Opinion of the "Polyamorous community"

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

My opinion of them is not high, but I knew some people who behaved/self-described this way in undergrad and they weren't 'degenerate' so much as they'd just been sold an ideological bill of goods that made life superficially easier for them and hadn't (yet) encountered any solid reasons to question it, so I'm not going to emptyquote Santander or the first word of SMilo's post.

I will, however, emptyquote the rest of SMilo's post:

I'm impressed by the early results. I suspected this forum would love this garbage.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Now I know how LGBT felt a decade ago reading threads of hate toward them.

I really don't think you do.

While I, too, would much rather be cheated on with one person for whom my girlfriend or wife actually had feelings than with a bunch of random flings, I wouldn't think that accepting an agonizingly ethical (ethics, of course, being, as Al once said, 'morals for people who are too gutless to have them') 'lifestyle' framework for the experience--if I did accept such a framework, which I wouldn't--would give me meaningful insight into the experiences of people who are oppressed for who they are.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Now I know how LGBT felt a decade ago reading threads of hate toward them.

I really don't think you do.

While I, too, would much rather be cheated on with one person for whom my girlfriend or wife actually had feelings than with a bunch of random flings, I wouldn't think that accepting an agonizingly ethical (ethics, of course, being, as Al once said, 'morals for people who are too gutless to have them') 'lifestyle' framework for the experience--if I did accept such a framework, which I wouldn't--would give me meaningful insight into the experiences of people who are oppressed for who they are.

Actually I'm referring to the rather hateful posts and empty quoting about "degenerates" in this case in reference to someone I really care about.

Yeah, 'degenerate' is a little...like I said in my first post in this thread, I don't think it's fair to use that word here. Or in many situations at all, really.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Consent is not a magic spell that obviates every potential moral problem with a sexual act. It's a necessary but not sufficient aspect of sexual morality. I don't think anybody is arguing that it's somehow less objectionable to cheat on a partner you've ostensibly promised not to; rather, the principle on which people operate is that carrying on multiple sexual relationships concurrently is objectionable regardless of how the people involved feel about it.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Consent is not a magic spell that obviates every potential moral problem with a sexual act. It's a necessary but not sufficient aspect of sexual morality. I don't think anybody is arguing that it's somehow less objectionable to cheat on a partner you've ostensibly promised not to; rather, the principle on which people operate is that carrying on multiple sexual relationships concurrently is objectionable regardless of how the people involved feel about it.

And where exactly does this principle come from that makes it any more legitimate than the principle of accepting that 1) it is possible to love more than one person at a time and 2) that consenting adults can do what they wish in the privacy of the bedroom?

I mean, from (the easiest, most well-popularized version of) secular liberal first principles it's hard to come to this conclusion through any route that doesn't rely heavily on disgust reactions, but if one presupposes (as I do) that the purpose of human sexuality is expression in mutual reflection and mutual gift (bracketing out for a moment the question of to what extent we should feel bound by the other, more obvious biological 'purpose' of sexuality, a question on which I'm certainly less than impeccably ~traditional~ myself), then it strikes me as fairly reasonable to conclude from that presupposition that that reflection becomes distorted if more than two mirrors are facing each other.

I don't expect you (or most other posters, including many of the ones I like best) to agree with that, but I hope it makes some degree of sense anyway.

I don't think anybody is actually denying that it's possible to love more than one person at a time.

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You don't say!

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You're perfectly free to have an understanding of morality that starts and stops at not measurably harming third parties if you wish, but I'd suggest you make some effort to understand why many people don't consider that sufficient. Reducing any attempt to reintroduce aesthetic and (in the broadest sense) liturgical sensibilities into a type of conversation that too many people on what passes for 'the left' these days would rather have solely on the level of health, harm, and safety to 'just because' without going through even a pro forma step of asking what those sensibilities are is in unbelievably poor taste and is an unacceptably bloodless and frivolous way of conducting moral arguments.

