Post-Christian America: Where Consent is the Sole Criterion of the Good

A reader writes:

My wife and I were watching “Hoarders” last night on TLC and they showed several commercials for their upcoming series “Sister Wives” about a Mormon polygamous family. While not the first show on polygamy, I noticed a different theme in the commercial that may or may not play out in the actual series. Most shows or movies about polygamy focus on the domination of women by the women, the exploitation of young girls in these communities, and the many other injustices associated with polygamy.

What my wife and I noticed in the commercial about the series, is there is no mention of Mormonism – or really any mention at all about a belief in anything. It seemed more of a promotion of secular polygamy and that if a guy falls in love with two women, then hey thats just great. Again that may play out differently in the actual series, but it struck me as interesting. If you take God out of the picture, secular polygamy should be as accepted as gay marriage, or marriage between whoever and whatever. Just another step towards redefining marriage.

The media and most Americans don’t know the difference between Mormonism, Protestantism, and Catholicism. We are lumped as Christians. So my logic is if we base polygamy on something in the Bible, then we can base the bad things associated with polygamy – domination of women and exploitation of young girls – on the Bible as well. Then secular polygamy becomes OK because we take that bad Biblically based stuff out and it becomes just a guy satisfying himself with as many ‘wives’ as he wishes. After all marriage is just another state license you get down at the courthouse…

I haven’t seen the show, but the “progress” in what is acceptable TV fare pretty much agrees with the basic moral principle that is now de rigeur among our Manufacturers of Culture: namely, that consent is the sole criterion of the Good. Forget such quaint ideas as appealing to the Bible. Who needs *that* dusty old thing? As long as two or more things with a pulse offer their consent, that’s all that is needed to render any concievable configuration of relationship “good”.

Eventually, it will occur to somebody to ask, “What’s so sacred about consent?” but we aren’t there yet. That will require further social disintegration and the destruction of safeguards for the weak that still exist. But eventually, we’ll get there and some future Heidegger will figure out a way to concoct a philosophical rationale for the domination of the weaker by the stronger. It’s where paganism always goes.