Adultery on Film

I have thought for some time that film and television has been waging a not-so-subtle campaign in favour of adultery. My Bloglines feeds delivered a piece called Adultery Ends Badly by David Mills over at Mere Comments:

Adultery is a tragedy, not a sin: Adulterers X and Y have found their true loves, the one with whom they can be all they can be, the one some cosmic force must have intended them to marry, only they met each other after marrying A and B. Should a marriage vow keep them from happiness? (A question easier to ask and answer "no" these days than once it was, now that the vow is almost universally considered to come with an option to terminate.)

The story tellers do usually hedge their bets, making A and B somehow deficient if not actually dangerous, presumably because the average American approves of adultery but only if the adulterer has an excuse. He's still not completely comfortable with pure desire. If this required bet-hedging is the result of the oft-derided Puritan heritage, then hooray for Puritanism.

Alas.