Greece hovers on the edge of political abyss. Eurozone leaders are struggling to keep their currency afloat. Protestors are doing their best to bring the institutions of capitalism to account by camping out on Wall Street, the steps of St Paul’s and countless cities across the world. It’s the economy, stupid.

But as the most profound questions are being addressed at the global economic order, it’s worth thinking about some tangible examples of where a belief in market without limits can leave us.

Over the past couple of years, we have seen an exponential growth in online ‘personals’. A small number of these encourage and facilitate people who are married or in committed relationships to cheat on their partners. These sites are not just confined to a dark corner of the internet – increasingly they are advertised on billboards on our high streets. Recently, a US-based company who run such websites used a picture of Boris Johnson in one of their adverts. It’s all part of a marketing strategy designed to court controversy and notoriety.

These websites are not small operations. They require complex technology and partner with large companies who operate the sites. One of the UK’s leading on-line dating companies, Global Personals, runs the website Marital Affair, whose strap line is ‘The grass is always greener’. 

Despite providing the backroom for these enterprises, Global Personals enjoys public recognition for their work and have been shortlisted for two awards at the 2011 National Business Awards. The awards ceremony is next Tuesday at a lavish event at Grosvenor House Hotel, the opening speech will be given by the Chancellor, George Osborne.

Websites like this represent a new expansion of profiteering into areas that previously has been reserved in principle from the market – a new low ebb in the commodification of relationships. It’s bad enough that we should routinely be subjected to the appropriation of human sexuality as a marketing tool, but these actively promote lying and infidelity to a partner, threatening relationships that we have too often forgotten have public as well as personal and religious dimensions.

As soon as you speak out about these issues it’s easy to find yourself caricatured as a regressive conservative or a naïve puritan. That’s not my background or approach. I’m on the political Left and most of my work has been with homeless people, including a number of years working in Soho with people involved in the sex industry.  It is this work that has fostered my concerns about the importance of families and faithfulness.

It’s encouraging that the Faithfulness Matters campaign has received some support from the political left (see this New Statesman article). Its recognition that the worst facets of economic and social liberalism – ease with the untrammelled pursuit of profit or sexual gratification – have formed an unholy alliance against essential human relationships. 

It might be tragically inevitable that people will have affairs. But faithfulness matters too much to accept businesses which promote and profit from them.

Jon Kuhrt co-ordinates the Faithfulness Matters campaign, and blogs at Resistanceandrenewal.net

Theos is backing Faithfulness Matters, a campaign which is seeking to persuade companies like Global Personals to withdraw from running websites that promote extra-marital affairs.