We do not simply want to make a big noise about this issue. We want to be part of something which brings about real change to stop people making money from breaking up relationships.
This campaign’s success will depend on your positive involvement. Please encourage friends, colleagues and others in the churches or organisations of which you are a part.
Please read the Faithfulness Matters statement and email us at faithfulnessmatters@gmail.com to register your support get involved.
Keep up the good work, against any bad stuff that is going on out there.
This is such an important movement/campaign – a prophetic voice in these dark days!! Keep up the great work – I will be spreading the word about this.
Hang on — how can you say people are ‘making money from breaking up relationships’? Surely that implies that the websites have some share of the responsibility for breaking up relationships?
But surely the whole and sole responsibility for breaking up a relationship by adultery rests with the adulterer? They are the one who did not say, ‘No’.
I agree the websites are terrible, but they are a symptom of a sick society that treats sexual relationships as if their primary purpose is to bring happiness, and that therefore if they no longer bring happiness they are disposable. It’s that necrotic attitude with needs to change at the root, and I don’t think that a campaign which focuses on these websites is at all helpful in that — especially when you make statements like the one I quoted, which could be used by adulterers to justify their behaviour by thinking, ‘Oh, I would never have strayed if that website hadn’t provided me an easy means to do so.’ No — as soon as you went looking on the website you were unfaithful in your heart.
I cannot, therefore, support your campaign, although like you I would like to see these websites cease to exist: I cannot support it because I think that faithfulness matters, and I think it matters so much that I find it abhorrent that you even imply that the responsibility for adultery can be shared, passed on, or in any way diluted by implying that a website had any part in the process.
A truly faithful person will simply ignore these websites. A campaign truly based around faithfulness mattering would try to change society to produce more faithful people, who will marry intending that commitment to last for ever, not just until they become bored.
And then the websites will wither and die because in such a world they will have no place.
But to deal with the symptoms with a campaign like this simply masks the problem, makes it appear that if we can stop these websites it will make the world a better, more faithful place. It won’t. That’s backwards thinking, and it’s dangerous. Adultery begins in the heart, not on the keyboard, and it’s the hearts that must change: take away the websites and leave the hearts as they are and you have achieved nothing,only hidden the problem deeper and made it harder to root out.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment – and I agree that no one can ultimately be responsible for an affair apart from the person who decides to have one.
But that does not mean that society is not an influence on people and we need to shape society in a way which encourages the best behaviour. This campaign emerged from seeing public adverts for 2 of the websites run by Global Personals – one outside a massive shopping centre where all kinds of people would see it. You can say that ‘faithful people will just ignore these websites’ but we are talking here about public space – no one had a choice to ignore a massive billboard.
I don’t think the world separates easily into ‘faithful’ and ‘unfaithful’ people – we are all weak in different ways and open to influence. What this campaign is about is highlighting that making money from encouraging and developing this market is not legitimate for a responsible business. I know its not going to solve the issue of unfaithfulness – but it stands up against the normalising of it and the profiteering from it. Why should we accept that ‘this is just the way things are’?
I think advertising of smoking is a good analogy. Smoking was proven to be bad for people. It does not mean that people are not responsible for their own actions – its not the cigarette company that have forced people to smoke. But advertising has been banned in the UK for years because we do not want to encourage it and for years before the outright ban the dangers to health had to be acknowledged on all the adverts. I think this is similiar – we should not pretend that services which encourage affairs are OK and fine when it is so destructive.
I don’t think we are reducing personal responsibility – we are just flagging up the toxic nature of this work and trying to ensure a more ethical approach to on-line dating.
I don’t believe we can go down the road of doing nothing about this. I guess you have a point in that if people even look on this site they have already been unfaithful. However, we have to look at the wider effect. Young people and children will get to know of this kind of website service and believe it must be acceptable and normal. We do have to continue to fight this. Otherwise we are allowing such businesses to contribute to society degenerating even more into the darkness.
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