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Sexual McCarthyism, Polyamory, and the First Amendment

Robert Hanna
Department of Philosophy
University of Colorado at Boulder, USA
[Sam Spade] grinned at her, [and] said, Somebody ought to write a book about people some timetheyre
peculiar.
--Dashiell Hammett1

1. Ive read and thought lots about the McCarthy erain Dalton Trumbos evocative phrase,
the time of the toadand more specifically about the moral character and political
implications of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, a.k.a. HUAC. As everyone
knows, the purpose of HUAC was to investigate, punish, and if possible extirpate, membership
in or sympathy for the Communist Party of the USA, a.k.a. the CP-USA, in American cultural
and institutional life, by specifically focusing on Hollywood. Ive also read and thought lots
about The Hollywood Tenthe ten Hollywood directors and screenwriters who were forced to
appear before HUAC in a show trial in 1947, and then were fired from their jobs by their
Hollywood studio bosses, imprisoned, and blacklisted, for refusing to testify and for contempt of
court, and in particular for refusing to repudiate their Communist beliefs or sympathies and
name names, i.e., denounce their friends and associates. The Ten explicitly and quite
reasonably claimed legal and moral protection for their Communist beliefs or sympathies and for
their judicial silence, under the First Amendment. And then, of course, they were fired,
imprisoned, and blacklisted anyway. So much for The Bill of Rights. Ultimately, in the
McCarthy era, many thousands of peopleincluding one former member of my Department
were named, investigated, and lost their jobs or were otherwise punished by blacklisting for the

D. Hammett, Too Many Have Lived, in D. Hammett, Nightmare Town (New York: Vintage, 2000), pp. 305-320,
at 312. In 1951, Hammett was imprisoned for five months after refusing to name names to a New York state version
of HUAC.

crime or sin of holding Communist beliefs or sympathies. And the plaza right outside the
building that houses my Department is named after Dalton Trumbo, in order to remind us of the
cultural, moral, and political oppression of the McCarthy period.
From our contemporary point of view, you might wonder: Why didnt the First
Amendment actually protect The Ten and all those other people too? The answer, obviously, is
that the First Amendment or any other purported legal or moral protection of freedom of belief,
speech, or self-expression cannot actually protect anyone in a witch-hunting environment of
fear, hatred, prejudice and taboo. How can you admit that you are, and claim your right to be,
what a witch-hunting mob calls a witch, and still survive?
2. In professional academics, we are now, sadly, in an era of sexual McCarthyism. In the sexual
McCarthyist era, intimate, romantic relationships between academic people (amongst which I
include tenured administrators, tenure track faculty, non-tenure track faculty, graduate students,
and undergraduate students at any and all colleges or universities) are currently regarded with
essentially the same fear, hatred, prejudice, and taboo that membership in or sympathy for the
CP-USA would have triggered more than 60 years ago. There now also exists a perfect analogue
of the unholy union of HUAC and J. Edgar Hoovers McCarthy era FBI, namely the Office of
Discrimination and Harassment, a.k.a. the ODH, or its functional equivalent, at virtually every
college and university in North America. Wire-tapping and opening personal mail has its perfect
analogue in the use of e-mail transcripts. And scandal-mongering newspapers, together with
various online accusatory blogs, function as a perfect analogue of the scurrilous Counterattack
and Red Channels. Furthermore, and what is perhaps worst of all, college and university
administrations all over North America are meekly and mindlessly accepting this state of affairs,

or even paying Uriah Heep-like obeisance to it and zealously forwarding it, just as they did
during the McCarthy era.
3. It is my impression that nearly all human persons seek to have intimate, romantic relationships
with other people. And by intimate, romantic I dont necessarily mean sexual. Even asexual
people want intimate, romantic platonic relationships. People simply want to love and to be
loved. At my own university, in order to have an intimate, romantic relationship with another
academic person with whom you stand in some sort of supervisory or otherwise evaluative
relationship, you must first declare this to the university administration. If not, then you can be
fired, suspended, or otherwise disciplined, up to seven years after the fact. Not only that, but
even being accused of wanting to have an intimate, romantic relationship with another academic
person, whether or not you stand in some sort of supervisory or otherwise evaluative relationship
to that person, if that other academic person decides that s/he doesnt now want this relationship,
or retrospectively doesnt want to have had it or to have wanted it, for any psychologically
peculiar reason whatsoever, up to seven years after the fact, and even though s/he might have
invited it in the first place, is subject to investigation by the ODH and punishment by the
university, including being fired, suspended, or otherwise disciplined, and also informally or
formally blacklisted.
These are bitterly ironic facts, since (i) basically every same-aged/same-career-stage or
older/advanced-career-stage academic person at a given college or university, or within the same
discipline, bears either an actual or really possible supervisory or otherwise evaluative
relationship to every same-aged/same-career-stage or younger/earlier-career-stage academic
person at that college or university, or within the same discipline, and (ii) I am sure that the
majority of all academic people have had, or are now having, intimate, romantic relationships

