Free love means you can do it with anyone you want, right? But it immediately begs the question of what's the kind of love that's not free with the answer being the kind which binds you to any person or thing on an exclusive basis. It can also mean the kind of love for which you have to pay. For instance, prostitutes by definition don't practice free love. But is there a price to pay for free love? The obvious example is that if you practice free love you're more likely to get STD's. Yet, let's put an end to that contingency by positing the idea of you rolling with a particularly health conscious crowd of swingers who all protect themselves in the right ways (with dental dams, condoms etc). The real price however lies in the social contract. Detachment is one of the downsides for practitioners of free love. Those who saw Sullivanian analysts back in the 60's may remember that possessiveness was frowned on by some of these practitioners. Thus if you were seeing a Sullivanian and it was your birthday and you wanted to be with the person you loved, you would in essence be showing a kind of favoritism that ran against the free and equal spirit of the cause. You would also be propagating the same colonialist, nuclear values that a truly liberated spirit would want to avoid. A true practitioner of free love is wary of his or her own imperialist impulses and will not look at those they care about as their property--something which is a tall order indeed. Eschewing classical monogamy with all its joys is thus one of the most costly consequences of those who both desire and choose to make themselves available to just about anyone. "It's all good" as MC Hammer says--until it becomes bad. Or maybe love isn't the right word. Perhaps the correct expression should be free sex.
{This was originally posted to The Screaming Pope, Francis Levy's blog of rants and reactions to contemporary politics, art and culture}