Reply to Ethically non monogamous?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm in an open marriage.  It works for us, but most certainly doesn't work for a lot of people.  And its ethical for us because all parties involved understand the situation and have consented. [/quote]

Neither knowledge nor consent are themselves sufficient to make something ethical, it is more complicated than that.  Fully-informed people often consent to things that are bad for them due to errors in judgment, from which they might need some protection.  And consent itself is kind of a slippery concept at times.

There are also externalities to consider, including the risks to third parties (i.e., children who might be affected by relationship instability if “ethical nonmonogamy“ has a bad outcome); modeling a form of behavior that most people cannot handle, with people getting into bad situations as a result; a broader acceptance of non-monogamy facilitating people pressuring their partners to engage in non-monogamy and becoming resentful if they will not; etc.  I personally have no issue with ethical non-monogamy, but “anything goes with informed consent” is not a viable moral philosophy.        [/quote]

Except no one makes those arguments in the context of all kinds of different behaviors they would apply to. No one says "you should think twice about pursuing IVF after 40, because you might give someone else the idea that they can postpone childbearing/normalize doing that", or "lawyers have really high divorce rates so you should take into consideration the potential effect of that career on your future kids." Or "sure, your wife says she wants to stay home, but a lot of people regret that; maybe she needs to be protected from that decision." If those were considerations that people thought needed to be taken into account, we'd see them made regularly, not just brought up in the context of behavior people want to object to for other reasons. [/quote]

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