We Still Need Full Marriage Equality

On this day in 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the limited, monogamous same-sex freedom to marry nationwide. 

It was a joyous time of progress that should be remembered and celebrated. Happy Anniversary to all who have theirs today!

We must keep evolving towards full marriage equality, so that an adult is free to marry any and all consenting adults. We are in solidarity!

Let's keep making progress!!!

Myth: Anyone Experiencing GSA Needs Therapy

Reality: Therapy won’t always be necessary, but since there is so much prejudice against those who experience Genetic Sexual Attraction, someone who is experiencing it might benefit from therapy.

Experiencing GSA is not an indication that anything is wrong with the person experiencing it. GSA is a normal, natural reaction to the circumstances.

Being reunited with, or introduced to, a close genetic relative who hasn’t been in your life can be enough to prompt therapy, depending on the situation. Add GSA, and yes, therapy can be helpful.

The prejudices, stigmas, and taboos involved in GSA situations, internalized by those involved or not, can be enough of a burden to make therapy beneficial.

However, not everyone who experiences GSA needs therapy. Some people who experience GSA continue to function well without having had therapy.

If someone does need therapy, it would be helpful if they weren’t ostracized or criminalized, and could find a therapist familiar with the issues involved. This is one reason we need to bring GSA and consanguinamory out of the shadows.

See Myth: Only Someone Who Was Abused or Neglected Experiences GSA

See Myth: GSA is Unnatural

Breaking the Law?

I'm active on Quora, where people can ask and answer questions.

Someone asked "Is it illegal for a mother to have sex with her own son?"

Here's my answer. 

It’s still illegal for a woman who have sex with her adult son in 48 states in the US and many countries.

It isn’t illegal in the US states of Rhode Island and New Jersey, as well as various modern countries, including France and Spain.

Regardless of criminalization, there are mothers and sons having sex in just about every neighborhood on the planet, regardless of class or ethnicity. And there always have been. Sometimes the sex is a very casual “family-with-benefits” agreement, sometimes it is part of a spousal relationship lasting decades, and sometimes it is somewhere along the wide spectrum between.

Very few are ever caught and prosecuted where it is still illegal, but such lovers need to be careful in order to protect themselves and each other.

I added links in the text here for the sake of people who want more information.

Criminalizing sex between consenting lovers is unjust, stupid, and in the US, is unconstitutional. There is no good reason for such laws, whether they are incest laws or try to force monogamy.. Consanguinamory between mothers and son happens everywhere, and always has.

Are you a mother or son who is involved, or want's to be? Do you know someone who is? Comment below or contact me.

Mock Movie Trailer Isn’t Bad

Consanguinamory gets played for laughs a lot, often cruelly. But this mock trailer for a comedy about a brother and sister couple isn’t bad.

Too bad the movie doesn’t really exist. It could could open some minds.

An Aunt Tells Us of Her Love For Her Nephew

We have another exclusive interview to bring you. As this interview is being published, there are many people still spending more time home with family members. Perhaps some of them will find this interview an inspiration? Or they can see this for some possibilities.

People in consanguinamorous relationships are everywhere, though consanguinamorists tend to be closeted. Fortunately, some are willing to be interviewed for this blog. As a result, Full Marriage Equality has featured scores of exclusive interviews with lovers denied the freedom to marry and have that marriage treated equally under the law. Most can’t even be out if the closet or they’ll gave prosecution under absurd incest laws, which, instead of focusing on abuse, also target consensual relationships.

The woman interviewed below should be free to legally marry her partner, or simply to be together as a couple without having to hide, yet they can’t. Prejudice can be deadly. They are consenting adults who aren’t hurting anyone; why should they have been denied their rights? In much of the world, they could be criminally prosecuted for their love, and might be persecuted severely in addition.

Read the interview below and see for yourself what this woman has to say about the additional bond she has. You may think this relationship is interesting, or it might make you uncomfortable, or you might find it ideal, even highly erotic and romantic, but whatever your reaction, should lovers like these be denied equal access to marriage or any other rights simply because they love each other this way?

Also please note that someone you love, respect, and admire could be in a similar relationship right now. Should they be attacked and denied rights because of the "incest" label?

