World AIDS Day

December 1 is World AIDS Day. It is very important to remember those we've lost to AIDS, to care for anyone battling AIDS, and to care for anyone with HIV.

We must continue to work for a cure and continue to fight the spread of HIV.

We should also never forget that stigmas, ignorance, bigotry, sex-negative attitudes and shaming have helped spread HIV and AIDS.

Let's continue to work for a better culture in which people aren't shamed and marginalized for their sexuality, nor stigmatized for getting sick.

It's Thanksgiving Week in the US

This national holiday always falls on the fourth Thursday of November.

Thanksgiving Day is a huge holiday in the US, centered mainly around a special family meal. In case you haven't noticed, Americans like to eat a lot. Since Thanksgiving is always on a Thursday, Friday is a holiday as well (at least as far as the government is concerned). Because Thanksgiving is considered to specifically be about family togetherness, it can be a painful time for those who have been rejected by their family because of their gender identity, sexual orientation, relationship orientation, or choice in partner(s). Some LGBTQ people, polyamorous people, and those in consanguineous, intergenerational, or interracial relationships are reminded every year that even their own family hates them.

Some people make the best of this and plan a Thanksgiving meal with friends. I throw out a special “good for you” to anyone who hosts such a meal this holiday. Keep up the good work. I think such gatherings are much more enjoyable anyway. If you don't have one to go to, consider hosting your own!

But I also have words for anyone who has driven away or banned someone in their family because of that other family member’s identity, orientation or partner(s): Shame on you. You don’t have to like your family member’s sexuality or how they live. But you should reach out to them and support them instead of driving them away. Every person at that table does things you don’t like. Why single out a family member for punishment because of who they love? If your family member has a partner whose family is more accepting, guess who is going to win? Guess who is going to get to play with any grandkids/nieces/nephews? Not you. Think about it. Maybe it isn't too late to make amends and have them over for this year's holiday. This might help.

If you can’t go “home” for Thanksgiving and you are feeling down and you haven’t managed to make plans with friends, consider hosting your own Thanksgiving and invite some friends. Or, volunteer at a homeless shelter or some other charity location that will be helping people that day. Don’t allow sadness or loneliness to take hold. You can find a place where you will be welcomed.

Do you have any special plans for this holiday week? Are you going to be coming out, or trying to start or rekindle something with someone special? You can comment anonymously below or write an email at fullmarriageequality at protonmail dot com.

Australian Leadership Can Make a Bold Move for Equality

The people of Australia have made it clear they support the rights of more people to marry. Those of us on the right side of history are happy to see more people around the world being free to have the relationships to which they mutually agree and to live out their gender identity. The leadership of the country can make a bold move for equality and take a leadership position in civil rights by bringing about full marriage equality.

This blog, and the related Facebook page, calls for relationship rights for all adults, including full marriage equality. When we say that an adult should be free to marry any and all consenting adults, we actually mean it. We have not hidden that.

As we see, there is no good argument against full marriage equality. So let's stand up for the rights of ALL adults to have the relationships to which they mutually agree.

BREAKING: Australians Vote For More Freedom to Marry

Hooray for Australians for voting to increase the freedom to marry!

Keep evolving towards full marriage equality!

When Bad Reactions Cause Harm

I answer a submission on this blog's sister Tumblr. It is from a man who was in a consanguinamorous relationship with his sister.

Veterans Day

Today is the Veterans Day holiday in the US.

I can’t help but think of the men and women who risked their lives (and those who gave them) and endured so many things in service to their country, who weren’t and haven’t been free to be who they really are and share their lives openly with the person or persons they love.

Recent years have brought progress, and we have to fight to keep what we've gained while still looking for more progres. Problematic laws and policies remain, and, of course, LGBTQ people, the polyamorous and consanguinamorous still endure the the threat of prosecution, persecution, or discrimination.

Shouldn’t someone who risked their life for this county be able to marry more than one person, or a biological relative? Or at least share a life with the person(s) he or she loves without a fear that their own government will be against them? Is bravery and valor negated if a man loves more than one woman, or his long lost sister? Shouldn’t a woman who served be free to marry both of the women she loves?

Let’s thank our veterans, especially those who are still being treated as second class citizens.

Update on Unjust Prosecution in Oklahoma

Here's an update on an a reunion GSA case we last covered in this entry. As reported by Nolan Clay at newsok.com...

A woman who married her mother has pleaded guilty to incest and been put on probation.

Misty Velvet Dawn Spann, 26, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Stephens County District Court to the felony charge.

Better probation than prison, but this shouldn't be a crime in the first place.

She was sentenced to 10 years of probation and ordered to get counseling. She also must pay a $1,000 assessment, a $991 fee and court costs.

