Marriage, sex, and babies. Our Creator designed them to go together. Tearing them apart has foreseeable results—both for individuals and for society. One of those results is that ever more selfish and loveless forms of sex become normalized as forms of self-expression and love.
Back in 2004, a collection of voices warned of the consequences of normalizing homosexuality. They were often mocked and dismissed for predicting how so-called “gay marriage” would usher in all kinds of other perversions. Last month, after three national news publications ran stories praising polyamory, these critics now seem like prophets, though their predictions should’ve seemed obvious to all. The slope really was slippery, after all.
In The New York Times version, “[A] Polyamorous Mom Had ‘a Big Sexual Adventure’ and Found Herself.” The New York Magazine sported a cover photo of four cute, snuggling cats beneath the headline, “Polyamory: A Practical Guide for the Curious Couple.” The USA Today gave readers a crash course in the supposedly “misunderstood” polyamorous subculture known as “swingers.”
For the blessedly uninitiated, polyamory is the practice of having more than one sexual partner. In other words, it is what was called (until yesterday) “promiscuity.” However, as with each prior stop on the slippery slope of undefining marriage and the family, this one also abounds with creative euphemisms like “open relationships,” “non-monogamy,” “throuples,” “swingers,” and (worst of all) “polycules.”
The New York Times article listed a bevy of new TV shows, movies, and books promoting polyamory as fun and even beneficial—a journey of “self-discovery” that could liven up your “marriage” (whatever that word still means in this context). Fawning over the middle-aged mom who published her polyamory exploits in a memoir, The Times explained that by opening her marriage, she “cast off internalized sexism and her tendency to put others’ needs before her own.” That last part is certainly true. It’s hard to think of anything more selfish than the implied “you’re not enough” at the heart of polyamory.
The most important thing to know about how we got here is this: Dissolving commitment as essential to sexual relationships is the natural outcome of dissolving complementarity between male and female. If sexual differences are made unimportant to our love lives, so is the number of lovers.