Solidarity For Full Marriage Equality

At prolongedeyecontact.tumblr.com I was pointed to “Why We Should All Be Against ‘Gay Marriage’” at gaywrites.org, while prolongedeyecontact.tumblr.com was getting it from f---yeahsexeducation.tumblr.com. Got that?

For a while, we referred to the overall political topic of people of the same sex getting married as “gay marriage.” But that’s never been right. Why? Because marriage is marriage. Whether two people who enter into a marriage are the same gender or not, it’s still a marriage under the law, and we don’t need to distinguish between those that are “gay” or not.

I like to say the same-sex or the "0same-gender freedom to marry," because that is what we're talking about.

Prolonged Eye Contact (I think... maybe someone else deserves the credit) calls for solidarity...

Ya’know I used to be taken in by this “marriage equality” rhetoric, but then I really sat back and thought about it. It’s not marriage equality that the cLGB are fighting for at all. Every time bigoted heterosexual politicians say we can’t have “gay marriage” because it will lead the way to polygamy, pedophilia, and bestiality activists are more than willing to take the bait and throw poly people in with pedophiles and animal abusers. And where exactly does that leave queer poly people [like me]? Exactly. They don’t care about marriage equality, they care about assimilation. Until they care about all people in consensual, adult relationships having the right to marry, until they stop acting like group marriage is an abomination on par with abuse, they are not really fighting for equality.

There are monogamous LGBT people who do support full marriage equality, and they should be thanked for their solidarity by polyamorous and consanguinamorous people, just as anyone who throws other consenting adults under the bus should be called out. At the same time, poly and consanguinamorous people should be supporting LGBT rights even if they are heterosexual.

Vivienne Chen writes at equalwrites.org, "Why We Need a More Inclusive LGBTQ Movement."

Anti-LGBTQ campaigners have often used the issue of polyamory–or rather, a twisted media presentation of “polygamy,” which is distinct from ethical nonmonogamy and polyamory–as a slippery slope argument against LGBTQ equality, particularly when it comes to marriage.

The worse thing is? LGBTQ activists left and right take the bait.

Yes, some do. Definitely not all, thankfully.

The fact is that the struggles of the poly/NM community are not unfamiliar to the LGBTQ world. Couples in open relationships have lost their jobs and even custody of their children after people around them outed them as polyamorous. Sound familiar?

By distancing themselves and trying to divorce their struggle from the struggle of the poly/NM community, LGBTQ progressives end up throwing another sexual minority–indeed, a minority within their own minority–under the bus. (A significant contingency of the poly/NM community is queer/bi and vice versa.) Those who oppose progressive social movements have used this tactic countless times before–divide and conquer. I’d say something trite about how we are only as strong as we are united, but you get the point.
In order to build a more inclusive LGBTQ equality/acceptance movement, we as activists need to learn how to combat the poly-baiting that occurs on the opponent’s side. Regardless of your own personal opinions about the feasibility or acceptability of an open or non-monogamous relationship, we need to have the language to call out anti-equality bigots on their bulls--- and false logical assumptions every time they make a “LGBTQ relationships = polyamory (= bestiality = total sexual depravity)” comment.

Exactly. Drop poly people, and then they'll ask you to drop transgenders, then bisexuals, and then perhaps gays and lesbians who "act too flamboyant" or "are too butch." It is divide and conquer. Push back by defending relationship rights for all consenting adults. Kudos to Chen.

Alonzo Fyfe wrote "Legalizing Incestuous and Polygamous Marriage" at atheistethicist.blogspot.com...

On the issue of polygamous marriage, perhaps this should be legal. They have one significant advantage over the "traditional family."


With a traditional family - one breadwinner, one caregiver, and children (or elderly parents, or those for whom care is needed) - if anything happens to either the breadwinner or the caregiver the results are much likely to be catastrophic. If we increase the number of breadwinners and caregivers, we can reduce the chance of a catastrophic result. There is always a "backup" to fall back on.

Good point.

On the other hand, managing so many personalities may well be impossible.

For some, yes. Some people can't handle any marriage. Marriage is optional, not required, or rather it should be. Part of the freedom to marry is the freedom to not marry.

It may require an unhealthy level of submission to a ruling patriarch that robs the other members if their personality and autonomy, or disintegrate into factions.

Not all polygamy even involves a man.


Fyfe does not show solidarity for consanguinamory, unfortunately...

Promoting a society-wide aversion to incest is almost certainly an effective tool for preventing the sexual abuse of children.

The problem with this argument was noted in a comment from Austin Nedved...

No, it isn't. Promoting an aversion to consensual sex between family members does nothing to deter people from molesting their children. Why would it?

It hasn't stopped anyone, has it?

If we wanted to stop child sexual abuse, wouldn't promoting an aversion to nonconsensual incest (i.e. rape) without trying to deter consensual incest make more sense? Why try to stigmatize all incest, consensual as well as nonconsensual, when we can just try to deter the latter?


I agree that completely removing any sort of aversion to all incest without respect to whether it is consensual or not, would definitely result in an increase of the amount of child molestation. But removing the stigma on consensual incest without removing the stigma on incestuous rape would seem to make the most sense in terms of stopping people from molesting family members.


And it is certainly possible to promote an aversion to rape without also promoting an aversion to consensual sex. 

Thanks to Nedved, who doesn't even support consanguinamory.