Navigating the Holiday Season

The year-end holidays are here.

If you might be getting together with family for Thanksgiving (USA), Hanukkah, Winder Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year's Eve/Day, or any other holiday coming up, you might be facing specific decisions and considerations, especially if you're in an interracial relationship or an age gap relationship, or are LGBTQ+, nonmonogamous, consanguinamorous, or are exploring/living out kinks and certain dynamics:

• Avoiding hostile people
• Keeping closeted
• Coming out
• Making a move

You are under no obligation to spend holidays with people who are hostile to you because of your gender, orientation, relationships, or kinks, even if they are related to you. Repeat that to yourself as needed.

That being said, if there is just one or two hostile people and there will be dozen or more other people, consider if you can go and simply avoid the hostile people. Some families and gatherings allow for that.

What you tell people, how, and when, is up to you. If you're not ready to come out to the people you'd be spending time with, you shouldn't have to. Or, if you think coming out now to one, more, or all of the people who will be there would be best, you'll need to prepare yourself for emotionally for that.

As far as making a move, if there is a person or people likely to be there you want to "get closer to," whether relatives or family friends, plan ahead for the possibilities. Will there be a way to get them alone? Would it be good to get things in motion ahead of time through texts, messages, video chats, calls, etc.? Or do you want to wait until you're face to face to get things in motion or back into motion, as the situation might be.

Plan ahead and make the most of the season. What that means is up to you. For some of you, it will be making plans with friends and "found family" or your partner(s) and their families. Others will make the most of their opportunities by going "home." Plans can change, and that's fine. But do consider what you might want to do.

If you need someone to talk with or to give you feedback about your plans, or you just want to say hello to Keith, you can do so, as always, by emailing fullmarriageequality at protonmail dot com or message him on Wire at fullmarriageequality or on Facebook.

You can also comment with your thoughts, plans, or past experiences below.

Polyamory Day is November 23!

November 23 is Polyamory Day!

I am polyamorous, but even if I wasn’t, we should all support the rights of all, including the rights of polyamorous people.

Polyamory is the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one loving intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.

The image reads: November 23 is Polyamory Day. Celebrate!

Feel free to share this image anywhere that’s appropriate as long as you’re doing so in support of polyamory and polyamorous people. 

Let consenting adults love each other how they mutually agree!

There is much diversity in polyamory. The uniting factors to polyamory include that it is ongoing nonmonogamy and not cheating.

It has been great to see awareness and acceptance of polyamory grow in recent years. Let's continue to make progress!

As always, comments are welcome below. Are you celebrating? If so, how?

Successful GSA Relationships

There is a split in the Genetic Sexual Attraction community, as I have noted before. I checked out a certain other site's posting with the same title as this entry. Below, I analyze what was written.

We often get this question- Are there any successful GSA relationships?

To answer the question... YES!

Are people in such relationships willing to do interviews that reveal their identities? Almost never.

Or the media will inquire about speaking with GSA couples living in the shadows of society afraid to announce they are actually reunited family members living as lovers.

I don't think many of those couples (or triads) are likely to keep in friendly contact with these negative naysayers. I know some who don't, and they ceased contact after they took over an established forum where people had long been contributing.

The more I work with the GSA community the more I hear about heartbreak and pain, because most often these relationships do not work.

Because that is that is who you attract! You take a negative attitude towards GSA and you offer sex-negative counseling for people who are having problems. What happy lovers are going to bother to come to you, especially if they have to pay money (leaving an clear, easily obtainable trail of evidence some ridiculous prosecutor could use) just to use your forum?

Most romantic/sexual relationships do not "work" if you mean by that "lasting for a lifetime and that lifetime not ending in the murder of one by the other." Most relationships break up, or most of us would still be in our first relationships. But there ARE lasting, happy, loving and very passionate relationships initiated through GSA.

