This is from the latest South Bay Poly Newsletter (#236).
Context: I co-founded the South Bay Poly discussion group around 1993. It meets monthly in the San Jose, CA area. For the last year, I have also been serving on the board of the Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness (UUPA). UUPA had a booth at the June national meeting ("General Assembly") of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA)
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Still not much news to report from the Unitarian polys….though I can say that there appears to be deepening discussions on common ground between the Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness (UUPA) and the Unitarian Universalists for BDSM ("Leather & Grace").
In any case, the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage has somewhat opened up public discussion on multi-partner marriage. Usually (of course?) this is presented as a cautionary tale of the “slippery slope” we are now on, supposedly because of that Supreme Court decision. Most people, though, I think still regard these as unrelated issues. I tend to agree with that. But if we’re going to discuss multi-partner marriage…
I’ve seen at least one commentary that suggested multi-partner marriage should not be dismissed out of hand. The details of a multi-partner marriage contract could be complicated to be sure. But then the same commentary raised the question -- perhaps more to the point for most poly families -- of whether government should be involved in sanctioning relationships at all. Can marriage be replaced by a complex of legal agreements, specified by the people involved?
Raising these issues certainly moves the discussion of multi-partner relationships forward -- which is a good thing.
And if more people become aware of committed consensual nurturing polyrelationships, if these become more accepted as possible options…that is some sort of progress.
I’m cautiously optimistic.
