me, then my problem is with my spouse, not with any website or other instrument used to facilitate the infidelity. What meaning would an agreement such as marriage have if cheating were literally impossible?

>But I think some moral discussion might be good

Let's discuss how we can keep from inflicting our own personal morals on those who do not share our moral philosophies; lest someone show up here and one-up us all with an even better morality than the one we already have.

[josinalvo]

>Let's discuss how we can keep from inflicting our own personal morals on those who do not share our moral philosophies

The interesting question, is, of course, which are private matters and which are matters of injustice that 'society' should intervene to fix.

THE WHOLE QUESTION is whether or not cheating is 'a private matter' or 'an injustice that ...'. Just stating that it is 'private' does not seem to be an answer to the question. If I understood you correctly, your argument it 'is is private, leave it alone, else someone else will mess with other private issues'. Why do you think it belongs to the 'private' rather than 'injustice' category?

> one-up us all with an even better morality than the one we already have.

For me, that would be very nice indeed! Convincing moral arguments are very rare!

[fnordfnordfnord]

I think I was quite clear as to why a marital relationship is a private matter.

I think we can agree that in society there are many different moral systems. Now I will use the words "good" and "bad" with the stipulation that these words have no inherent meaning, but instead only have the meaning that we apply to them from within our own personal moral system. You can compare another moral system to your own, and decide that it is "better" or "worse" but you cannot make an objective determination. Now, you can decide that your morality where adultery should be prohibited/prevented/punished is better for your purposes than mine where adultery is none of the government's business, but that is just your personal preference. The problem is that this may never end and there is always another fellow who is more moral than you or I or both of us, and whose morality tells him that shoes are immoral or that red-haired people are witches or something like that; and this fellow wants the government to segregate the witches for the protection of the good moral folks, and also prevent everyone from wearing shoes, even firemen. So, we have to compromise on our morality and find a set of common rules upon which most of us can agree and which will protect people from serious harm even if it allows for some behavior that makes some of us uncomfortable.

Why do you think that two other peoples' marriage is some concern to you, or to society at large? And please, no references to vague concepts that we have no real definition of such as 'making the world a darker place'

>For me, that would be very nice indeed! Convincing moral arguments are very rare!

That's because morals are very personal, arbitrary, and often irrational.

[josinalvo]

Thank you for your reply.

No, I am not harmed when two people (Pa and Pb) are married, and Pa cheats on Pb. The reason I'd oppose AM is because it normalizes and helps the harmful behaviour of Pa towards Pb. I am quite sure that there is some marginal contribution of AM to the number of cheatings and broken marriages. I think we can objectively say that AM contributes to needless suffering. Do you agree?

[fnordfnordfnord]

We can agree that act(s) of marital infidelity cause people to suffer. Sites such as AM are not my favorite thing, but it is simply not my place or yours to tell other people how to manage their personal lives. I do not think that the existence of AM causes anyone to think that infidelity is okay who did not previously think that was the case, therefore, AM is not contributing to the moral decay of society. I'm not going to transfer the blame to the third party. AM did not force anyone to participate. There would still be marital infidelity if AM did not exist, and as you say, I expect their contribution to be marginal.

[cjsthompson]

Let's discuss how we are forced to live with people who don't share our standards of behavior (like those who cling to 17th century individualistic philosophy which science has long debunked) and force us to compromise on the kind of society we want because of centralized government.

Let's also discuss how human behavioral biology predicts that if you are in favor of polygamy you are highly likely to be an arrogant, aggressive, sexist bully (like males of tournament species are) who makes society worse for everyone else.

[fnordfnordfnord]

In another reply in this subthread, I explain my ideas about compromise based upon what I learned in elementary school. It may make me slightly uncomfortable to share the land with flat-earthers, but as long as they don't try to teach astronomy to my children I'll leave them be. I might even have them over for dinner or mow their lawn when they're away since, aside from being morons who don't vote the same as me, they are mostly pleasant, generous, peaceful people.

>Let's also discuss how human behavioral biology predicts that if you are in favor of polygamy you are highly likely to be an arrogant, aggressive, sexist bully (like males of tournament species are) who makes society worse for everyone else.

Okay, can we talk about how to best implement a eugenics program to help us solve this problem too? Or perhaps compulsory psychiatric medication? Compulsory hormone therapy?

I think the majority of people agree that polygamy is verboten, not that I really care in principle, at least as far as the law goes. What poly-amorous folks do with each other is none of my business.

[cjsthompson]

What's wrong with eugenism? Technology allows eugenism to be implemented without being unfair to anyone. But I fail to see how eugenism is needed to allow monogamous humans to exist on their own terms. I guess mentionning eugenism here is just a 'reductio ad hitlerum'.

Monogamous humans should be able to function in their own societies, with their own laws and a culture adapted to the non-trivial differences in social behavior monogamy entails without having to put up with the predatory behavior of polygamous humans and the cultural propaganda to glorify it. It's been shown that for monogamy as a trait to continue to exist it needs to be the dominant behavior in a group of animals. Others are free to revel in the "joys" of dog-eat-dog polygamous primate societies as long as they engage in this with others who consent.

Also noone exists in a vacuum. One's actions affect others (directly or indirectly) particularly when they live in the same society. Having people with deeply conflicting standards of behavior coexist in a futile attempt at a one-size-fits-all society that inherently favors one group over the other is not going to work.

[philwelch]

Cheating is also something that roughly 50-70% of married people do. Sex, along with food, water, and drugs, is one the basic, biological human compulsions and it's part of the human condition, for a large majority of us, to fall victim to it against our better judgment. As wrong as it is to cheat, it's even more wrong (and more harmful, which is perhaps the same thing) to invade people's privacy and expose cheating.

[DanBC]

Adultery is illegal in many bits of the US.

[fnordfnordfnord]

It is but according to the Wiki it there hasn't been a conviction in the US since 1983.

[chmielewski]

If you are part of the armed forces under DoD or DHS, you see people being convicted and brought up on adultery charges all the time.

[amyjess]

Having an affair actually is illegal in almost half the US, and in some states, it's even a felony.

[balls2you]

> Having an affair actually is illegal in almost half the US, and in some states, it's even a felony.

Wow! United Saudi Arabia (USA)!

[cjsthompson]

Saudi Arabia allows polygyny which is the complete opposite of this.

[dragonwriter]

Allowing polygyny is not the opposite of criminalizing adultery; its quite orthogonal.

Its the opposite of criminalizing polygyny, which is also common in the US, but that's a different issue.

[cjsthompson]

This is certainly what tumblr ideologues who haven't bothered checking scientific facts (behavioral biology) like to believe.

[balls2you]

Saudi Arabia criminalizes adultery which is "having an affair". Polygyny means you're legally married which is allowed in Saudi Arabia but having an adulterous relationship is criminal.