Pride and Promiscuity

An excerpt from Monday's Detroit News discussing the sexual promiscuity of actor Warren Beatty put the number of women he supoessedly slept with at 12,775. The article cited Peter Biskind's recently published biography of the actor, "Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America," warning that the oddly random number of conquests was just a ballpark figure, that the actual count could be well north of it (if certain "casual" encounters were included). It took me by surprise, not merely because of the subject matter but mostly because of the placement of the piece in the day's paper: It was at the top of page 2A (which is located on the left hand side of the paper when you open the front-page  -- or "A" -- section, for those of you unfamiliar with the layout of a daily paper).
In the wake of the revelation that Tiger Woods -- priorly the world's greatest, most well-groomed and behaved athlete -- was a philandering hoax of a model citizen, infidelity seems to have become the world's new obsession. Folks whose beliefs fall in line with that of those on the far right of the political spectrum decry this behavior, typically citing fortune, fame, and a rusty moral compass as the impetus for sexual infidelity. And those whose lifestyles are more progressive -- whose beliefs are more endearing to that of those on the left end of the political spectrum -- tend to be somewhat more forgiving (usually attempting to diffuse an argument or discussion on the matter by claiming that the world's entertainers are not role models, and thus should not be held to such standards).
Fortunately, the majority of us reside in the gray matter between these two extremes, which is healthy because it means that we tend to be more dutifully open-minded (as opposed to recklessly so, or just plain closed-minded). It also means, though, that we tend to have more difficulty forming firm opinions about matters of morality and immorality. This can tend to grate on one's patience. But it too can be a healthy disposition, mainly because it helps us put everything we encounter into a proper context (as it should be, as opposed to being jammed into some predetermined moral peg slot). For example, I was lying in bed the other night and (accidentally) caught half an episode of Oprah. She had on Cookie Johnson (Magic's wife), hawking her new line of denim jeans, which apparently are designed for -- ahem -- women with disproportionately large backsides.
Now, despite how difficult it may be to understand how a woman could possibly find it within herself to remain faithful to a man (regardless of what he accomplished as an athlete) who spent a good portion of his adult life as a rampant philanderer (with untold scores of women, no pun intended),there she was on Oprah, standing next to her husband (his appearance was via taped video), he with his arm wrapped tightly around her, gushing with  pride in support of her endeavor to be a compassionate clothier. He even joked at one point (which should have made anyone in their right mind uncomfortable), grabbing his wife by her hips and turning her back to the camera, laughing about how much he was in love with her...curves. But who are we to judge, right?
It's at this point in the discussion (or argument as I earlier stipulated) that people tend to amble into the "Is man meant to marry?" realm of the topic, so let us do so too. For the record, I am married, and happily so. But that's not to say that my life isn't a challenge (it most certainly is) or that it is daily everything that both my wife and I expect it to be. Rarely is anything in life that self-fulfilling. Nor should it be. Especially in the case of marriage, where the idea of self is replaced (more accurately, transcended by) the idea of discovering thyself in another, which is -- I think -- a vital component in the evolution of man. I mean, we've all seen what forsaking others for personal gain can do in terms of setting us back as an evolutionary species (think: Columbine, Nazi Germany, The Vietnam war, the sad state of affairs the attacks on 9/11 have plunged us into, et. al.).
On a recent feature on MSNBC a reporter wrangled her way into the homes of several Mormon fundamentalist families to discuss with them the practice of plural marriage. Specifically, she was hoping to get some answers to some of the more vexing questions about how the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (or FLDS), a fringe component of the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (or LDS), operated. Now, the LDS church -- commonly known as the church of Mormons -- is not in any way affiliated with the FLDS, nor do they allow plural marriage (which is an antiquated Mormon practice that only a handful of renegade sects still embrace). These people live and practice their faith in small, tight-knit groups well out of sight in rural areas of Utah and Arizona.
At any rate, it has long been believed that the women in plural marriages are probably somehow brainwashed, or in some way trapped in these relationships. But to hear them tell it (albeit in front of a television camera) they wouldn't have it any other way. The ones that participated in the interview explained that their way of life -- sharing their husbands with multiple women, while raising not only the children each of them bore with their husbands but also those of numerous other women -- was a much more sophisticated way to live, one that most of us (in effect, the majority of the world) could not possibly understand. The basic premise of their argument is that men in their culture are "committed" to each of their wives, and children, which makes them (apparently) more evolved than what they believe to be most of the men in mainstream society who marry one woman and still get involved with others, committing in no real way to any of them.
I don't necessarily agree with that sentiment. But I do find it hard to believe that men like Warren Beatty, Tiger Woods, and Magic Johnson (among countless others, I'm sure) are fully committed to the women with whom they have entered into marriage -- especially when their infidelity counts are so astronomically high. So, are these men exceptions to the norm, or -- unfortunately -- representative of it? It's hard to say with any degree of certainty, especially when infidelity is so pervasive: We see it in Hollywood, in professional sports, and even in politics. That, certainly, doesn't mean that it inflicts only the rich, high-profile, and famous among us. No one, I suppose, is so infallible, nor are our convictions so impenetrable,  that we cannot be influenced by the seductive tongue of temptation. Which is to say, I suppose, that we are all human. As such, we are each responsible for our own actions, and for those people in our lives who are directly affected by them. And, like it or not, we all know better than to compromise what means most to us, even if we do it anyway.