You have to know that I am composing this post while my thirteen-year-old son Denali is playing “Eye of the Tiger” on the bass approximately 6 feet away. At least it beats “Souls of Black” at half speed, which is the only other choice at this point.
After my last post, I asked my husband (currently on electric guitar, playing something unrecognizable – gotta love cacophony) if he thought I was being too self-defensive. “What can I say? It was a bunch of ethical debate,” he said. “Who's right, who's stupid....I mean, what's the point?”
“Also,” he said, “I kept waiting for you to get back to your topic paragraph.”
So here I am, dutifully getting back to the point, even though a blog is, by nature, writing-as-indulgence as opposed to writing-as-discipline.
I think we've established that some people think that ethical monogamy is possible, and some people do not. I'm guessing there's less debate about whether or not an ethical person is an honest person. But honesty is a crucially important component of ethical non-monogamy, so it's a topic worth exploring.
I was pretty much cured of lying by the time I was seven or eight. You see, there was this incident on the last day of first grade involving a salami sandwich. I had thrown it in the trash as soon as I got to school, then sponged food off the volunteer mom on the field trip, claiming that my mother hadn't packed anything but some raisins in my lunch, then lied to my mom when she asked if I'd eaten everything she had packed me.
Wasted food; made mom look bad; lied. I was going to hell, for sure. Every night for two months, I prayed for forgiveness, but that unconsumed sandwich was still eating me up inside. Finally, one queasy, sleepless night, I got up and padded down the hall in search of my confessor. She was in the bathtub, with two facecloths draped strategically over her naughty bits. I told her about my crime. I don't think my mother even knew what I was talking about, but she did her best to soothe me. She assured me that if I had truly repented, the incident was between me and God, and I didn't need forgiveness from anyone else. In other words, I hadn't really needed to tell her anything.
Maybe it shouldn't have surprised me that I got a similar response from her when I finally came out to my parents as poly: “Why on earth did you feel the need to tell us these details about your private life? Especially when you knew it would make us feel terrible?”
Why, indeed?
The two basic tenets of my ad hoc moral code – one, Do No Harm; and two, Be Honest – had really bonked heads over that one.
Next up: To Tell or Not to Tell -- Is Honesty Always the Best Policy?
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