I’m going to start this post by saying this:
I am 100% opposed to anyone cheating when they’ve entered a monogamous relationship. If you want or need to be with someone else then you should, in my open, discuss it with your partner. There are plenty of options that don’t involve lies and deception.
With that out of the way let’s start this properly.
Nobody has the right to play “morality police” which is what seems to have happened in this case.
Personally I feel people deserve to know if their partner is being unfaithful, and if I knew that the partner of someone I cared for was cheating on them I would tell them. I wouldn’t do it to punish the unfaithful party, but rather to protect the person I care for. However that isn’t what has happened.
This hack and data leak, seems to be purely for the purpose of punishing people. And while I have no sympathy for people,men or women, being exposed as cheaters I still don’t agree with how it was done. Exposing these men and women for the whole world to see punishes more than themselves. It publicly exposes their partners and their children.
I know what it’s like to be a child and have people know one of your parents cheated, and it’s not a great thing.
I also know how painful it is to find out you’ve been cheated on, and that deeply hurts and is quite embarrassing to have others know if I’m honest. I can only imagine how bad it would feel to have the whole world know.
Hacking “Ashley Madison” was illegal.
Cheating, while I personally think it’s a horrid thing to do, is not.
And even if cheating were illegal, two wrongs don’t make a right. I genuinely hope that the people responsible for the hack are found and given the appropriate punishment as dictated by law.
But all that doesn’t even take into consideration the reasons why people were using the site. Yes it’s aimed at people who want to have an affair, and the majority of users are probably there for that reason but what if they’re not?
What if a couple has decided to open their relationship to other sexual partners and use this site to find those partners? I personally know of at least one married couple who have agreed to have sexual partners from outside their marriage, however they don’t want to make that public knowledge for fear of family reactions and judgment. If they had used “Ashley Madison” to find partners, they may now be exposed to some very awkward situations with family.
Yes, the majority of victims of the hack are likely just unfaithful people but that may not be all of them.
And just as a side note, I completely disagree with Barbara Ellen when she says that men deserve to be exposed because they were stupid for using the site(http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/23/ashley-madison-men-sex-women-dating-adultery).
I can all but guarantee that if the gender demographic of “Ashley Madison” was reversed and it were more women than men using the site, people like Barbara Ellen would damn near have an aneurysm as they furiously wrote their articles to condemn the hackers for perpetuating patriarchy and invading the privacy of women. But it’s ok in this case because reasons.
P.S.
I will admit when I heard about the hack it was through an article about how Josh Dugger had been exposed by it, and yes I laughed. Not because I agreed with the hack, but because it’s just another example of Dugger being a lying hypocrite. I still disagree with the hack.
Atheist Alan 