(July 9, 2015 at 10:21 pm)Esquilax Wrote:(July 9, 2015 at 7:27 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: But it would increase the rate of STDs overall. If you got an STD and you were sexually active with 6 other people on a regular basis, there is a big chance all 7 of you will eventually get infected. If you were married to just one person, only 2 people will contract STDs as opposed to 7. Monogamy decreases the spread of STDs. Let's keep the STD rates down!
Your math is off; you're not taking into account the quarantine factor. Say I'm in a group of six, and one person cheats, but the others don't: yes, the logic holds that the other five people stand a better chance of being exposed to whatever STDs get picked up. However, since the other five do not cheat, the virus stays contained within the circle of five, whereas if the other five did not consider themselves in a committed relationship, then you would have five other vectors of the disease potentially spreading it to others.
At most, the net number of people with an STD goes up, but the potential for that to spread outside of the group actually goes down by dint of the majority of those people keeping their sex contained to the group. If those people were not married, one could make no such assurances.
Conversely, in the monogamously married couple, the cheater could keep cheating, spreading the disease yet further. The relevant data isn't married people infected, because that assumes that a cheater will not cheat again, which isn't justifiable. What matters is people infected, which the marriage demonstrably does not keep safe from infection, in this scenario.
Esq, it seems you missed the fact that, at least, one of the spouses is a cheater... quarantine would only work if the cheater was removed from the group.
