Problems are for Solving

It’s true: AIDS is nature’s awful retribution for our tolerance of immoderate and socially irresponsible sexual behavior. The epidemic is the price of our permissive attitudes toward monogamy, chastity, and other forms of extreme sexual conservatism. (the rest at the NY Times web site)

This is an excerpt from a book entitled, More Sex is Safer Sex by Steven E. Landsburg. [I'll note in passing that because of the number of ways my last name was changed by immigrating ancestors, it's entirely possible I'm related to this fool]. I followed a link yesterday morning from a doctor’s blog and was appalled at what I saw there.

Landsburg’s logic? That increasing promiscuity slightly reduces overall transmission of STD’s. He never once deals with the fallacious nature of his argumentation–while pointing out some of the fallacies in his opponents.

He writes later,

Indeed, the whole point is that that the relatively chaste have too little sex because it is not in their interest to behave otherwise. If you and your spouse are monogamous, you won’t get AIDS. If I point out that your continued monogamy is potentially deadly to your neighbors, I don’t expect you’ll rush to risk your life for theirs.

Never mind that if the neighbors also were monogamous their risk is zero also. And if everyone was monogamous disease doesn’t spread at all! Landsburg misses this classic case of the prisoner’s dilemma and oversimplifies it as a do what’s best for you vs. do what’s best for society situation. He also fails to notice that what’s best for society as a whole is almost always what is best for the individual. His analogy of a company sacrificing profits for smokestack filters is faulty–a company harming its customers won’t be around very long, and reasonable customers will not buy from them unless they fix the problem.

The problem with the prisoner’s dilemma (and in much game theory) is that not everyone acts rationally. The prisoner’s dilemma works its way into many knotty issues, and here Landsburg works it into promiscuity.

When I read this I immediately thought of this exchange from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World

“But after all,” Lenina was protesting, “it’s only about four months now since I’ve been having Henry.”

“Only four months! I like that. And what’s more,” Fanny went on, pointing an accusing finger, “there’s been nobody else except Henry all that time. Has there?”

Lenina blushed scarlet; but her eyes, the tone of her voice remained defiant. “No, there hasn’t been any one else,” she answered almost truculently. “And I jolly well don’t see why there should have been.”

“Oh, she jolly well doesn’t see why there should have been,” Fanny repeated, as though to an invisible listener behind Lenina’s left shoulder. Then, with a sudden change of tone, “But seriously,” she said, “I really do think you ought to be careful. It’s such horribly bad form to go on and on like this with one man. At forty, or thirty-five, it wouldn’t be so bad. But at your age, Lenina! No, it really won’t do. And you know how strongly the D.H.C. objects to anything intense or long-drawn. Four months of Henry Foster, without having another man–why, he’d be furious if he knew …”

Mother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierce and foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet. My love, my baby. No wonder these poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn’t allow them to take things easily, didn’t allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty–they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable?”

There is no marriage in Huxley’s Brave New World. Indeed, monogamy is considered unstable! Even keeping the same partner for a few months is open to ridicule. And marriage is becoming less common in our world.

Marriage is under assault in our culture. And if we are to avoid the dystopia that Huxley describes in his novel, we will need to remember that God’s design is that we have marriage, the family, the Church and communities: institutions that God has designed to work well, and which are under attack. The state, likewise, is designed by God–but not to establish, but to bear the sword when crimes are committed.

We live in a day where social engineering is considered normal and good. And if we are to save marriage and the family from being undermined in favor of ideas like Lansburg’s we will need to be ready to defend it against all foes. And we will defend it by unashamedly living as biblical families no matter the cost or ridicule.

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