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Adultery Agency gets Regular Coverage from CBC on St. Valentine’s Day

by Hilary White

TORONTO, February 17, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The CBC has re-run a programme segment covering a Toronto-based dating agency specializing in “hooking up” people who are already married or in “committed relationships,” for extra-marital sex.

The CBC has covered the agency several times in the last few years in print, radio and television segments usually on St. Valentine’s Day, the Christian feast day celebrating marital fidelity.

Rick Okada, Ashley Madison’s marketing director and media buyer told LifeSiteNews.com that the agency gets regular media coverage from the government-funded CBC. The segment that ran this year was a repeat of the longer 2005 piece that, Okada said, aired on the National on February 11, 2005. The Ashley Madison website lists several separate instances of CBC coverage, dating to 2003, but Okada said the agency rotates the media coverage on the website and, though he did not know exactly how many times the CBC has covered them, he said it was more than seven.

“They normally pop up around Valentine’s Day, not necessarily every year but around then,” Okada said. “It’s topical around that time of year. We hear from them any time there’s some sort of point in the year that is appropriate in their eyes.”

The agency adheres to the theory that human beings are not meant for life-long fidelity. Ashley Madison’s director, Darren Morgenstern told the CBC, “In today’s day and age, maybe infidelity isn’t the taboo that we feel it is or ought to be.”

The agency’s website says that studies have shown that 50 - 60% of men and 40 - 50% of women will engage in some kind of extramarital affair. It says, “Extra-marital affairs and open spousal relationships offer an opportunity to re-experience the excitement and stimulation associated with dating and courtship.”

The Ashley Madison agency claims to have nearly a quarter million Canadian clients on its lists. Mr. Okada said the agency is doing well and expanding. “We’ve got members all over North America and are just going into the UK.

The CBC’s 2004 TV spot reported that a Los Angeles TV studio planned to use the agency as the basis of a reality show about infidelity.

Dr. Donald Carveth, a professor of sociology and social and political thought at York University said, “TV shows of that sort appeal to the voyeurism in all of us. I think they appeal to the sadism in all of us. Here we are watching these people humiliate themselves. We’ll be watching marriages fall apart. We’ll be watching people in pain and making stupid mistakes and facing the consequences.”

Dr. Carveth is a psychoanalyst who serves as a Training and Supervising Analyst in the Canadian Institute of Psychoanalysis. He told the CBC, “Monogamy requires work, but it pays off…It offers the greatest degree of fulfillment.” 

Carveth compared TV coverage of Ashley Madison with the bread and circuses of Rome. “It’s the end of the Roman Empire, things are falling apart,” he said. “(The Roman empire) provided the masses with bread and circuses and the circuses often involved terrible cruelty.”

CBC media relations spokesman, Ruth Ellen Soles, told LifeSiteNews.com she was not familiar with the specific segment and could not immediately comment.

The CBC is massively funded with taxpayer dollars and has long positioned itself as the arbiter of Canadian values. Those values – from its eager coverage of the adultery dating service to its regular slams of Christianity and its openly biased coverage in favour of abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage and just about every sexual aberration – are increasingly out of touch with those of the majority of Canadians.

Some CBC viewers commented that the programme was in poor taste since the agency was really “exploiting” people with low self-esteem. One Torontonian, Fiona Carver, commented on the CBC website, “Is this the end of monogamy? Absolutely not, but it does look like the end of television.”

Contact Members of Parliament
http://www.lifesite.net/getinvolved/politics/canada/findyourmp.html

Contact the Minister of Canadian Heritage with concerns:
The Honourable Beverley J Oda
Canadian Heritage
25 Eddy Street
Gatineau, Quebec
K1A 0M5
Tel.: (819) 997-0055
Toll-free: 1-866-811-0055

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