Outrageous. Adults have a fundamental right to marry.

Misty Spann and her mother, Patricia Ann Spann, 44, married in Lawton in March 2016 and lived together in Duncan, records show.

The two were charged in September 2016 after a DHS child welfare worker learned of the relationship and reported it to Duncan police.

Who was being harmed???

The incest charge against the mother is still pending.

The marriage was annulled last month after a judge concluded the mother had induced her daughter "by fraud to enter the marriage."

In her request for the annulment, Misty Spann complained her mother claimed to have "consulted with three separate attorneys who advised there would be no problem with the marriage."

Notice that's not "I don't want to be married," but rather that she thought it was legally OK.

The mother told the DHS worker she "had looked into it" and felt no laws had been violated "because her name was no longer listed on Misty's birth certificate," police reported.

Thankfully, the vast majority of consanguinamorous relationships aren't brought to the attention of law enforcement and prosecuted. Like it or not, there are genetic mothers and daughters who are, as you're reading this, hugging, kissing, making love, sleeping together and you'll never find out who they are and you'll never stop them. Some of them might even be "legally" married. Some are married in every way but other the law.

UPDATE March 15, 2018

If you're in a consanguinamrous relationship, you need to protect yourself and your lover(s).

Now May Be the Time for New Jersey and Rhode Island to Make History

Yesterday was an “off year” Election Day in the US, meaning there were a few state and local elections.

Soon, members of the Democratic Party will have the Governorships of both New Jersey and Rhode Island and majorities in both houses of each state’s legislatures. Democratic Party legislative goals can be reached by the passing of laws that will be signed, rather than vetoed, by the Democrat Governors. Out of the two major political parties in the US. the Democratic Party was more supportive of progressing towards marriage equality.

Neither of these states have criminal laws against consanguinamory.

This legislative session coming up may be the best time for the states to modernize their marriage laws to bring them in line with full marriage equality. They should repeal any law that prevents consenting adults from marrying and positively affirm the rights of adults, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, or religion, to marry any and all consenting adults.

This could lead to a case that could go to the Supreme Court, and the Court could rule in a way that removes laws discriminating against ethical nonmonogamy and consanguinamory. The Court currently has the same philosophical composition that moved marriage laws closer to full marriage equality in 2015. How much longer this will be the case is uncertain, but it is possible the Court could become less friendly to civil rights if the current President has the opportunity to replace any more members of the Court.

A window will soon be open that could allow for a great advancement of civil rights. Will the leaders of New Jersey and Rhode Island have the courage to make history and bring about full marriage equality in their states and, possibility, nationwide?

If they need  inspiration, try this:

The right to marry or to personal consortium shall not be abridged or denied in this state on account of sex, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, ancestry, consanguinity, affinity, or number of participants.

Epic Takedown of Hater by Polyamorous Consanguinamorous Mom

In addition to having a lot of fetishists, Tumblr appears to also have some people in actual consanguinamorous relationships. Some of their blogs are NSFW, and others are relatively SFW, like the sister blog to this very blog you're reading. Here's a text entry at a Tumblr, "Mommy With A Crush," which is a generally NSFW blog. This text entry, however, should be reblogged and sent all over. "Mommy With A Crush" is about a mother in a relationship with her son, and in this entry she responds to an anonymous (of course) hater who sent a message to berate her and say he hopes her blog is fake...

Up until about 2 years ago, I would have been right there with you. I grew up in a very religious, conservative home. And, to a somewhat lesser degree, that is the home that my husband and I have established for our family because he had a similar background to mine. In that kind of environment, my reaction would have been the same as yours: outrage and disgust.

Feelings of disgust are understandable. If someone has a strong Westermack Effect in their life, they're going to feel disgust about the thought of having sex with their own close relatives. The problem comes when they insist everyone else has to feel the same way about their own close relatives. Not everyone does, and the disgust of persons A, B, and even C should not interfere in the love lives of person Y and Z.

But then, almost two years ago, I suddenly had to start dealing with feelings that I discovered inside myself that flew in the face of my beliefs. I did not ask to have those feelings, nor were they secret desires I’d hidden for a long time. They were simply a development of what I already felt toward my son in a direction I never expected them to go. And yes, they terrified me and disgusted me too. And, like you, I was very judgemental and negative toward myself for having those feelings.

More people find themselves in this situation than most people think.

Shame on Independent Women's Forum For Sloppy Hate

IWF fell into the same hate trap as some others just did, as we documented here. This time the attack on those experiencing Genetic Sexual Attraction is from Patrice Lee Onwuka.

TRIGGER WARNING: Bigotry and talk about abuse/sexual assault.