Anyway, now that the argument over the morality of same-sex relationships qua same-sex relationships has (as an animating social issue) been more or less resolved for the better in the parts of country and types of online spaces I frequent, I get to settle into the self-satisfaction of being able to see the phrase 'consenting adults' and immediately know that it's being used as, essentially, the sexual morality equivalent of 'but it's my First Amendment right!'.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

...how many of you HP-voting guys have ever been with even one woman?

Define 'been with'.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I mean, from (the easiest, most well-popularized version of) secular liberal first principles it's hard to come to this conclusion through any route that doesn't rely heavily on disgust reactions, but if one presupposes (as I do) that the purpose of human sexuality is expression in mutual reflection and mutual gift (bracketing out for a moment the question of to what extent we should feel bound by the other, more obvious biological 'purpose' of sexuality, a question on which I'm certainly less than impeccably ~traditional~ myself), then it strikes me as fairly reasonable to conclude from that presupposition that that reflection becomes distorted if more than two mirrors are facing each other.

I don't expect you (or most other posters, including many of the ones I like best) to agree with that, but I hope it makes some degree of sense anyway.

I don't think anybody is actually denying that it's possible to love more than one person at a time.

Upon rereading, I'm actually not sure what you mean by your mirrors analogy. When you're saying that the reflection becomes distorted, do you mean that, in such relationships, people tend to lose sight of the others and fail to care for them as they need? If so, you are arguing that it's impossible to (truly) love more than one person at a time, since I'm sure you agree that caring for someone is a fundamental aspect of love. Or did you mean something else?

It's very possible to feel love for more than one person at once, but not with as ardent and singleminded devotion as a partner in a romantic or marital relationship (as opposed to other types of loving relationship) deserves.

Say a man (or woman) is married but falls deeply in love with a woman other than his (or her) wife. This may mean that he, emotionally, 'loves' his wife less than he did before (or it may not!), but if so he can still communicate practical love to both women by being faithful to the obligations both that marriage means that he incurs to his wife and that whatever relationship he has with the other woman means that he incurs to her. In the case of his wife, this means that he doesn't become sexually intimate with the other woman and possibly emotionally distances himself from her somewhat. In the case of the other woman, it means that he continues to treat her solicitously and doesn't blame her for his own emotional conundrum.

Seems from Nathan's response to my post that everything comes down to individual presuppositions that are based on nothing but gut feeling or religious dogma. That is how people like him and Antonio are able to allege that polyamory "degrades society"—they cannot prove it hurts anyone, so they say it degrades society based only on their presuppositions. How does it degrade society? It perpetuates something they don't like... and that's all.

Well...yes, it makes society less the sort of society I want to live in and more the sort of society I don't want to live in. I hardly see how this reasoning is so wildly illegitimate as to make moral opposition to it and the desire to argue against it--not to ban it, merely to argue against it--incomprehensible to you.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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I think there's a lot of merit to this, in that it's evident from this and other threads that liberals, at least on this forum, literally can't comprehend why non-liberals disagree with them, whereas conservatives (or, in my case, socialists with what Haidt would classify as conservative moral foundations) have at least some capacity to understand where the forum's strong and in many respects admirable social liberal contingent is coming from.

I don't particularly wish to discuss this further.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

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I think there's a lot of merit to this, in that it's evident from this and other threads that liberals, at least on this forum, literally can't comprehend why non-liberals disagree with them, whereas conservatives (or, in my case, socialists with what Haidt would classify as conservative moral foundations) have at least some capacity to understand where the forum's strong and in many respects admirable social liberal contingent is coming from.

I don't particularly wish to discuss this further.

You're right. The reasons some people consider polyamory morally wrong are bizarre and alien to me. However, someone considering wearing orange shirts morally wrong would be bizarre in the same way. Not understanding the other side's point of view does not necessarily make one wrong.

I wasn't trying to say that it did, merely that I find this sort of conversation frustrating and unproductive after a while.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Love and sex are different things.

True but (in this sense) not a good thing.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Love and sex are different things.

True but (in this sense) not a good thing.

How is that "not a good thing". It's a simple fact.

And as we all know states of fact are never desirable or undesirable. Don't be obtuse.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

This thread is still going on?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

My opinion is that bumping this thread after six years was a bad idea.