Essays: Volume One. Mark McGinnis

lives. In some ways it has replaced other pleasures that they have been unable to find – the pleasure of contentment, the pleasure of non-sexual love, the pleasure of a connection to the world around them.

      The Christian church has been a strong proponent of monogamous relationships through the millennia making it a moral rather than a procreative issue — although the Catholic church, with its prohibition on birth control, kept the procreative issue in the forefront. It may be the moral and social dimension of monogamy that has its largest benefit to contemporary human culture. Many social bonds of human society have disintegrated over time. The support of the tribe and clan are a thing of the past. Extended family is now very extended, many times over thousands of miles. Elders are farmed out to retirement communities or homes. Children are swept around by the whims of education and economic opportunity. Monogamy, the committed relation between two people, is a surviving social institution to give a last human connection for many people.