Bill Weintraub

Why Be Faithful

9-25-2004

We have a major new Man2Man Alliance statement on Fidelity.

Titled Why Be Faithful?, it looks at at the health and psychological risks of sexual promiscuity, and examines the benefits of Fidelity.

What concerned me in writing the article was the ongoing very high levels of promiscuity in the gay male community, and the efforts of some Frot guys to achieve the same levels of promiscuity which have proven so deadly to the analists.

That's a really bad idea, and betrays a failure to understand how the ideology of promiscuity interacted with HIV to cause the AIDS epidemic and the deaths of literally millions of people, many of them men who have sex with men.

So this piece is intended to be a wake-up call to those of you who are still promiscuous, and of course to strengthen the resolve of those of you who are not.

At the same time, I'm concerned about the impact of the piece on the bi and straight-identified men on this site, most of whom are married.

Once in awhile I get a letter from someone accusing me of encouraging men to be unfaithful to their wives.

That's not what's going on.

Rather, bi and straight-identified men find this site on their own, almost always after a long, painful, interior struggle to come to terms with both their love for and loyalty to their wives and their need for same-sex affection.

What they find here is a validation of their intrinsic masculinity, and two recommendations: that if they're going to have sex with another guy, that sex should be Frot, which is low risk, hot, equal, and masculine; and that they limit themselves to *one* partner of each gender.

That's called "gender monogamy," and most bi organizations endorse it.

As does history.

Because that's what the ancient Greeks practiced.

A Greek man had a wife, and he had a male lover.

That system worked extraordinarily well, and under it the Greeks produced the single most luminous culture the world has ever known.

Often called the Greek Miracle, it was the extraordinary first flowering of our civilization which gave us, in embryonic form, most of the key components of Western culture.

Despite that well-known fact, as I said in Nude Combat Sport, a lot of nonsense has been written about Greek homosexuality.

And one piece of nonsense is that Greeks only had male lovers when they were teens and young adults.

Not true.

For one thing, we need to remember that life expectancy in ancient Greece, in a good year, was about 35.

And that in a bad year -- and there were many bad years, since they were constantly at war and had no way of treating disease -- life expectancy fell to around 20 or 21.

So the population itself was quite young -- including the population of guys who had male lovers.

In addition, in some places, like Sparta, men were not supposed to marry until they were 30.

Which may explain why the supply of full-blooded Spartiates consistently declined throughout the fifth and fourth centuries.

Nevertheless, we have accounts from Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, Plutarch, and many other ancient Greek writers of life-long male-male relationships.

And we have similar accounts from Imperial Rome, 300 years later.

(You can find some of these accounts summarized in Chapter 3 of John Boswell's Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, an excellent resource which is on the reading list.)

So the reality is, as I keep saying, that men have sex with men.

Because the overwhelming majority of human beings are bisexual, and the need of men to have sex with other men cannot forever be denied.

The only real question is whether men can structure their lives in a way which meets that need on a basis which is sound both emotionally and physically.

The answer is clearly yes.

But, despite what my critics think, I can't prescribe for other men; all I can do is recommend.

And then it's up to the individual to work out a solution which is elegant and equitable and satisfying emotionally and physically for all concerned.

In any case, I hope that those bi guys who read Why Be Faithful? will understand that it's not aimed at them, but rather at those gay men for whom a hundred or more partners per year is still the norm -- or at least the ideal.

Finally, a word about the Medical Institute for Sexual Health, some of whose advisories I used in writing Why Be Faithful.

As I say in the Preface to Why Be Faithful, The Medical Institute (MI) is not a religious right front.

But it is in my opinion, de facto, a faith-based organization (FBO) -- even though it's not affiliated with a specific church.

The difference between the MI and many other FBOs is that it was founded by a physician and is staffed by physicians and other health professionals.

And it concerns itself solely with the hard science data on STDs, as well as the social science data on the relative health of partnered and non-partnered people.

As such it's unusually objective.

Nevertheless, my experience of the MI, as of most FBOs, is that it is on the whole relatively ignorant about homosexuality and in general not inclined to discuss non-hetero sexuality of any stripe.

The reality is that in sexual and other matters, we have two camps in America, neither of which is eager to think outside its box.

One is the FBOs, which tend to support abstinence and fidelity, and to ignore the gay / MSM community, which they regard as beyond redemption.

The other are the secular pansexualists, among whom are the people we call analists, who support promiscuity and an "anything goes" view of sex, and who are in denial about condoms and STDs.

We offer a moderate middle course, a new paradigm that respects both the wisdom of the ages about Fidelity *and* our bisexual human nature.

For doing so we've been pilloried by both camps.

Given the absymal ignorance and bigotry from which those camps are operating, their dislike of us simply confirms that we're right and that we need to keep on doing what we're doing.

So ck out Why Be Faithful?, and remember

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Bill G

Re: Why Be Faithful

9-25-2004

Hey Bill,

Bloody FANTASTIC article!!!!!Can't say more then that. Every man should read it! Especially the parts about how a single partner relationship is more fullfilling emotionally, and the part about abstinance. Not to sound like a prude, but I think our "modern" commerical culture coupled with our amazing ability to surpress sex education at all levels has pushed our kids into intercouse at a way to early age. Now I'm not stupid, I remember what it was like when puberty hit, and I understand that the reproductive urge is one of, or even the most powerful motivator, but we are not Salmon,rats or even Chimps. We do not need to spawn as the sole purpose of our existance. Our brains give us the unique ability to see and modify our behavior. Sadly very few of us humans seem to want to do that or even teach it. We are too caught up in the idea, that to be a man or women means to have the latest "in" item and to tally one's sexual conquests at the earlest age possible.

Do I think that abstinance is a cure all? Of course not, it should be a choice, but an informed one!!! We need to do so much more in educating people, but especially kids, in school, at home , and here on the Web about the dire consequences of unprotected intercourse, anal intercourse and of promiscuity. I hope every person that reads this article will pass it on to others. WTG Bill for posting this!

Bill G

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