In the past few years, newspapers, magazines, and television dramas have introduced a new term into the public discourse of sexuality: “polyamory,” which denotes romantic and sexual relationships absent traditional constraints of fidelity. Daniel Frost and Hal Boyd examine some of the arguments used to justify this phenomenon, which often focus on the supposed “radical honesty”—another new term—of polyamory:

Proponents often tout polyamory as an ethical, “consensual” form of non-monogamy. However, a recent survey . . . found that less than half of women who had been in a consensual non-monogamous relationship said that both partners desired the arrangement equally. . . . Another study on this topic found that “commitment emerged as a central concept in polyamorous relationships” but that when “rule violations” of commitment occurred they were “not generally interpreted as ‘cheating’ but rather as opportunities to renegotiate agreements.” In other words, even in polyamorous relationships, there are rules and violations of rules. The main difference, it appears, is that in “radically honest” relationships the dishonest partners—those who don’t play by the rules—face few consequences.

Radical honesty, [thus] understood, is particularly pernicious because it not only allows an individual to void prior moral commitments but also seeks to give the individual a moral justification for doing so—one is doing the right thing by following one’s honest desires. Many commitments can be canceled, and many responsibilities evaded, with this kind of honesty. Commitments made in the shadow of “radical honesty” seem always to have an implicit escape clause attached to them: “I will do X, at least as long as I feel like it.” Ultimately, “radical honesty” just means being honest about your desires, and in particular your sexual desires, even if you fall short of honesty in your commitments.

Polyamory’s boosters can claim honesty here only by importing a great deal of loose assumptions about right and wrong, human nature, and what it means to live a worthwhile and fulfilling life. In this view, humans are defined primarily by their felt desires, and the only way to live honestly and authentically is to obey them. Desire is most core to the self.

Of course, humans are not reducible to desires alone.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.