Catherine Woodgold wrote:
Ericka Kammerer ) writes:

Catherine Woodgold wrote:


I remain unconvinced of your claim that
"to claim that there will always be suspicion
of married people who have opposite sex
friends ... until and unless society
stops valuing marital fidelity is
absolutely a red herring."

Please note that I'm not making such a claim
myself; it was someone else who said something
like that. However, your collection
of statements above, although it contains
a bunch of true statements, doesn't strike
me as an effective argument in favour of
your claim.

This is a pretty simple logic problem.
I say X (forbidding this sort of contact) is
not a prerequisite for Y (a society or individual
valuing marital fidelity). If you would like
to refute that claim, then you must argue that
Y is impossible without X. If you would like
to make that argument, go ahead.


No, thank you, I'll have to decline your
invitation to refute that claim, because I
happen to agree with it. :-) I never
said otherwise. I disagree with you about
something else (see above).

Then I think you'll have to explain
what you're disagreeing with. To recap:

Tai said:

Marital fidelity is an important component
of their relationship for many if not most married people and I don't
believe it is healthy for a society to ignore that.

I said that I think equating married people socializing
with members of the opposite sex (e.g. "ignoring that")
with a lack of marital fidelity is a red herring (i.e.,
a distraction from the main issue), primarily because
it is not true that the two need be related. Also, no one
in this thread (as far as I can tell) has argued that
marital fidelity is unimportant, or that society is,
or should be, unsupportive of it. The only argument
has been whether socializing with opposite sex friends
is appropriate in the context under discussion.

To say it a different way, just because someone
socializes with members of the opposite sex
doesn't mean that they aren't interested in
marital fidelity. Society could "ignore that"
and still be supportive of and respectful of
marital fidelity. Conflating the two indicates
a particular perspective on what is necessary
and desirable for society to do in order to
support marriage, and I do not agree with that
perspective.

Now, would you care to clarify your disagreement
with the above arguments?

Best wishes,
Ericka