(This essay originally ran in the subscriber’s newsletter this past Friday. For access to exclusive essays sent only to AT members, subscribe here.)
Read more Strange Things Are Happening
Listen, I know this is controversial, and it’s going to ruffle some feathers. And do not take this in any way as an effort to discount all the heroism and selflessness we have seen from women in uniform (a true and sincere thanks)—but women should not be cops, and they shouldn’t be in the military. It really comes down to a cost-benefit analysis and the reality of net outcomes.
I had the thought when I read a story in the New York Post about a married female cop (and the mother of three young children) in Nashville who filmed herself having “depraved sex” with a cop coworker “inside the middle school where she worked—while students and staff were just outside her office….”
The sordid details came out during an investigation into her conduct, which also revealed that this wasn’t a one-off: She’d also filmed herself hooking up with her affair partner inside his cop car on “at least two occasions while on duty.”
She was immediately decommissioned and resigned shortly afterward, and it’s not exactly clear what happened to her adulterous paramour, who’d been on the force for 18 years (though he was decommissioned, too).
Now, if only men were allowed on the force? This never would have happened. (Or, the chances of it happening would be infinitesimally small.)
We wouldn’t be reading about “depraved sex” going on mere feet away from where our children are supposed to be learning, in what’s supposed to be a safe environment. We wouldn’t have one more broken family (probably two), with more children whose innocence has been stolen because they’ve been shoved into a world where adults couldn’t act like adults.
Our trust in our law enforcement wouldn’t have taken yet another hit. We wouldn’t have wasted who knows how many tax dollars paying the salaries of people who lack the character to be in civil service and investigating their bad behavior after the fact.
Are all those costs really worth it to have a person who’s objectively physically inferior in a world where physical superiority is a matter of life and death, not only for them but for citizens as well? I just can’t justify it.
Read more Trump’s warning on China: It really is that dangerous
The same goes for the military (which has a high rate of cheating). Women do offer benefits in these worlds, but the net results as a whole are negative.
There are countless historical examples of how great the fallout of adultery and illicit sex is and how far it ripples—David and Bathsheba (their child’s death and the collapse of a kingdom), Cleopatra and her Roman men, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Alexander Hamilton and Maria Reynolds (blackmail), and Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah (murder) are just a few. A comprehensive list would read like an encyclopedia set, so I’ll stop there.
Yes, there are women who could join law enforcement or enlist in the military and not be shameless attention-seekers (read: whores), but because too many can’t, we all have to be excluded.
I’m being hard on women, I know, and it’s not one-sided. Yes, too many women can’t be professional, but too many men lack the self-control and discipline to deny sexual temptation right in front of them—Joseph turned and literally ran from Potiphar because he knew staying meant a guaranteed breach of trust and morality.
Men can’t just hightail it from the cop station or a patrol car when confronted with the same reality, though, so the solution is to remove the temptation, since someone has to do the job. Someone has to do the job of law enforcement and national security, and if it can only be one of the sexes, to remove all the dysfunction that comes with a mixed-sex environment, it needs to be the men.
And here’s my last point: We need to bring back adultery laws (where they’ve been struck from the books) and start prosecuting affairs as criminal offenses once again. Making immorality illegal means criminal punishment for violations, which does deter behavior.
Adultery rates have risen dramatically since the pain of the consequences is no longer a metaphorical burning at the stake but more of a rubber-band snap on the wrist. Now, the only person I’ve really heard talking about this is Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback, who proposed changing the state’s divorce laws to punish an offending spouse. I think that’s a great start, and I applaud his position.
History shows that the disastrous consequences of just one affair can truly alter the course of history in an incomprehensible way, and it’s time we reject the normalization of affairs and infidelity and treat them with the gravity they demand.
Read more Are H-1B visa holders in universities radicalizing the students?
Image generated by ChatGPT.