Thursday, February 4, 2010

Homosexual "Marriage" and Monogamy

In a rare outburst of honesty, the New York Times published an article on Jan. 28 that explains that marriage to homosexual activists and their supporters does not mean the same thing as marriage has traditionally meant in Western culture.
"As the trial phase of the constitutional battle to overturn the Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage concludes in federal court, gay nuptials are portrayed by opponents as an effort to rewrite the traditional rules of matrimony. Quietly, outside of the news media and courtroom spotlight, many gay couples are doing just that, according to groundbreaking new research.

A study to be released next month is offering a rare glimpse inside gay relationships and reveals that monogamy is not a central feature for many. Some gay men and lesbians argue that, as a result, they have stronger, longer-lasting and more honest relationships. And while that may sound counterintuitive, some experts say boundary-challenging gay relationships represent an evolution in marriage — one that might point the way for the survival of the institution.

New research at San Francisco State University reveals just how common open relationships are among gay men and lesbians in the Bay Area. The Gay Couples Study has followed 556 male couples for three years — about 50 percent of those surveyed have sex outside their relationships, with the knowledge and approval of their partners.

That consent is key. “With straight people, it’s called affairs or cheating,” said Colleen Hoff, the study’s principal investigator, “but with gay people it does not have such negative connotations.”

The study also found open gay couples just as happy in their relationships as pairs in sexually exclusive unions, Dr. Hoff said. A different study, published in 1985, concluded that open gay relationships actually lasted longer.

None of this is news in the gay community, but few will speak publicly about it. Of the dozen people in open relationships contacted for this column, no one would agree to use his or her full name, citing privacy concerns. They also worried that discussing the subject could undermine the legal fight for same-sex marriage." [bolding mine]

This is very interesting because it puts the real issues on the table. Many people are willfully naive about same-sex "marriage" because they just want the issue to go away and they think that letting homosexuals "marry" will make it go away. But the issue is not simply letting homosexuals into the institution of marriage or not, the issue is what marriage actually is.

The sexual revolution has proceeded step by step. Divorce came first and cohabitation followed divorce. Premarital sex was then accepted as children imitated their divorced and cohabiting parents. Then, once the principle of serial monogamy was in place, we got no-fault divorce in the 1970's. Only then was it possible to talk about same-sex marriage. The whole idea of same-sex marriage is that permanence and fidelity have already been left behind, so same-sex marriage is really just an extension of that trajectory. It is not about homosexuals, especially men, becoming monogamous and faithful, but rather it is about marriage ceasing to be centered on monogamous, permanent fidelity.

And why is monogamous, permanent fidelity not necessary? It is because sex has been separated from procreation by artificial contraception and abortion. Once sex is reduced to pleasure, its connection to marriage becomes tenuous. And the next logical step is the severing of the strong connection between sex and marriage. After that, the next step is the severing of sex from personal relationship and the depersonalizing of all sexual activity. We are in the process of working on that now in Western society as serial monogamy gives way to the hook-up culture.

In this cultural context, same-sex "marriage" begins to look more and more like a symptom of deeper problems than the problem itself.

10 comments:

feetxxxl said...

i think you'll find that the legal gay marriages in massachussetts have no where near the divorce rate as the heterosexual marriages performed at the same time..............serial monogamy!!!

Josh said...

I don't think this study will surprise many people. I had a conversation with a gay man awhile back in which he admitted that promiscuity is a problem in the gay community. Conservatives often bring up this problem in their bashing of gays and lesbians.

That said, one of the arguments for expanding the legal definition of marriage is that it will lead to less promiscuity. The assumption is that more same-gender couples will be monogamous if they are allowed to marry one another. On this side of a change in said definition, though, there is no way to evaluate the accuracy of this hope.

Finally, the notion that promiscuity is a problem unique to gays and lesbians is ridiculous. Promiscuity is common among both heterosexuals and homosexuals. Because there are far more heterosexuals than homosexuals, heterosexual promiscuity is the greater societal ill. D. Stephen Long, Jim Wallis, and others have made this point. (Note also that homosexual promiscuity does not lead to unwanted pregnancies and subsequent abortions.)

feetxxxl said...

the only thing that you fail to consider is that for 600 years gays have been subjected to being abandoned by friends and family, to being rejected by society including the church, and subjected to possible assault, incarceration(forced to live under a veil of illegality,and as wellas being a designated sin, including for three hundred years in england homosexual sex was punishable by hanging(king henry), and even murder.

you say it takes a village to raise a child, what happens when that village hunts them down and persecutes them for 600 years.

