Audacia Ray on the Sanford Scandal

I recently met the awesome Audacia Ray at the Sex 2.0 conference held in the DC area in May. Audacia Ray is a sexual rights activist and is the author of Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing In On Internet Sexploration (Seal Press, 2007). Dacia is also the Program Officer for Online Communications and Campaigns at the International Women’s Health Coalition and an adjunct professor of Human Sexuality at Rutgers University.

Dacia is a guest today on The Takeaway, a new national morning news radio program co-produced by PRI (Public Radio International) and WNYC Radio in collaboration with the BBC World Service, The New York Times and WGBH Boston.

Today's program is entitled "Love, Sex and Governor Sanford", in which Dacia and another guest make some very excellent points. Give it a listen, it's only 7 minutes long.

As a polyamory advocate I am intrigued by the part of the Sanford story that makes clear (if he is being truthful) that he first developed an emotionally intimate friendship with Maria Belen Chapur. This is something married men and women are often forbidden from doing in western culture. A few years ago a therapist wrote an article published in the Baltimore Sun that was emphatic that opposite sex friendships aren't OK for married people. At the time I was furious about it and vehemently disagreed - but context does matter, as does the importance of clear, direct communication between spouses about specific boundaries around behavior with others. Polyamorists must develop this ability in order to make their relationships work. Monogamy encourages avoidance of such discussions, because people marry thinking that everyone already knows the rules.

Once Sanford became emotionally bonded with Ms. Chapur, his human nature made it very, very difficult (though far from impossible) to avoid expressing those feelings sexually - it's the way we are wired as humans. Does that mean he should never have become friends with her? I guess I'll have to leave that decision up to the individuals who find themselves in that situation to decide, because it is their marriage, not mine, that is at stake.