Haters Don't Bother to Check the Date on Articles Before Screaming

Cosmo recently tweeted a link to an article that was in Cosmo back in October 30, 2015 (and sister publications about the same time), and the foaming-at-the-mouth knuckle-draggers, not bothering to notice the date on the article, erupted in hate-filled attacks insisting this had to do with other things that have happened in the last few weeks. And of course the tweets and commentaries by the bigots were cheered on by a bunch of prejudiced hypocrites who took a break from masturbating to sibling sex in Game of Thrones long enough to pile on with the hate.

The original article was about a reunion GSA case and we covered that at the time. Of course none of these anti-equality discriminators had a good reason to deny the right of consenting adults. That's because there isn't one.

Brandon Morse at redstate.com wrote this...

DISGUSTING: Cosmo Is Now Trying to Normalize Sibling Incest

Fake news!

In an article titled “This Is What It’s Like to Fall In Love With Your Brother,” Cosmo recounts the tale of the troubled “Melissa,” a woman who didn’t know she had a brother for 40 years, until one day she learned she did.

OK.

Cosmo doesn’t make any effort to say this practice is immoral, disgusting,

Why should they? It should be legal and they should have the right to marry.

Cosmo looks at Melissa’s plight with something that goes beyond tolerance, and may even border on sympathetic.

Oh no! Sympathy! For someone blindsided by an overwhelming phenomenon! How dare they!

Paul Bois then picked up the ball and fumbled again, also not bothering to check the date. He wrote at dailywire.com...

Just a little over a week after it said white girls were forbidden to wear Princess Moana costumes for Halloween, Cosmo managed to out-ridiculous itself by normalizing incest.

How embarrassing. These sheep don't bother to think or do basic observation or research.

The comments from the bigots were full of reasoned consideration. Just kidding!

NuttyCatLady
eeeewwwwww!

That's pretty much their "argument" against equality and rights. Which is why we will have full marriage equality.

GSA Siblings Featured in Good Housekeeping

[This is being bumped up from 2015 because a recent tweet to the article by Cosmo set off controversy all over again.] Also, in sister publications Esquire and Cosmopolitan. Yup, Asher Fogle and her publishing employers are probably receiving all sorts of bigoted hate mail right now. Here's the article that is getting the prejudiced discriminators foaming at the mouth.


It's a feature that involves Genetic Sexual Attraction.

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Two days later, Melissa drove two hours at night during a Monday Midwestern snowfall to meet her brother. And when she saw him standing in the frigid air outside his office building, she felt a connection that was instantaneous and electric.

"It was love at first sight, absolutely the craziest thing I have ever experienced," Melissa says. "The sexual force was like I was levitating off the earth. Your body instantly craves the other person."

The feeling was mutual: The pair shyly hugged and they had trouble looking at each other, in part because it was like gazing in a mirror, they looked so similar. "It was trippy, like seeing yourself in the opposite form," Brian says. "Everything inside you is just vibrating. Your cells know that this is your person."

The article does explore the possible science behind GSA.

Social scientists and psychologists have long researched how societies' prohibition against incest evolved: It's essentially nature's way of protecting humans from passing along the genetic mutations and disease risks that happen more commonly with close relatives, explains Dr. Debra Lieberman, a professor of Psychology at the University of Miami. The dominant theory, first proposed by Finnish social scientist Edward Westermark, is that people become desensitized to those they are raised alongside.

"Westermarck's hypothesis and my research have shown that siblings use clues like living under the same roof and being cared for the same parents to develop a sexual aversion," Lieberman says. "But if you don't grow up together, no aversion naturally develops."

And not everyone who does grow up together experiences the Westermarck Effect.

The flip side is something Lieberman calls her "template hypothesis." All people form a template for the world based on the people and their surroundings during development: what men and women look like, what their roles are, etc. Then, they seek that out in a mate. This is common for non-related couples, too, psychologist and sex expert Isadora Alman notes.

"Many couples experience the feeling of being instantly attracted to someone that is familiar in some way, whether it's a physical reminder of someone beloved or something else they can't put their finger on," Alman says. "Love at first sight is a real phenomenon."

But it's been suggested that this feeling is even stronger for consanguineous (a.k.a. related) couples, especially those who don't develop the ick factor from growing up together. Why? "Genes tend to shape our preferences, talents, and attitudes — and familiarity creates comfort, so we look for someone similar," Lieberman says. "For siblings, this drives an enhanced sexual attraction." Which is exactly what happened to Melissa and Brian.

This is an issue that can't be ignored. It is going to happen more and more over the next few decades. As expected, the ignorant and the bigoted haters are commenting on the article, but they are throwing in red herrings at best, and otherwise are using Discredited Arguments. There is no good reason they shouldn't be free to be together.

Start reading through our series on myths about GSA.