4.2.2 |
PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS AND FAITHFULNESS |
There is much which can, and partially has already, been
said about personal relationships from the standpoint of
the norm of inclusivity and
the norm of neutrality. Personal
relationships must, then, be understood as denoting relationships
with people one knows, particularly friendships, whether
with relatives or nonrelatives, neighbors or nonneighbors. Being
friends adds to personal relationships a dimension of more or
less intensely liking each other and of more or less regularly
being together or voluntarily doing things together. Friendship
could be distinguished from love in that the intensity of
liking, or of emotional dependence, is much higher in the case
of love, but there is no need to do so: if people who like
each other very much are 'friends', this includes 'lovers'.
Whether one speaks of "a lover", "mate", "chum", "comrade",
"friendly neighbor" or "beloved relative", they all are friends
with whom one enjoys being together at certain times (often or
always). This may or may not include sharing a household, having
sexual or physical contacts with each other, and/or having one
or more children in common.
The most drastic institutionalization of personal relationships
in religious and religiogenic societies is the institution
of wedlock. It is a standard contract drawn up by a religious
organization or state in which exclusively two people at a time
of exclusively different gender who are not close relatives, are
theoretically joined together for life. Under the rules of such
a contract, the two partners are traditionally seldom or never
united on equal terms: the two sexes have different, that is,
unequal and exclusive, rights and responsibilities. To those
who have entered the institution, special advantages are often
offered in the sphere of, for example, social and parental
status, hereditary rights, taxation and accommodation, often
regardless of whether the married people concerned look after
minors or not. Since wedlock only covers one type of human
relationships in which the parties are practically always
unequal as well, and since it offers advantages from outside the
relationship proper of which other personal relationships are
deprived, it must be looked upon as an institution which in its
traditional form has always violated sexual inclusivity and
interpersonal equality.
Because of a preferential treatment of the relationship of
those who are married on a religious or religiogenic basis,
other personal relationships are, relatively speaking, made
unfavorable. The first relationships to be prevented from
developing optimally are, then, friendships of two or more
people which do not comply with the prerequisites of the
established marriage contract. A clear example is a racist
or ethnocentrist country in which persons of a different race or
ethnicity are not allowed to marry or even to have sexual
contacts. But personal relationships are not only made
unfavorable by illegalizing them or by depriving them of
matrimonial equality, they can also be made unfavorable by more or
less hidden prejudices and customs. Thus it may be legally possible
to marry somebody of a different ethnic group, of a different
social class or of a different political party, yet the social
pressure not to get involved in such a relationship may be so
strong that this is felt as a serious restraint. And prejudices
are not only found in opinions; they are also found in expectations.
The most notorious of these expectations are what 'people (parents,
neighbors, friends or relatives) might think of it'. It is
under such circumstances that factors such as ethnicity, class,
ideological belief, gender, job, education, and so on, were, or
still are, used to break off friendships or to harass human
beings who love or like each other.
Relationships are equal, regardless of whether the persons
involved belong, say, to the same race, family, gender, class,
or age, or to a different race, family, gender, class or age, so
long as these persons want the relationship and are mature
enough to show decision in their refusals or consents. Granted
that the people involved agree among themselves and respect the
personal rights of others, no system of relationships of more
than two human beings, for example, of one man and two women, or
of one woman and two men, is inferior to relationships of only
two human beings. Hence, a law which allows a man to be wedded to
several women at once (or a custom which allows a man to have a
'mistress' in addition to his wife), and not a woman to be
wedded to several men at once (or to have a 'mister' in addition
to her husband), is nothing else than an illegitimate hybrid of
sexual and matrimonial
exclusivism.
Sexual relationships of which children are born definitely
demand special attention. In fact a common offspring is the most
concrete confirmation of a relationship between human or other
sexual beings. Because children are not capable of providing for
their own needs of safety, food and shelter, mature beings are
required to care for them. However, such does not mean that
children need exclusively or necessarily to be brought up by
their biological parents, particularly not in a culture that no
longer discriminates between so-called 'legitimate children',
children born out of wedlock and step-children, and particularly
not in a culture where the material 'ties of blood' are no
mental 'ties of conduct', that is, reasons for exlusiveness or
exclusion, anymore. But when there is no good alternative, the
procreators have the first responsibility for the satisfaction
of the children's needs. In the relationship of one man and one
woman both are equally responsible; in general, all partners
have this responsibility together, or may have this responsibility
instead of (exclusively) the biological parent or parents.
