While the situations and conditions is which you describe using GPS tracking upon spouses isn’t the same as governmental intrusion upon individual rights and freedoms, those same rights and freedoms are nevertheless derived from a moral basis that once was more sacred than it is now in our society. I fear that attitudes like yours – that it is an acceptable behavior in a “free” society to track and spy on others, for any reason short of criminal or dangerous activity – are products of your lack of understanding what it might be like living in a time when those rights were not being categorically stripped away from people as blatantly as in the last ten years.

Your argument does not stand the test of logic or morality. There is no acceptable criterion, under your ruling thumb of justified espionage, to limit such tracking only to adultery. Therein lies the fatal flaw to your illogic. You assume that the means, since they exist, are justifiable for using them. The same might be said for the use of nuclear weapons. We’ve built them, so there must be situations where using them is an acceptable means to achieve an end. But what is to stop someone from using GPS systems – which, in my opinion, if used for tracking people is as immoral as cheating or lying, stealing, or raping – to track others for whatever reasons they choose?

As someone who grew up under the threat of communists always supposedly looking over our shoulders, spying on everyone, and we know from the McCarthy era what that led to, it seems what the world needs is less surreptitiousness and delusionally misguided concepts like yours-reasonable sounding on the outside but not well thought out- and the elimination of the very thought form that more spying is necessary to keep people under control. Your notion, of using GPS devices for tracking spouses, reader’s comments of using them to track children are merely only ways to control society more from a paranoid elitist perspective, devaluing human rights, and individual freedom.

It could never be good enough to merely use them to replace maps and guidance systems to make travel easier and quicker, because in your world, there is no such thing as privacy. If you were older, you might not be so quick to christen such devices for such dehumanizing purposes. The world needs more transparency, and less people advocating a ludicrous reduction to surveillance techniques in solving people’s problems.

Thanks for your comment. Looking back on it I think you are right. I should go back and remove the name calling – it is unprofessional.

And it did hit home. I have a small problem of being compassionate and empathetic. I can imagine the pain and hurt someone might feel who is being cheated on and then is told that they are too fat or ugly to be loved anymore, or to have promises made to them kept. It does make me angry to think that someone can prop themselves up with that type of agrument and feel justified. It is the the height of folly and it breaks my heart that people are hurt because of it.

And you are also right that marriage is difficult and not so clear cut. Marriage, for most people, is rather messy. It is not always two healthy people coming together in marriage. People are broken and do stupid, silly things. But this is never an excuse for cheating. Love overcomes these obstacles and persists through them. If a husband or a wife honors their promise to love they will work on the marriage until things get fixed – even in the face of people not taking care of themselves.

Love will call for change – even demand it from a spouse. Hate will cheat.

- Joe