**WARNING: Mild descriptions of sex are included.**

*****

FULL MARRIAGE EQUALITY: Describe yourself.

Anu: I am a human resources professional in a large multinational corporation in Kolkata, India. I am a 43 years-old, heterosexual, liberal-minded person. I am a divorcee for over five years and stay with my only son who is about 14. I do try to maintain myself well at this age, although some might call me a bit bulky. I am 5'3", about 60 kilograms in weight, have medium length hair. I have one elder sister and an elder brother.

I like to cook, do photography and enjoy traveling. I prefer wearing western attire more than the traditional Indian attire.

I had a wonderful childhood with most of my needs taken care of, although by no means it was luxurious. I like to work hard and I think I have two sides of me, one which is very docile with my family and another very dominating one at my work. My near families are all close to me and I like doing things for most of my near ones. I live in a large apartment complex with my son. My sister’s family, too, stays in the same complex but in a different apartment. We have a very strong relationship between the two families.

Father's Day

Sunday, June 20 is Father's Day.

For all men raising or helping (or who have helped) to raise a child, whether you are a biological father, presumed father, grandfather, stepfather, bonus father, adoptive father, foster father or any variation… Happy Father’s Day!

A special thanks to fathers who have supported and loved their children who are LGBTQ+, polyamorous, consanguinamorous, or have otherwise faced persecution or oppression because of who they are or the person(s) they love. And you fathers who ARE LGBTQ+, polyamorous, or consanguinamorous, we see you, too.

We offer a note of encouragement to all fathers who can’t legally marry the person(s) they love, but would if they could, or who face bullying due to love or who they are: We will win so that every adult can pursue love, sex, and marriage with any consenting adults.

If you have a good father in your life, are you planning anything special for Father's Day?

Some considerations if you have, or are considering, a more physical relationship with your father...

Guest Post: Ewen Owen on a Historical Reference to Consanguinamory

I'm happy to bring you a submission from a friend. Ewen Owen has provided the short essay below. He considers something Christian philosopher Tomas Aquinas wrote about. If you don't care what Aquinas or any other religious philosopher wrote about, especially hundreds of years ago, it is easy to skip over this entry. But if you want to consider thoughts that still influence people today, you might want to read this.

If you're interested in submitting something relevant for this blog, write to me at fullmarriagequality at protonmail dot com and we can discuss it.
 

*****

For those who have never heard of him, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was one of the most influential philosophers of the Christian religion, ever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas . He left us with buried gem. From his masterwork Summa Theologiae, question 154, Article 9, “Whether incest is a determinate species of lust?” (In other words, whether it’s necessarily a sin, even if it’s between consenting adults.) 

Flexible?

On this blog’s sister Tumblr, I was asked about a gay son being with his mother or a lesbian daughter being with her father. Read what I had to say.

If Your Partner is Experiencing Reunion GSA

Please see the disclaimer at the bottom of this page.

What’s Happening?

You might be dealing with or facing a very difficult situation.

• Has your partner or spouse connected or reconnected with a close genetic relative?
• Did they have minimal or no face-to-face interaction from the time at least one of them was around the age of seven into puberty, or longer?
• Is your partner and/or their "long lost" relative experiencing a strong attraction to, or preoccupation with the other? Are they flirting or touching/hugging a lot? Do they want to spend a lot of time together or communicating?
  

There’s a strong chance that at least one of them is experiencing reunion Genetic Sexual Attraction. GSA is real and is a common, normal response to the circumstances involved. GSA is not an indication that anything is wrong with your partner or the other person. It is not wrong to have these feelings.

Genetic Sexual Attraction happens in up to half of all situations in which pubescent or post-pubescent genetic relatives meet for the first time or reunite after having been separated since at least one of them was a child, provided the genders and sexual orientation line up. It can happen whether this person is your partner’s genetic parent or grandparent, aunt/uncle, sibling or half sibling, nephew/niece, grown child/grandchild, even a first cousin.

It’s an overwhelming attraction unlike any other experience.

A couple of words of caution are needed here:

1) Sometimes people are just excited to connect or reconnect with “blood” or kin. There may not be any sexual attraction at all.