Craig Carter said...

Josh,
I think it is far more reasonable to assume that SSM will result in the normalization of promiscuity in the form of "open marriage" than it will result in homosexual males in particular becoming monogamous. The real goal of SSM activists is to destroy traditional marriage by altering it to the point that its essential character has been lost.

Christians who are suckered in by the "We want in" argument are just naive and have not read the writings of the sexual liberationists.

The average homosexual male has over 100 sex partners, while the average heterosexual has about 8. So your projection of heterosexual behavioural patterns onto homosexuals may satisfy your need to rationalize your acceptance of homosexuality but it is not based in reality.

feetxxxl said...

you never answered my answered my question about 600 years of persecution. do you not see any connection between 600 years of persecution and large percentages of antisocial behavior.

being a believer i have never known an open marriage that was embraced by the fruit of the spirit.

sexual intimacy is like the word of god going out and then coming back prospering and full of the fruit of the spirit. i have found that only true of sexual intimacy when it is wrapped with faithfulness (a fruit of the spirit). why should same sex relationships be any different?

it is interesting when i listen to gay radio programs on public radio. though there may be inferences about promiscuity there has never been an open discussion about gay promiscuity...........how it is a positive thing in a persons life, instead i hear hidden shame. i also see what i would identify as sexual addiction among gays.

i attend a gay church(99% gay).i have never witnessed anything from the pulpit that condoned promiscuity, in fact just the reverse.

Ryan Dowell Baum said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ryan Dowell Baum said...

Craig, I think you're missing a really important point here: nowhere is sexual fidelity mandated in the definition of American or Canadian civil marriage. In both of our countries, straight people, if they so desire, may enter into "open" marriages and receive the political and economic benefits that marriage provides. Whether most straight people do enter into this type of marriage is beside the point--they have a civil right here that gay people (in my country) do not. It sounds to me as though you are arguing that American and Canadian civil marriage should be some kind of theocratized version of Christian marriage, and as a Yoder fan, I don't think you want to be arguing that. Should we not let Christian ethics be for *Christians* and not try and mandate legislatively the ethics of those who have not voluntarily committed to the way of Jesus Christ?

feetxxxl said...

fidelity and marriage have to stand on their own merit. people must strive for them because they uplift their souls, not because some religion has some regulation about them.

first of all there is seperation between church and state. and second the new covenant is not about regulation or a relationship to god thru regulation as in deut 28, but instead it is directly to the one who lives in each believer.(the torn curtain)......each believer having the holy of holies within them.

it is that indweling relationship that leads all believers and shows them all truth.

anyone who under the new covenant uses the new testament to create a new system of regulations to obey has one foot still in the old covenant. they are looking for outer direction, when in fact direction is from within.......the holy spirit, the father, and the son are all within.

Sean Christopher said...

What has the marriage practice of Rome to do with the church?

CHRISTOPHER ALLEN HORTON said...

AS AN ATHEISTIC-NEGRO-MALE HOMOSEXUAL WHO DOES NOT SUPPORT THE "GAY AGENDA," I BELIEVE MOST MALE HOMOSEXUALS ARE SUPPORTING THE LEGALIZATION OF "GAY MARRIAGE" BECAUSE OF PRESSURE APPLIED BY FEMALE HOMOSEXUALS. ALL FEMALES (REGARDLESS OF SEXUAL ORIENTATION) WERE RAISED TO BELIEVE THEY WILL BE CARED FOR AND FINANCIALLY SUPPORTED IN THEIR ADULT LIVES. WHEREAS, FATHERS TEACH THEIR SONS TO "STAND ON THEIR OWN TWO FEET AND PULL THEIR OWN WEIGHT." IF TWO MALES WERE TO LEGALLY MARRY, THEY (AS INDIVIDUALS) WOULD QUICKLY DISCOVER THE WISDOM OF THEIR FATHERS' TEACHINGS.
THANKS FOR YOUR TIME.
CHRISTOPHER ALLEN HORTON