Transgender Day of Remembrance

On November 20, especially, we remember transgender people killed by hatred and ignorance. It's the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

For all transgender people reading this:

We value you. You are valid. You deserve to live your life free of prejudice, free of being attacked for who you are.

We are going to help make things better sooner rather than later.

We are with you.

We remember those who aren’t with us anymore. We support those who are.

Has Your Partner Experienced Consanguinamory?

I used be active at a certain Big Internet Portal's Question and Answer service, until someone who couldn’t handle me answering questions truthfully when it comes to certain romantic or sexual topics decided to get me "suspended" using a weakness in their automated system. After that, I'd still check to see what questions were being asked there, even though I couldn't participate in any way or even contact anyone there unless they had somehow provided an email address in their question or answer. I will not link to the service, but I will quote it. Someone named Lauren asked this question...

Ok.....complicated one, recently found out my husband and his younger sister had sex for a number of years between the ages of 10-12, this is what he's telling me tho I'm aware this may have more to it? We are a young couple married with two children (boys) my relationship with his family has never been great and this hasn't helped! Can anyone give me any advice or your thoughts on how you would deal with this news? I'm up and down and so confused.....

Questions like this come up more than people might think. Person A is dating or married to Person B and Person A suspects or has found out that Person B has been sexually involved with a sibling or other family member. Person A usually wants to know what they should do.

It is important to clarify the situation by determining the answers to some questions.

1) Is this something that is suspected or has it been confirmed?

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:

So Your Friends Are Polyamorous

Amy Dickinson's "Ask Amy" column got a letter from someone who found out their friends aren't monogamous... [This entry has been bumped up.]

Q. My husband and I recently discovered that our closest friends (another couple) are having an open relationship. They say they are “polyamorous.”

Did they actually say their relationship is open? Some polyamorous relationships are closed, but people hear the word and they think "open relationship."

I am having a very hard time accepting this.

How does this change the letter writer's life?

They were in our wedding, and we were in theirs. In the last 10 years I can’t remember having a single disagreement with them, but I can’t seem to get past this.

Really? So much history, getting along so well, being so close, and this is just too much?

They didn’t even tell us about it. We found out because the husband was hanging all over another woman very publicly at their annual party. My husband found out what was really going on through another longtime friend.

Could that be what was really upsetting? That this letter writer thought this couple was so close but didn't discuss this with them?

Adults Having Their Basic Rights Isn’t Child Abuse

When someone advocates for all adults to have the right to be with any and all consenting adults, or specifically for the rights of polyamorous or consanguineous adult lovers, someone who hasn't bothered to think it through or is being deliberately dishonest might respond with “So, you’re advocating for the abuse of children?”

If this is your response to someone advocating the rights of all CONSENTING ADULTS to be together, something is wrong with your reading comprehension. Adults are not children. Consenting means voluntary, not an abuse situation. Consenting adults being together has nothing to do with abusing children.

Trying, but failing, to avoid looking like ignorant bigots, they might try something like “Yeah but, if we allow polyamorous, polygamous, or plural marriages, or we allow incestuous relationships or marriages, doesn't that make it more likely children will be abused by normalizing it? Isn't the next step moving on to children?”

This is an attempt at guilt by false association. It is something LGBTQ+ people have been dealing with forever. “If you allow gay people to be together, it will make it easier to molest children!” It simply doesn’t follow. It’s a lie that most LGBTQ+ people want to abuse children, and it is likewise a lie that people who are ethically nonmonogamous or consanguinamorous want to abuse children. Child abusers are going to try to abuse children. Children will be more likely to be abused and to keep quiet about it the more taboo we keep sex in general.

There are places where consanguinamorous relationships between adults are not criminalized, including a couple of US states. This has not caused an increase in child abuse in these places.

When it comes to ethical nonmonogamy, citing a few isolated villages or compounds where women don’t have equal rights and children are treated as property as proof it leads to child abuse is dishonest. Children are abused by professing monogamists every day, while most parents involved in ethical, disclosed, or consensual nonmonogamy are great parents who are not abusing children in any way.