2) If your partner/your family is being stalked/harassed by this person rather than it being a relationship welcomed by your partner, that’s not what this entry is about. Encourage your partner to block contact and seek a restraining order.


Why Is This Happening?

Myth: Only Someone Who Was Abused or Neglected Experiences GSA

Reality: While some people who’ve experienced Genetic Sexual Attraction have been abused or neglected in the past, many people who’ve experienced GSA never experienced serious abuse or neglect.

People who experience GSA come from a wide variety of backgrounds, including warm and loving families as well as abusive childhoods. The only thing, so far, determined to be common to all people experiencing reunion GSA is that they were introduced to, or reunited with, a close genetic relative post-puberty. Abuse is not the cause of GSA.

If you don’t want someone to be abused, don’t abuse people experiencing GSA. Don’t ostracize them for having their feelings. Don’t criminalize their love. Don't deny them their rights.

See Myth: Sex in GSA Relationships Always Means Someone is Being Abused

See Myth: Anyone Experiencing GSA Needs Therapy

Double Entendres In Classic Ads

Someone brought this advertisement, apparently from the mid-1980s, to my attention.

What do you think?

As the person who shared this with me pointed out, companies like that one knew exactly what they were doing. They’d been advertising for decades. 

They and their advertising agency carefully crafted this advertisement to appeal on two levels:

1. To the broader audience of readers who will simply glance at it and think about how enjoyable those candy bars are, quickly moving on.

2. To the sons who’ve thought about their mothers as sexual partners, to the mothers who’ve thought the same thing about their sons, to those who’ve been active with each other, and to the other people who get aroused thinking about that. 

At the time, some of the most popular adult video titles and adult book titles were fictional portrayals of mothers and sons being together. This was before websites and smart phone apps. There were some premium pay television channels, magazines, and some brick-and-mortar video/bookstores. 

 These companies knew exactly what they were doing, and it was effective.

Families Brought Closer Together This Past Year

Over the past year-plus, we have known that, with family members spending more time together than ever before, more people were becoming interested in, and engaging in, consanguinamory than ever before. Soumya Karlamangla has an article at latimes.com that, if you read between the lines, touches on this. It was even titled: "A pandemic love story you haven’t heard before: Parents and their adult children."

“I don’t know anybody like I know Melissa,” said Mary, 58. “You raise your kids to grow up, and somebody else gets to meet them like this, as adults. But now I get to know her like this.”

The pandemic pushed millions of young adults to live with their parents as college campuses shuttered, businesses reduced their hours and social isolation wore down people’s mental health. In July, 52% of Americans 18 to 29 years old lived with a parent, making it the most common living arrangement for people in that age group and the highest level recorded in at least a century, according to the Pew Research Center.

I want to make it clear that I'm not saying that any of the people mentioned by name in this article have engaged in consanguineous sex. But the dynamics are in line with fostering that added bond.

But for some lucky families, the unexpected time together often felt like a gift, a bonus year to bond with parents and siblings. And for the luckiest, like the Andersons, that time was a revelation.

Melissa, 29, is the third of four daughters. She hadn’t spent much time alone with her parents until she packed up her Los Angeles apartment last summer and moved in with them in Gridley, about an hour north of Sacramento.

But over several months, the three Andersons formed a bond that more resembles a friendship among peers than a parent-child relationship.

Sounds wonderful!

During a stressful year, they took care of one another.

“Normally you look to your parents as reassurance that everything is going to be OK, but we were all on the equal playing field of being scared and being in the unknown, and I think that allowed us to know each other better,” Melissa said. “I think they know me probably better than anyone else now.”

Beautiful. 

Unlike so many stories about the pandemic, the recent movement of adult children home is often a joyful one. Americans traded their independent lifestyles for shared movie nights, exercise buddies and dinners around the table. Many, for the first time, tried a kind of intergenerational living far more common in other countries — and liked it.

Hopefully, more families will be closer together going forward.

Derek Daniels’ three-week trip to his parents’ house last summer turned into a 10-month stay. Not only was his childhood home in Burlingame less lonely than his empty L.A. apartment, but he savored the extra time with his younger sister, who was home from college.

