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.

The Last Half-Year

Returning again to this blog.  I left it on the Winter Solstice, I’m returning now that we have passed the Summer Solstice.

I left because -- so many things went wrong between those two soltstices!

In early December, my car was stolen.  Long story--maybe I’ll tell it later.

In late January, just as we were about to buy a new car, my dental crown fell out.  By the time that was fixed, in late February, another tooth or two had gone with it, and I had my first dental bridge.  “Oh Joy!”  The temporary had threatened to come loose just as I was settling in for coffee and a sandwich at Pantheacon.

End of February, congratulating myself on surviving the car and tooth “incidents” -- both our computer and our printer stop working; so we were off to research replacements.  If I tell you we ended up moving from Windows 7 to Windows 8.2…some of you will appreciate that we had a bit of a “learning curve.”

Middle-to-end of March:  The house plumbing starts to back up again.  We get it unclogged; within ten days it’s a mess again.  Unclogged finally--but the toilet seemed defective.  Off we go to research toilets.  And so it went through April and May.  And finally we had a sleek (?!) new toilet!

I’m sure other matters came up--or maybe it just felt that way as we recovered from these disasters.

You get the picture.

And now--June--the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage.  And, unfortunately, the killings in Charleston.  I’ve been online all week discussing the propriety or impropriety of the Confederate flag.

And figured: Solstice-to-Solstice was enough of a gap here on Grail and Wand.

So I’m back.