Promiscuity versus Commitment?

We have a number of gay friends who have maintained life long committed relationships. We also have had (sadly) a number of heterosexual friends whose marriages have been blown away by promiscuous, covert relationships that have destroyed their marriages -- too often leaving children as well as spouses devastated.

My wider philosophy colleague some time back, Tom Nagel, did a moving article to the effect that mutual respect in relations -- whatever the gender combinations -- was the essential commitment in human relationships.

I am quite aware that sex is one of our strongest human drives, second only to hunger, and that human relationships may deteriorate as people evolve in divergent directions. Many a marriage is undertaken before the individuals involved have matured and through forces and encouragement's by friends and family that are misleading and over the long run destructive. When such relationships break down one hopes that the separation, nevertheless, is achieved with mutual respect. I know some separated couples who still remain respectful friends.

Pardon the preaching here, but I cannot help but express my contempt for the ideologues quick to attack and claim commitments to falsely conceived "family values" too frequently contemptuous of both women and others who have found other routes to respectful human relationships.

The pathetic Craig incident is all too emblematic of the tormented types who end up redirecting their self hate into attacks on others. May their gods forgive them, for they know not what they do.
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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Ed Kent 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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