WHAT'S SEX GOT TO DO WITH IT?: Gabriel Rosenberg

Thanks to Eve for posting her thoughts on the D.C. Debate, with Jonathan Rauch and others. It was especially helpful for those of us that wish we could have been there. I am quite interested in some of her thoughts about gender roles and gender divide, but first I just wanted to briefly respond to her comment on marriage and best-friendship.

Eve notes De Solenni's question, "What makes marriage different from best-friendship?" and she asks why "nobody thinks the state should sanction or affirm her closest chosen relationship unless [she starts] sleeping with her."

My short answer to De Solenni is that best friends are not so interdependent as married couples. We don't commit to our best friends the same way we commit to our spouses. My short answer to Eve is that I wouldn't require that she and her best friend sleep together as long as they didn't sleep with anybody else for the rest of their lives. I see an important difference between forbidding extramarital sexual relationships and requiring all married couples to have sex. I know my wife and I don't think our sexual relationship with each other is anyone else's business. I certainly don't approach other married couples and inquire into their sex life. Extramarital sex can threaten the trust and permanence on which marriage depends. It can also create rival dependents (the sexual partner and possible offspring). For these and other reasons society has an obligation to help prevent it in order to sustain marriage. Any
interest society has in controlling couples' sex lives within marriage, though, fails to override its interest in leaving that issue to the married couple itself.

posted by maggie at 1:02 AM VOTE

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