It boasts the slogan, "When Monogamy Becomes Monotony,” a line that could arguably be applied, at one time or another, to every marriage that has ever existed. Like all web sites that aid and abet rotten behavior, this one wraps itself in the rationalization that it is only giving people what they want: America is a free society, after all, and there is nothing wrong with giving Americans options, right? Besides, the web site isn’t forcing anyone to do anything wrong…it simply presents an option that individuals are free to reject or accept. With this self-serving philosophy, AshleyMadison.com is traveling the same smugly unethical road as one of last year’s Ethics Dunces, Mike Torchia, the personal trainer who wrote in Newsweek about the sexual services he generously provided to desperate housewives.

Adultery leads to shattered families, ruined finances, psychically damaged children and deep emotional scars all around. Most if not all spouses will eventually find themselves in a vulnerable state where unhappiness, anxiety, and stress have them primed to make an impulsive and ultimately destructive decision to pursue an illicit relationship. These are the times when people need good advice, counseling, and perspective. These are the times when AshleyMadison.com instead offers the tools they need to tear apart their commitments, vows and lives: secrecy, betrayal, selfishness, and irresponsibility. It offers the seductive promise of excitement and sexual adventure, willfully ignoring the emotional devastation and multiple victims that are the usual bi-products of adulterous affairs.

Yes: it is all legal. But inducing people to hurt others while subjecting themselves to the risks of remorse, financial ruin, and even violence is far worse than many crimes. Done on a large enough scale (and large scale is what web sites do best), prodding Americans to damage their marriages and jeopardize their families can harm communities and the fabric of society itself. AshleyMadison.com already has competitors; one is called “Philanderers.com.”  If facilitating adultery turns out to be one of the things, like auctions, that the internet does well, who is to say that AshleyMadison.com and its imitators won’t do lasting damage to the domestic stability of the United States? Should the web site record its accumulation of broken families and displaced children along with its “hits?”

America is having enough trouble keeping its families together without having slick web sites working to tear them apart.

See unethical sites from other months