with other same-aged/same-career-stage or younger/earlier-career-stage academic people either

at the same college or university, or within the same discipline . Let us call these regular
academic couples.
In order for regular academic couples to be formed, they all had to go through the usual
peculiar human rituals of mutual attraction, getting to know each other, dating, communicating
love to each other, etc. And of course for every regular academic couple, there are several other
people, usually also academic people, who were or are unlucky in love with one or another of
the members of that regular academic couple, in any of all the peculiarly human ways of having
romantic relationship troubles. But nowadays, when an academic person decides that s/he
doesnt want, or retrospectively doesnt want to have wanted or have had, an intimate, romantic
relationship with another academic person, especially one that would lead to the formation of a
regular academic couple, up to seven years after the fact, and even if s/he invited it, this is called
sexual harassment by [the name of the other academic person goes here].
Notice how the phrase sexual harassment sounds a lot like sexual assault and nonrationally evokes the same moral disgust as the latter phrase, even though the phrases actually
mean very different things. But the non-rational emotional association with the ugly phrase
sexual assault is no doubt precisely why the sexual McCarthyites chose the equally ugly phrase
sexual harassment, and not, e.g., romantic relationship troubles. Indeed, sexual McCarthyites
like to talk about victims of sexual harassment precisely because in fact there are no such
people as victims of romantic relationship troublesthere are just people in all their
multifarious peculiarity, having the all-too-familiar romantic relationship troubles with each
otherbut they want to evoke, non-rationally, the impression that there are such victims. Even
worse, at my University, for instance, the label sexual harassment is irrationally stretched to

cover everything from originally-welcomed but ex-post-facto-unwanted expressions of romantic

affection over e-mail, and funny or not-so-very-funny jokes that someone took the wrong way, to
rape. But thats like classifying everything from overt sarcastic remarks, or malicious gossip, to
brutal murder, under the same label, colleague abuse. Its not only absurd, its sophistical in an
entirely pernicious and potentially extremely harmful way.
4. Of course, sexual assault, and any other sexual interaction that is not governed by mutual
moral respect and rational consent, e.g., rape, is immoral. Its entirely awful, evil, and wicked,
and no one ever ought to do it.
What I am wanting to point out, however, is that in the era of sexual McCarthyism, many
intimate, romantic relationships, or wanting to have such relationships, even when they are
entirely governed by mutual moral respect and rational consent, are being used as sufficient
grounds for disciplining or firing people, by colleges and universities all over North America.
For example, within the last five years an untenured professor in another humanities department
at my university was summarily fired for having an intimate, romantic relationship with a
graduate student and not declaring it to the university administration first. Question: How many
of us know or have known academic people, including university administrators, who now more
or less fully support the sexual McCarthyite system, who are or were members of regular
academic couples, and in many cases such that one of them is a former student of the other, who
didnt ask any colleges or universitys permission to have this intimate, romantic relationship,
and who (more importantly) would have thought that this was an entirely morally unacceptable
restriction of their freedom had they been forced to do so? Their support of the sexual
McCarthyite system is sheer hypocrisy.

Moreover, many intimate, romantic relationships, or wanting to have such relationships,

especially when they would lead (or would have led) to the formation of a regular academic
couple, even when they are entirely governed by mutual moral respect and rational consent, are
also being investigated by ODH offices and then punished by colleges and universities all over
North America, provided that one academic of the academic persons, usually (but not always) a
woman, complains about the other academic person, usually (but not always) a man, up to seven
years after the fact. If the sexual harassment complaint doesnt stick, then they will still get the
other academic person for unprofessional conduct. More bluntly, for the academic person who
is the target of the complaint, then once the complaint has gotten to the investigation stage, that
person is screwed: the complainant always gets the benefit of all the doubts, no matter how
psychologically peculiar his/her reason might be for bringing such a complaint to the ODH.
Indeed, and as a consequence, many academic people, usually (but not always) women,
sometimes pushed by their jealous partners, but also sometimes pushed by their senior female or
male colleagues, or for Machiavellian identity-politics reasonsor sometimes out of sheer
malice, just because they canhave recently learned that the ODH and sexual harassment
complaints are extremely effective weapons for silencing and terrorizing other academic people,
usually (but not always) men, and for taking revenge for past slights, real or imagined. I know
this first-hand, because it has happened in my own Department several times in recent years. Let
me repeat: The ODH and sexual harassment complaints are being used by some academic
people, sanctimoniously and self-servingly, as weapons against other academic people. It is
simply a fact, but no one ever talks about it out loud or in print, for fear ofbeing denounced to
the ODH and found guilty of sexual harassment or unprofessional conduct, of course.
Notice, too, that in the sexual McCarthyite era, even just being accused of sexual harassment,

