Reply #66: You Present A Caricature Of My View, Sir [View All]

And perhaps the fault is mine for inexact expression.

My point is not that, and my expression hardly urged that, government take any action against anyone, and you will find it difficult to support any such claim on close reading of my comments. My point is that a condition of equality before the law renders any arrangement involving submission of one partner to another unenforceable by lawful means, and hence artificial in every sense of the word. Maintaining any such arrangement will require a degree of enforced isolation that your perhaps unfortunately chosen example illustrates, because anyone in such an arrangement who is also exposed to the full range of choice and empowerment available in the civil society around us will find ample means available to alter their circumstances should they become displeasing, and also is likely to find a variety of examples that may serve to make their circumstances seem displeasing by comparison. The fact is that people tend to avail themselves of choices that are available to them, and so there is a steady erosion of marriage on the "submit to your husband" model, simply because a great many woman do not wish to do so, whatever the man might want, and if she does not, she cannot be compelled to do so, but rather will find ready assistance in doing what she would rather do. My view of how a marriage should be organized does not come into this analysis at all, and has not been disclosed in this exchange, nor is it likely to be.

Gratification in love, of course, being such a personal thing, is hardly susceptible to comparison between cases, so you are in no better position than me to comment on what might possibly bear comparison concerning it. People find a wide variety of things not only immensely gratifying but positively essential to their happiness that make no appeal to me whatever, and it would seem to me a waste of breath to tell them that these things cannot possibly compare to those things that gratify me....