“When would you be able to go back at 24 and live with your entire family for almost a year?” said Daniels, who returned to North Hollywood in April. “As the world outside was crumbling, it was nice to be together.”

It's not just parents. People are closer to their siblings.

“When they’re kids, you’re still more the parent. Now it’s less of a parent role — actually, hardly any of a parent role — and it became more developing a friendship,” said David, 60. “She was a good roommate.”

Melissa and Mary began a daily ritual of wandering down their street around dusk. While the world swirled with uncertainty, they took the same path every day, to the stop sign and back, never deviating.

The time allowed them to get to know each other in a new way. Mary had once thought that Melissa was a private person, but the wall that had separated them fell.

No topic of conversation was off the table. Dating. Religion. Money. Family relationships. Life goals.

Mary said that she had previously thought that Melissa, her only daughter who is single, was missing a necessary piece of her life.

But she realized Melissa can be happy partnered or not, and that her child has become a confident woman who doesn’t put too much stock in other’s opinions.

“That, to me, has been fascinating because I love that in a person. I didn’t know she had that. I didn’t give her enough credit,” Mary said. “I would like to be her friend if she wasn’t my daughter.”

Did you make the best of being home with family over the pandemic? Comment below (you can comment anonymously) or email Keith at fullmarriageequality at protonmail dot com

Consanguinamory After COVID

An Open Letter to Officers of the Court in the US

If you are in the US and you are a judge at any level, or an attorney-at-law (whether a prosecutor, criminal defense attorney, civil law attorney), or even facing jury duty, this message is for you.

You are needed to help bring about justice.

There may be laws on the books in your jurisdiction that need to be overturned or removed. It is ridiculous that there is still discrimination not only permitted by law, but enshrined in law, against consenting adults simply because they love each other. The basic freedom of association that allows consenting adults to love each other how they mutually agree has been restricted by various unjust and unconstitutional laws throughout history. Although some of these restrictions have been removed by the Supreme Court of the United States, even those may still remain in your state codes or statutes due to legislative inertia or as mean-spirit statements or even in the hopes of a reversal by a subsequent Court ruling. It is clear that momentum is on the side of civil rights and has been for a long time. We must move forward in securing the rights of all adults.

A Married Couple Denied Legal Recognition and Rights

[Removed per request of interview subjects.]

Solidarity is Needed to Advance Rights

While solidarity is needed for general relationship rights and full marriage equality, for this moment let's focus on the rights of consanguinamorous people to have their relationships and not be denied their freedom to marry. In many places, consanguinamorous people can be thrown in prison simply for having their relationships. Allies are essential to the cause of liberating the consanguinamorous.

In addition, though, there needs to be solidarity within the community.

What do I mean by that?

In my experience, when a consanguinamorous person seeks to connect with the community and be active within the community, and to work with journalists to raise awareness, it is more likely that they are someone who has experienced reunion GSA, rather than being someone who grew up with their partner(s).

If I had to guess why this is so, I think there are several factors at work. People who grew up with their partners, especially if their physical affection escalated gradually, usually "knew what they were getting into" and many have accepted that the discrimination, prejudices, taboos, and even criminalization were to be expected. Some have even embraced that, feeling like they are rebels or kinky. They take a certain thrill in being "naughty." Grew-up-with consanguinamorists might seek the community and advocacy if their initiation into consanguinamory comes well into adulthood as a sudden, and surprising, event, as that can be similar to reunion GSA situations in some ways. Another exception to this general situation is people who recognize they are consanguinamorous as an orientation.

In reunion GSA situations, in which the individuals didn't grow up together or weren't raised by one another, what is usually a sudden and overwhelming attraction usually takes them by complete surprise and the cruelty of prejudiced stigmas and discriminatory laws slaps them in the face with full force. I've found someone I love like nobody I've ever known before, we're passionate for each other and we belong together, why can't we be together like anybody else? Why can't we marry? That's what they're hit with. Until recently, they haven't socialized at all as family members. They almost never had time to contemplate growing feelings and affection and the discrimination against it, like the grew-up-with lovers usually did.

Happy Pride Month

It's Pride Month 2021!

May this be the best one yet.