MALE-MALE COUPLES AND COMMITMENT: Eve replies to Mark Barton

(His post is immediately below mine.)

Three hyperbrief comments: 1) People interested in this discussion should know that we discussed the question, "Why fidelity?" on the blog several months ago. Go here and scroll up, then go here and scroll up. (Sorry about the reverse-o-vision--it's a handicap of blogs.)

2) I can't accept any argument that rests on the premise that we have "cured" the risk of pregnancy. Manifestly we haven't. (I doubt we even, really, want to.) According to NIH, about half of all U.S. pregnancies are unplanned. Mark's argument (like Donald Sensing's) relies on a belief in contraception that is simply not warranted by the facts on the ground. Our bodies still do stuff we don't expect or want them to do. Intercourse still makes babies, even when we don't expect or want it to.

3) Contra Mark's "test-drive the car before you buy her" claim, couples who cohabited before marriage have higher divorce rates than those who don't. Yes yes I know--correlation is not causation etc etc etc--but that certainly isn't the picture that Mark's worldview would lead us to expect, is it? If you have either patience or a printer, you can find a pretty good piece I did on this question (which addresses several possible causal connections) by scrolling to pages 8 and 9 here (PDF).
posted by Eve at 7:58 PM VOTE

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