Keeping unjust discrimination in place is wasting resources vitally needed to prevent and stop actual abuse. It makes it less likely victims and witnesses of abuse will cooperate with authorities if their own relationships are criminalized. Every bit of time and money wasted on trying to stop consenting adults from being together how they mutually agree is time and money that isn’t being spent to help people who are actually being abused.

There is no good reason to deny consenting adults their rights to be together how they mutually agree.

On a Personal Note

This is Keith. I just wanted to take a moment to reflect and to update my readers.

This blog is a labor of love. I don’t ask for, nor accept any funding. I don’t even have ads.

I work full time, plus. And, thankfully, I also have a pretty great life. But life is keeping me busy, and so I update this blog when I can make the time, because this blog is not a job.

I have multiple interviews I need to finish and post, and so many drafts of other entries, some closer to being finished than others. Thankfully, I have many years of still-relevant material for people to read through and share. (Do share!)

One thing that keeps me busy, and I’m so thankful it does, is direct contact with people who find me through this blog or social media. I’ve been hearing from so many people and helping some of them.

After all these years, I have demonstrated to myself that what I really enjoy most about my activism is helping people directly and personally through consultation, connecting with them via email (fullmarriageequality at protonmail dot com), Wire messaging app (@fullmarriageequality), X (@FullMEquality), Facebook, Quora, and Reddit. If you need to connect through another service, we might be able to do that, but those are the accounts I check daily and more.

I like blogging enough, but blogging is my tool to help a lot of people in a more general way. When I’m connecting with them specifically and individually, that’s the thing I like most. Even though I’ll never knowingly meet them, most likely. (Note: I don’t ever ask for money, nor do I ask for pictures or video, though I gladly accept pictures and video if someone OFFERS to share. Nor am I looking for new partners. If someone asks you for money or initiates a request for pictures or video, or asks to meet up, that’s not me.)

Thanks for your continued visits. I’ll keep posting when I can. And thanks for everything you’re doing to increase inclusion and advance the rights of all.

California Voters: Yes on 3

Vote YES on Proposition 3!

If you’re a registered California voter, you might have received your Presidential Election ballot in the mail already.

If you’re not registered or not registered in your current location yet, you likely can still register for this election. Do so ASAP.

You should have multiple ways to vote in-person even if you don’t get a ballot in the mail or don’t want to use a mailed/mail-in ballot. You can also hand-deliver mail-in ballots.

Vote YES on Proposition 3 to advance the right to marry.

Here it is:

*****

PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO ARTICLE I

First—That Section 7.5 of Article I thereof is repealed.

SEC. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a

woman is valid or recognized in California.

Second—That Section 7.5 is added to Article I thereof,

to read:

SEC. 7.5. (a) The right to marry is a fundamental

right.

(b) This section is in furtherance of both of the

following:

(1) The inalienable rights to enjoy life and liberty and to

pursue and obtain safety, happiness, and privacy

guaranteed by Section 1.

(2) The rights to due process and equal protection

guaranteed by Section 7.

*****

Here’s the link to the official voter information with the official language of the Proposition (it’s a PDF) if you want to see for yourself:

https://vig.cdn.sos.ca.gov/2024/general/pdf/prop3-text-proposed-laws.pdf

If you want to see the current “in the book” law as of this posting, here it is:

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=CONS&division=&title=&part=&chapter=&article=I

While Proposition 3 isn’t written like the Marriage Equality Amendment this blog endorses, Proposition 3 can enable the same result with some court cases and some follow-up legislation. It removes “dead” language from the California state constitution that was determined to be a violation of the US Constitution and it adds language to the state constitution emphasizing that marriage is a right. It is wonderful that it is written in a way that doesn’t restrict that right; rights are for all.

Let’s advance EVERYONE’S freedom to marry.

Yes on 3 in California!