Respect For Marriage Act

Like many countries, the US needs a national "Respect For Marriage Act."

Our laws should ensure that an adult is free to marry any and all consenting adults, and have their marriages respected under the law, in courts, by schools, in hospitals, by insurance agencies, and so forth. This should be the case in every state, county, and city.

Ideally, we would adopt a Marriage Equality Amendment that supports diversity, equity, and inclusion.

There is no good reason to deny an adult, who is capable of consent, regardless of their age, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or any other personal characteristic, their rights to consent to relationships, love, sex, kink, residence, or marriage with any and all consenting adults.

Denying the polyamorous right to marry shouldn’t be part of any law. Equality “just for some” isn’t equality.

Let's support full marriage equality.

It’s Always Good to Hear From You

There is one of me here (and a few other people who do similar work elsewhere), and I’m doing this for free, and have to squeeze it in around the rest of my life. There are millions of you, thousands of whom have contacted me over the years. That means it’s difficult for me to keep in contact unless you keep reaching out. 

I always like hearing from people who are or have been lovers, the curious, the allies, questioning friends and family, and anyone who isn’t a closed-minded bigoted hater.

Whether you’ve been in contact with me (Keith) before or not, please feel free to reach out, even just to say hello.

Reach out to me privately via email at fullmarriageequality at protonmail dot com, message me on Wire messaging app at fullmarriageequality, message me on Bluesky at @marriage-equality, and X at @FullMEquality.

For Consanguinamorists Considering Parenting

I was asked anonymously on Tumblr about the health of children from consanguineous parents, why there is a taboo about this, and what advice I have for a mother and son having a baby.  My answers mostly apply to any consanguinamorous parents.

National Sons Day

In the US, Monday, September 28 is National Sons Day.

Celebrate sons. All sons, regardless of sexual orientation or relationships. 

Whether they are cis, trans, fluid, or whatever their identity, if they are sons, it is their day.

Are you a son?

Do you have a son? If you have a son, it's time to think about the good things he's brought into your life and what you can do to show your support and appreciation.

Are you celebrating?

Do tell in the comments below.

If you have something to share or ask you don’t want in the comments, you can write to Keith at fullmarriageequality at protonmail dot com

Twins and Double Cousins

Throughout history, it has been more common than present-day people in densely populated areas would think for, say, a man to marry a woman and then for that man's brother to marry that woman's sister. If the larger families get along, it can make a lot of sense. It gets more attention these days when the siblings are two sets of identical twins.

Becky Pemberton reported at the-sun.com on such a situation, which is more newsworthy because both couples had children within months of each other. [This post has been bumped up so external links may no longer work.]

Brittany and Briana are identical twins who married identical twins Josh and Jeremy Salyers and then gave birth to babies within months of one another. 

 

They uploaded an Instagram post of their adorable sons Jett and Jax and said they are “Cousins, genetic brothers, and quaternary twins.”

When children are born to both of those married couples, those children are first cousins twice over to each other, or "double cousins." They are first cousins through their mothers, AND first cousins through their fathers. This is true whether or not the sisters are twins and whether or not the brothers are twins. Genetically, the double first cousins are like siblings to each other. Once they are grown, legally, those first cousins can marry in about half of US states and have sex in all but a handful of US states, whereas siblings can't legally marry in any of state and can legally have sex in only three. It's another example of how ridiculous the laws are, and another example of how genetic concerns are not the reason for unconstitutional bans on the consanguineous freedoms to sexuality and marriage.

Brittany and Briana met Josh and Jeremy at a festival for twins in 2017 and the Salyers blokes proposed six months later, following a whirlwind romance. 

 

They had a joint wedding on August 5, 2018, live in the same home in Virginia, US, and are now expanding their families together.

Twins, especially identical twins, can be very close, and as the article stated, these twins have done so much of life together, and they are living together. While the article does not say one way or the other, it isn't out of the range of possibility that this situation involves polyamory and consanguinamory. Either way, we wish them well.

Have you known of similar situations? Maybe you know of someone who ended up having marriages to more than one person from the same family? As always, feel free to comment below.

National Daughters Day

Friday, September 25, is National Daughters Day.

Celebrate daughters. All daughters, regardless of sexual orientation or relationships. 

Whether they are cis, trans, fluid, or whatever their identity, if they are daughters, today is their day.

Are you a daughter?

Do you have a daughter?

Are you celebrating?

Do tell in the comments below.

If you have something to share or ask you don’t want in the comments, you can write to Keith at fullmarriageequality at protonmail dot com 

Ethical Nonmonogamy is Not Cheating

Cheating is breaking an existing agreement or vow and keeping/intending to keep that breech of the agreement a secret from the person or people with whom it was made rather than informing the other(s) that the agreement is over (which is "leaving").

Ethical nonmonogamy is not cheating. (ENM may also be known as “consensual nonmonogamy” or “disclosed nonmonogamy.”)

For example, Mark and Jenny are swingers. Their agreement is that they will only be with others when they are both present. Anything more than a hug or kiss on the cheek with someone else, or revealing genitals to someone else in a social context, when they are not together, is a no. They attend parties together and have sex with others there; that's not cheating. But while Jenny is out of town on business, Mark picks up a woman at a bar and she gives him oral sex. Under the agreement he has with Jenny, this is cheating. Other swingers have different rules.

