The Fulsome Website Award
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o what is this website about? The name no doubt suggests some fancy product for women. Perhaps even sexy lingerie. If that were the case, I might very well applaud the website, since I think keeping the sexual flames kindled in a marriage is a good thing. And if attire promotes that end, then let the dressing begin. And I really don’t care whether it is the woman or the man who is using attire to keep the romantic flame glowing.
But, alas, AshleyMadison.Com is not about lingerie except by accident. Here is your hint. The site's slogan reads
When Monogamy Becomes Monotony
You got it. The raison d’etre of this site is to promote adultery.
Now, there is the simple truth that this is a free country and the site is certainly not forcing anyone to commit adultery. In most cases, it is not even putting the idea in anyone’s head. Quite the contrary, the website is merely facilitating the satisfaction of a desire that is already in place. There is, I believe, no gainsaying this truth.
But this truth does not suffice to get AshleyMadison.Com off the hook of moral criticism. Adultery is not like gambling or drinking. When these things are done in moderation, they can actually raise the quality of a person’s life. Moreover, they are not inherently harmful. I may spend an evening gambling and having a few drinks without harming anyone at all, neither my family nor myself. Indeed, doing so may enrich friendship.
With the exception of couples who swing, however, a person may not commit adultery without violating a profound trust, and thus not without setting things up for considerable damage to be done.
There is a difference between facilitating a wrong and facilitating a wrong the nature of which egregiously harms another. There are numerous websites for peddling essays of which students can avail themselves. A professor who gets such an essay may very well be disappointed, but the professor most certainly has not been harmed. The professor’s standing along any number of dimensions is not affected one iota.
AshleyMadison.Com facilitates a wrong that egregiously and often irreparably harms another—indeed, several people, namely the spouse and the children of the married couple.
I understand that affairs can more or less happen, without anyone starting out with this intention, As an aside, think that fewer affairs would happen if people took the draconian approach that Michael McKeon and I have about these matters: better an entire pound of prevention than that a single wrong move should occur. So we go out of our way to make sure that things cannot go astray.
In any case, what so very much bothers me about the website is that promoting and facilitating adultery takes moral inconsiderateness to one of the most fulsome levels imaginable short of significant bodily harm. I shall draw upon this point at the end of the essay.
It is irrelevant that the act is going to be committed anyway. I mean if Mary is going to murder Smith, you are hardly justified in giving Mary your gun on the grounds that Mary is going to commit the deed, anyhow; and that if don’t give her your gun someone else will give his gun to her. The same holds for child sexual abuse. The knowledge that someone is going to commit such an abominable act no matter what is hardly a reason or an excuse for someone else to do so instead.
I have noticed that it has almost become commonplace for people to justify wrongdoing on their part in this way. But it is too painfully obvious that the argument simply does not work. It does not work even when applied to this very website. The folks in Toronto, where the website is based, cannot excuse their promoting and facilitating divorce via a website on the grounds that someone else would surely do so.
Now, there are lots of wrongdoings that I can at least get a handle on, though I hope that I would never commit the wrong in question. For example, I can easily understand some instances of killing. If someone killed my child, and I needed only to put my hand on a gun in order to kill that person, it is not at all obvious to me that I wouldn't do so. And greed is more comprehensible than not. So it is hardly a mystery that people are constantly scheming in this regard.
But some things: they seem so repugnant through and through. Promoting adultery is surely a case in point. I mean it is not as if something else quite salutary or even remotely salutary is being promoted and that thing often leads to adultery. No, adultery is what the bill of sale is about. And one has to wonder what kind of person says to himself: “I got it. I will make a killing promoting adultery, and so setting the other spouse up to be egregiously harmed”. Does such a desire require some measure of psychological damage on a person’s part?
For what it is worth, it is not my view that such sites should be legally banned. There is a website entitled “JesusLovesGayPorn.Com”. I do not for a moment think that it should be banned. In fact, while I think that the name is terribly offensive, I don’t that think anyone is in fact harmed by it. As another aside: I am sure that there will never be a website with the name "AllahLovesGayPorn.Com"
I am very much committed to free speech. But a commitment to free speech is not a commitment to be silent no matter what is said. And it seems to me that this is the mistake that many free speech advocates make. There is no incompatibility at all between defending a person’s right to say something and vociferously arguing that what she or he has said is morally bankrupt. Free speech and approval of what is said are two very different things, and are rightly defended on fundamentally different grounds.
This last point can be cast in terms of the language of moral climate. Precisely what we want is a moral climate in which speech prevails, on the one hand, and in which rigorous debate and critical scrutiny prevails, on the other. Free speech without rigorous debate and critical scrutiny is tantamount to a moral climate according to which “Anything goes”. Many people think that this is just fine so long as no physical violence is involved. No doubt the creators of the AshleyMadison.Com site had just this thought in mind. But just as it is possible to be a person’s body without ever touching his soul, the reverse is also true. One can destroy a person’s soul without ever touching his body.
Facilitating adultery is one way to do precisely that. Without breaking ne’er a bone in anyone’s body, the nature of divorce, especially divorce occasioned by adultery, is such that it typically ravages the soul of the spouse and the souls of the children involved.
Sites like AshleyMadison.Com reveals that society is quickly loosing sight of a truth that the great thinkers like Rousseau readily grasped, namely that insofar as society can be justified, it is not enough that society maximizes the liberty of its citizens. It must also be the case that society is an unerring conduit for elevating the souls of its citizens, and so for bringing about a more perfect excellence in the members of society.
This is not the place to defend the importance of theological convictions. Just so this much can be said. For many the retreat from theology is thought to be synonymous with the view that man is without a spiritual nature. That is manifestly false. The problem is not that man lacks a spiritual nature, but that, given the present course, society is surely destroying rather than uplifting it. The site AshleyMadison.Com has been chosen for the Fulsome Website Award because it is a very profound and poignant reminder of this reality. It stands as an example of the truth that we can destroy, and are choosing to destroy, what is unique about human beings without ever inflicting any form of physical injury whatsoever. Thus, the site is a reminder of the horror that awaits us in a society that systematically chooses freedom over excellence. Indeed, AshleyMadison.Com already has a competitor ! ! !
