Polyamory: Entering the Public Discussion

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.

“How Did *You* Become Poly, Anyway?”

(From the South Bay Poly September newsletter)

I’ve just written up about 600 words for a friend of mine to post on her blog, about “how I became poly.”  When it’s out, I’ll provide the link.  Of course, in my case, I tend to think that I’m poly by nature somehow—I don’t recall making a decision to “become” poly.  Though in this blog piece, I hedge my bets a bit.  In reality, though, if I chose anything, it was to explicitly acknowledge something I knew I already was.

I grew up as a Christian who believed in marriage for life.  My parents had one marriage:  To each other, for over forty years.  My sisters both married once—for life.

At the same time, though, I wondered why, when my college girlfriend moved away during my sophomore year, she thought I was sending her a “Dear John” letter simply because I told her I was seeing another woman since her departure.  And later I wondered why, if my fiancée truly loved me, she would break our engagement simply because I had once seen someone else.  What did she mean by “love,” anyway?  To be fair, she probably wondered what I meant by it.

Maybe I’ll tell this all to the Unitarian polys, who seem disturbed by the possibility that polyness may not be something that some people “choose.”

How did you become poly, anyway?