Some people have open relationships/marriages and a "don't ask, don't tell" policy, meaning the partners can be with others and won't ask or tell each other about who or what or when, often with certain conditions such as using protection and having STI tests. If you're not communicating with a potential partner's other partner(s), you can't be sure that being with you wouldn't involve your potential new partner cheating. Ultimately, though, at some point you just have to trust what someone tells you because establishing an absolute negative is extremely difficult. How can you be sure they don't have an agreement with some other person out there that would be breached with whatever you're doing? You can't. You can only be sure that you're not cheating on someone.*

Ethical nonmonogamy can take many forms, from lifelong spousal triads and quads (polyamory) to couples swapping to swinging to open marriages to couples engaging in the occasional casual threesome to someone living alone but having casual hookups. Informed consent is the core of all of this. While ENM is not cheating, people who profess or attempt to maintain ENM might cheat, just like monogamists might cheat. If there is a closed triad and someone in the triad has a secret lover on the side contrary to the agreement with the two others in the triad, that's cheating. "Fluid bonding" is a term used in polyamorous circles. Someone might only have unprotected sex with one person, and protected sex with others. Going without protection would be a form of cheating.

One should never assume that someone who is married or at least coupled isn't available, although one can certainly decide they don't want to be with someone who is married or coupled. That's each person's decision to make. Just because someone is married or has a partner doesn't automatically mean they aren't available for romance or sexual affection or some other social activities (meals together, going to the theatre).

While one may decide that kissing someone else is cheating and a deal breaker for their relationship, not all cheating has the same implications and risks.

How Consanguineous Lovers Can Avoid Trouble

Believe it or not, there are still criminal laws in many places criminalizing consensual sex between adults, and there are still police officers who will investigate people for this "crime," still prosecutors who will take the case before a court, and still judges and jurors who will convict people and sentence them to prison. There are still social workers who will take children away from good parents because those parents love other adults.

It doesn't matter to them how loving the relationships are. It doesn't matter if they love each other more than they could love others, it doesn't matter if the lovers didn't even meet each other until they were adults. It apparently doesn't matter to the people interfering that every dollar or minute they spend trying to stop consenting adults from loving each other is a dollar or minute that could instead go into protecting people, especially children, against predators.

In addition to this persecution of consanguinamorous people, there aren't any protections against other forms of discrimination against the consanguinamorous, such as employment discrimination. There are still many states that don't have protections for LGBTQ+ people, either, and polyamorous people are even less protected than monogamous LGBTQ+ people.

I sometimes forget that people don’t follow the news and law as closely as I do for this blog, so they may be unaware of these things. So I want to share with you what I've learned.

First, note the disclaimer that there is an ever-present at the bottom of this blog. I'll mostly repeat it here:

Sorting Out Relation

Sometimes people, especially young people, aren't certain of how to describe their relation to someone else. It doesn't help that legal relation isn't always the same as genetic (blood) relation.  People can legally be siblings, but not be close genetic relatives, for example. Or two people can be genetic siblings but not legal relatives. Relation by blood/genetics is referred to as consanguinity and relation by marriage or law may be referred to as affinity.

Generally, the law recognizes that people are related through birth*, adoption, or marriage (or civil union or domestic partnership.)

I hope this provides clarity to people who are uncertain.

If You Get Called to Jury Duty

What should you do if you are called to jury duty and are faced with being placed on a criminal case against someone you think is being prosecuted under an unjust law, such as a law against adult unmarried cohabitation, or against polyfidelity (as Utah has had on the books), or against consanguinamory? NOTE: THIS IS A PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAY, NOT LEGAL ADVICE.


The Basics of Criminal Case Juries in the US

Here in the US, people being accused of criminal activity have a right to a trial by jury or they can go with having a judge decide their case. If they go with a jury trial, the judge pretty much acts like a referee until the jury reaches a decision. The decision will be in the hands of the jury, not the judge. The judge should give you no indication of whether they think the defendant is guilty or not.

For a criminal conviction, the jury of twelve people has to unanimously decide the person on trial is "guilty" and it is supposed to be because the prosecution proved their case for guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt." If just one person (or, up to eleven people) on the jury says "not guilty" and won't budge, the case ends in a mistrial and the prosecutor can try again with another jury. If all twelve say "not guilty" then the accused is cleared of that crime and can't be retried for the same crime for the same incident. People can appeal after they've been convicted of a crime, but their appeal usually won't get them cleared.

Living Consanguinamorously - What To Tell The Children

A question many people in consanguinamorous relationships have is if, what, when, and how to tell their children about their relationship.

There is no one right answer because it depends on many different factors.

It will be great when we get to a point where it doesn’t even have to be a question, but since most consanguineous lovers are still living in places where such relationships face severe discrimination, often including imprisonment, it is a question some people have.

Most people in consanguinamorous relationships have children, whether they have those children together or by some other relationship or through adoption or third party reproduction, because most people in general have children, so this is an issue faced by many people.

Let’s consider some of the factors involved.

Labor Day Weekend

In the US, the first Monday in September is the Labor Day holiday, making this weekend an extended holiday weekend.

Friends and family often go to the beach or get together.

Although most schools now start before Labor Day, it’s still considered the cultural “end of summer,” although the meteorological end of summer always falls about September 21.

In the northern hemisphere, warm temperatures, beachgoing or poolside socializing, and perhaps some alcohol make it a festive time. 

If you have any special plans or end up having any special experiences with family or friends, tell us about it below in the comments. You can stay anonymous. For some of you, this will be a chance to make a move to initiate something you’ve wanted to do.

Be safe and have fun!