Justin L. Clardy

A number of Black writers have cast Black marriage in a state of emergency – Black folks are not getting (or staying) married like they used to. Yet in seeking to address the Black marriage problem many have left marriage's ‘monogamous-only’ condition unexamined. In this article, I take a different approach. I draw on a long-standing prevalence of de facto non-monogamy among those marked Black and argue that the numerical constraint making marriage between two people violates equal treatment. To make the case, I show how anti-non-monogamy attitudes have been racialized in ways that are expressive of anti-Blackness. In my view, the effects of this racialization include ongoing and disproportionate impacts on an already burdened group – Black polyamorists. A failure to reform the monogamous-only condition of marriage tacitly endorses anti-non-monogamous attitudes of the past where Black intimate relationships were thought inferior and therefore deserving of an inferior social standing. Finally, I look to an account of minimal marriage as a site of possibility for establishing a marriage institution that is more just in relation to equal treatment and a site of repair for racialized non-monogamists whose historical denial to accessing marriage has had the effect of accumulated social and political disadvantage.

Discussions about infidelity in the philosophy of love typically emphasize sexual transgressions, often neglecting emotional infidelity. In this article, I provide a conceptual analysis of emotional affairs. In my view, emotional affairs are defined as extrarelational connections that (a) take on a pattern of intimacy that mirrors the intimacy present in a relationship whose emotional structure is presumed to be exclusive, (b) involve a sustained consideration of being engaged in a relationship that mimics the original with the affair partner, and (c) involve a form of deception, asymmetry, or relational opacity – whether by omission, strategic withholding, etc. – that disrupts mutual transparency between relata. While the primary aim of this article is to establish a conceptual account of what emotional affairs are, I recognize that it is worth considering (and gesture at some preliminary considerations) that emotional affairs might not always be morally problematic. That is, identifying whether and how emotional affairs are wrongful is not always clear. Thus, I close by briefly sketching some preliminary reflections on their potential wrongfulness by pointing out a few morally salient features that might warrant further analysis in future work.