As soon as the child is no longer helpless and shows decision on
its own, this responsibility terminates. Until this stage is
reached the norm of well-being requires that a child shall not
be left to its fate.
The institution of wedlock can be stripped of exclusivisms
and impingements of
the right to personhood by incorporating
it into an inclusive system of personal contracts. Such a system
is to be inclusive in that it shall not make the formalization
of any kind of personal relationship impossible: any group of
two or more persons (male, female, both or neither) has the
right to enter into any personal contract, the conditions being
determined by the partners of that contract themselves. Such an
agreement may specify the terms on which two or more people
decide to live together, the terms defining the social aspects
of their sexuality towards each other and towards outsiders, the
pecuniary and fiscal terms, and possibly also the terms regulating
the responsibility for children entering into the relationship.
The participants should also determine themselves for how long
the contract will be valid and what will be the penalty (if any)
for breaking it. The binding nature of a family contract may
automatically come to an end, for instance, when the last child
reaches the age of majority (as defined in advance).
Characteristic of an inclusive system of contracts is the
personal consent of the people involved: every decision to which
the contract applies directly has to be unanimous, inclusive of
the decision to give a mandate to one or more particular
persons. The situation in exclusivist countries where a man can
only marry one woman, or can marry several women in different
wedding ceremonies without being legally bound by the consent of
his other wife or wives, is far different from the situation
where a person can have a formalized relationship with one or
more other persons who together voluntarily agree to enter into
such a relationship. The prerequisite that the acceptance of new
partners has the unanimous consent of all who are bound by the
contract indicates that it formalizes a personal relationship
and not just membership of a social group like an association or
a union.
A contract is not simply an agreement between two or more
persons (or parties) but a binding agreement. If it were merely
a useful agreement, people could forget about it as soon as it
would turn out not to be useful anymore. Similarly, if it solely served
neutral-inclusivity, it would
not be wrong in any way to leave the contract for what it is as soon as
breaking the contract served neutral-inclusivity better. What makes a
contract binding (in the normative sense) is what makes a promise
or a threat binding in the first place, namely the principle of
truth. It is this principle which demands that we keep our
promises and observe our contractual duties. This does not mean
that we actually must do, or refrain from doing, certain
things in the future, because every promise or contract makes an
im- or explicit use of exceptive clauses. In general this is
the condition that one shall do, or refrain from doing,
something, unless the other person or persons concerned give
permission to do or not to do this (because it is the other
party's preference which counts in a promise). If such an
exceptive clause were not somehow part of the promise or
contract, one would still violate the principle of truth even
tho
one's partner(s) would not mind if one did not do what one
had promised. Not doing what one has promised would, then, still
be wrong from a truth-conditional point of view, whereas it is
not actually wrong with the proviso that one can be relieved by
someone else of one's promisory or contractual duty if there are
good reasons for not doing what was promised. (Dependent on the
weight attached to the proviso, it may remain prima facie wrong
from the purely truth-conditional point of view nevertheless.)
To stick to one's promises and to observe what one has agreed
upon in a personal relationship, whether by means of a contract
or not, is what is called "faithfulness". Faithfulness is a
truth-conditional normative concept and has no bearing on the
content of a contract or on what has been promised. What has
been promised may be wrong from the perspective of a neutral-inclusive
subnorm, yet to keep one's promise is always right in
terms of the principle of truth. Exclusivist moralists love
confusing these things. Equating moral with normative in
matters of sexuality they are obsessed with a negative,
sexual conception of faithfulness in which partner relations
must be, and remain, monogamous or exclusive under all circumstances (at
least for the woman).
For them faithful merely means not having or having
had intercourse with anyone else, if not not having intercourse
with anyone at all, for the relationship may be, or have
become, devoid of any erotic significance. Such a negative
conception of faithfulness is quite different from the positive
one which demands of the people concerned that they keep their
relationship going, also (and perhaps primarily) in the erotic
respect (provided that it was meant to have an erotic component).
Positive faithfulness does not possessively and jealously
preclude relations or contacts with others, unless it has been
promised not to get involved in such relations, or not to have
such contacts. Thus faithfulness is not firmness in adherence to
the doxastic values of supernaturalist, exclusivist or
extremist
ideologies; faithfulness is firmness in adherence to agreements
with other people, whatever the contents of these agreements
may be.