for any reason whatsoever on the part of the accuser, no matter how psychologically peculiar, is
deemed by university administrations to be tantamount to unprofessional conduct. So too in
the McCarthy era, even just being named as a communist or commie sympathizer, for any
reason whatsoever on the part of the accuser, no matter how psychologically peculiar, was
enough to get many thousands of people fired from their jobs and/or blacklisted.
5. There is a sexual orientation known as being polyamorous, which means being disposed to
falling and being in love with more than one person at once. In practicethat is, the practice of
polyamorythis means seeking and having more than one mutually morally respectful marriagelike relationship at a time. So in that sense, it could be called ethical polygamy. For an extremely
fair-minded, carefully researched, and well-argued discussion of polyamory in all its
psychological, social, legal, moral, and philosophical aspects, you could read the legal scholar
Elizabeth Emenss long and brilliant paper, Monagamys Law: Compulsory Monogamy and
Polyamorous Existence
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/58-monogamy.pdf
But for a more popular and shorter presentation of the basic issues, also very fair-minded, instead
you could simply watch Ida Lupinos equally brilliant but little-known film, The Bigamist
https://archive.org/details/the_bigamist
No one who is even minimally reflective can help thinking, as they take Edmund OBrien off to
jail at the end of the movie, What exactly did he do that morally undermines The American
Way of Life?
6. People who have admitted to themselves that they are polyamorous have also rationally
chosen this way of life, for better or worse. So in these respects, their sexual orientation is

exactly like that of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, or queer people, a.k.a. LGBTQ people.
Theyre all just who they are: theyre peculiar, just like all people everywhere and everywhen;
but polyamorous people are also sharply different from the serially monogamous, heterosexual
norm in contemporary North American society; and therefore theyre subject to various kinds of
fear, hatred, prejudice, and taboo.
7. Now I want to bring together sexual McCarthyism and polyamory. Currently, being L,G, B,
T, or Q is morally cool in the academic world, by which I mean that not only is it regarded as
fully morally permissible in that world, it is also in a sense affirmed and celebrated. But
polyamory is not morally cool in the academic world. It is the sexual orientation Whose Name is
Not Spoken. Why? Why isnt LGBTQ actually LGBTQP?
One reason is that virtually all non-LGBTQ people and LGBTQ academic people alike
still more or less unreflectively think that serial monogamy is the moral norm for intimate,
romantic relationships. Think of the righteous campaign for Gay and Lesbian marriage.
Rationally and morally speaking, however, why is serial monogamy the moral norm and also the
law? What is the real moral difference between serial monogamy (i.e., multiple marriage-like
relationships over time) and polyamory (i.e, multiple marriage-like relationships at a time)?
Someone once said to me, OK, but polyamory would be so tiring, and I couldnt deal with
that. Right. But thats just an honest admission that her heart was prudentially closed in certain
ways, and certainly not a moral argument against polyamory. Polyamory, by contrast, means
having a more open heart: loving more people than just one. So polyamorous people are more
open-hearted and more loving. But why is this a sin?

The right answer, of course, is: it isnt a sin. Polyamory, just like being serially
monogamous and heterosexual, being lesbian, being gay, etc., is perfectly morally permissible,
provided that it is governed by ethical principles of mutual moral respect and rational consent.
But here is where the other and more important reason why, in professional academics,
LGBTQ isnt LGBTQP, kicks in. The reason is sexual McCarthyism. If polyamory were morally
cool too, then this fact would significantly get in the way of some academic people
sanctimoniously and self-servingly using the ODH and sexual harassment complaints as
weapons against other academic people, including polyamorous ones. And it gives them coercive
power to be able to do so. And they enjoy having coercive power over their colleagues.
Ultimately, then, that is why in contemporary professional academics its only serially
monogamous LGBTQ thats morally acceptable, and not LGBTQP.
8. Now generalizing, I strongly believe that all those academic people at any North American
college or university who are now sanctimoniously and self-servingly using the ODH and
sexual harassment complaints as weapons against other academic people, especially including
polyamorous people, are themselves acting immorally. Whatever their peculiar motivations,
theyre acting just like those people who sanctimoniously and self-servingly named names to
HUAC and Hoovers FBI in the McCarthy era. That is, theyre not just the usual run of peculiar
humanity doing the usual peculiarly human things: in Kants moral terminology, theyre treating
other people as mere things; or in my mothers more punchy moral terminology, theyre nasty
pieces of work .
9. As you might imagine, being an academic person who is a member of the polyamorous
minority, or even just defending the moral permissibility of being polyamorous, in a sexual
McCarthyist world, could get you into serious trouble. And it actually has gotten some academic

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people into serious trouble. So without any hope whatsoever that it will make any difference
whatsoeverI remember what happened to The TenI hereby claim my First Amendment
rights to say what I really think about sexual McCarthyism and polyamory in this new time of the
toad.