The Return of Infidelity
The Return of Infidelity » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names
America is back to normal. After the hard fought 2012 election, there is something almost reassuring about the news that two powerful boy-toys, CIA Director David Petraeus and Lockheed Martin’s incoming CEO, Chris Kubasik, were forced to resign due to extramarital sexual affairs.
There’s something about men with power: they just can’t keep their zippers zipped. Over the last couple of decades, the U.S. has been witness to wave after wave of infidelity scandals with considerable social power and position.
The 2012 election was a major rejection of the Christian right’s culture wars against the rights of woman to choose an abortion and use birth control and homosexual couples to marry. It may also prove to be a pivotal event in the long war against public shaming of married people who commit infidelity, who violate the “sacrament” of monogamous marriage.
According to current estimates, more than half (53%) of first marriages end in divorce and more than half of men (57%) and women (54%) admit to committing infidelity in a relationship.
Clearly, far more is at stake in the Petraeus and Kubasik affairs. While both incidents seem to have been voluntary and non-coercive, other concerns are at issue. With the former, national security might have been violated; with the latter, corporate employment policies were breached. Both are firing offenses for the male honchos involved.