I've been seeing a lot of this recently from friends on the cultural right. I grew up in this world and know it inside and out--its good points (of which there are many) and it's bad points. In this case, some of them are the same points. Thread: 1/?

Before we even start talking about policy, cultural norms, or morality, one must look at what sexual morality is:
It is an attempt to channel the second most powerful animal drive (survival is the first, and only sometimes) into a form that doesn't destroy civilization. 2/?

"Civilization" in this case can be anything from a family unit up to a sprawling empire.
Those advocating that sex be confined to marriage as a norm, because this is the way it used to be when it was great, are not playing from a full view of the history of their own 3/?

culture or religion.
Marriage has three purposes in Western culture (and human culture):
1) As a way of promoting the economic stability of kin networks, thus allowing for the care of children and the continuation of the line.
4/?

2) As a sacrement (in many, but not all religions)
3) As a one-two punch vs male domination (married women historically enjoy more rights than single along most, but not all, axes, and married men are less likely to be violent, politically dangerous, or otherwise disruptive 5/?

All that is great, but it ignores a couple simple, glaring facts:
1) this is not a perfect solution, it's only a "pretty good" one, and it leaves a lot of malcontents
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2) it only functions optimally when prostitution and adultery have culturally sanctioned and tolerated places, even when they retain their stigma
There are a couple other darker aspects, but I'll skip over those as they're not really material.
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The simple fact is that there will always be people who are, for one reason or another, unmarriagable. There will always be married people who can't find satisfaction with their partners. There is a good case to be made for the idea that "divorce solves the latter" and that 8/?

maybe porn helps solve the former.
But the simple fact is that since prostitution was outlawed on moral grounds and social welfare policies were championed...9/?

...the system of normative monogamous marriage has decayed. Marriage persists--always will--but as the expected norm it is now the provenance of the relatively well-heeled, a great percentage of whom have found private (and not always undestructive) ways to allow wandering. 10/?

For a moral system to be practicable at scale it must BOTH have a best-practices model AND an "acceptable deviancy" script.
The "This would all be fine if everyone just got married and stayed faithful" aspiration is a pipe dream dreamt up by demagogues, many of whom 11/?

kept/keep mistresses & harems, collect/ed rent boys, & had other more exotic tastes--sometimes hidden, sometimes open.
Want a stable marriage system? Want children to be cared for? Want to minimize abortion?
You have to have systems that allow for deviation from the ideal. 12/12