Sex or Love?

Steph asks if polyamory is about sex or love.

My answer is...yes. As I understand it, it can be about love, but it can also be about sex. It can be about both.

We should not tell consenting adults that that they can’t love one another, or can’t have sex with one another, but nor should we tell them that they have to have sex with each other if they love each other, or that they have to love each other if they have sex with each other. How people love each other, and how they express that love for each other, is not something for those outside the relationship to attempt to measure, limit, or force.

Serial Monogamy or Polyamory: Do What is Best

Deborah Anapol, Ph.D has an excellent blog posting (and an upcoming book.) The blog posting is well worth reading, and if it is any indication, the book will be, too.

So the question is not so much whether to love more than one, but whether it works better to have multiple partners sequentially or at the same time. There are definitely some people who are far better off taking it one at a time, and there are some situations which call out for other possibilities. I'm continually amazed both by the ingenuity, courage, and vulnerability of people who have made their own bodies and hearts the center for an inquiry into the true nature of love and by the persistent self-deception, lack of integrity, and callousness others justify by calling what they are doing polyamory.

While many people define polyamory as the practice of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with everyone's full knowledge and consent, I see it differently. To me polyamory is a philosophy of loving that asks us to surrender to love. Polyamory leads us to ask, "What is the most loving and authentic way I can be present with these people and with myself at this time?"

The answer to this question may not always be obvious, and it may change over time, but the asking of it, and the willingness to consider answers we may not want to hear, is the whole point of polyamory. Most of us would rather surrender to our cultural conditioning, to our emotional discomfort, peer pressure, social censure, lust, convenience, or a partner's demands than to the unvarnished truth about what would contribute the most to the well being of everyone involved.

I couldn’t have put it better myself. Everyone should be free to love the way that suits them. Honesty with yourself and others, and respecting yourself and others, is important to happiness. You can have bad monogamy and good monogamy. The same goes for polyamory.

Adam and Eve

Despite the consensus of scientists, there are many people who believe in Adam and Eve, or some similar beginning to the human race, whether or not they believe everything ancient religious texts say about human origins.

However, if someone does believe that two, and only two, people started off the human race from scratch, if they believe the traditional story of Adam and Eve, then they also have to accept that we are all the products of incest, because Adam and Eve’s children would have had to reproduce with each other or their parents, or both. Proponents of fundamentalist Christianity acknowledge this. You can see a typical discussion of this in this Yahoo Answers link.

Did Adam an Eve's children commit incest?

If they did why don't we have sex with our family members, and if they didn't please explain how it wasn't incest.

Some people have sex with their family members today. A better question would be why consensual sex between any adults is scandalized.

A typical answer to the question is provided that is all too eager to say we should no longer engage in the kind of relationships that supposedly created us in the first place.

According to today's laws and standards, yes they did. However, at that time, there were no laws against such activities, and they knew no difference. Several thousand years after the earth was populated, God gave the law which stated that we were not to have sexual relations with near kin. Now, today, there are laws on the books against it as well.

If this person is going to be consistent in their belief that God gave a law against incest, won’t they also have to admit that the same God also gave lots of other laws at the same time that are no longer followed? Perhaps the laws served their purpose long ago and are no longer needed?

Today, the gene pool is very corrupt and having children with near kin would cause all kinds of problems for many.

This is alarmism. There are children of such relationships who are just fine, and children of people who aren’t closely related to each other who have severe birth defects. Besides, it is not up to anyone else to tell people they can’t love each other or have children. Sex, marriage, and having children are all three different things that don’t have to go together, and don’t always go together, so stop using children as an excuse to deny people the right to love each other.

Fired For Sexuality

There are still places in the USA where someone can be discriminated against in employment on the basis of their sexual orientation and personal sexual behavior. In some places, it is legal to discriminate against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people. In more places, it is legal to discriminate against the polyamorous and consanguineous, and some people are actually prosecuted for their polyamorous and consanguineous lifestyles.

Here’s an example of someone who lost her job because she enjoyed and wrote about her polyamorous orientation on her personal time, even though by all accounts she was strictly professional while on the job, and she kept her personal and professional lives strictly separate, even using a handle in her writing about her personal life.

Tony Rothert, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri told The Riverfront Times it's not an employer's job to police the sexual lives of its employees – "when an employer discriminates on that basis it is sex discrimination and it's against the law," he said.

This is why we need a Marriage Equality Amendment.

First Cousins

In this blog posting, Danielle writes about what does and does not fit the definition of incest: do first cousins count?

Because really, even if it isn't technically "incest" it's still creepy as hell! Funny on the show... but creepy in real life. Down with flipper babies!

The show to which she refers is “Arrested Development.”

This kind of bigotry and ignorance is all too common. First cousins are able to marry in many parts of the United States and around the world, and while it doesn’t sound like her cup of tea, many people have happy, fulfilled lives married to their cousin and they also have healthy children.

You’re free to call it what you want- I prefer consanguineous to incestuous. But if you want to be respectful, “creepy” isn’t a good word. As you know, I believe in marriage equality, and so not only should first cousins be able to marry everywhere, so should adult sibling, parent-child, and aunt/uncle-niece/nephew couples, trios, etc.

Slurs Against Polyamory

On Yahoo Answers, I found a rambling statement from someone who seemed upset. This is how it started:

Polyamory is just glossed-over, Blinged, glorified whoring around by a bunch of middle-aged yuppies/yippies who never grew up and their wives decided to go look for other lovers.

I think the writer was lashing out in pain (read the rest of it), but there are a lot of other people who calmly express such ignorance and close-mindedness, often unprompted. This is the kind of thing that has prevented marriage equality.

Why do people trash the sexuality and relationships of others? If people who love each other agree that it is okay to have relationships with others, either alone or together, why does that bother someone else who isn’t even involved? Jealousy? Envy? Mean-spiritedness? Who you love and who you marry should be nobody else’s concern.

One could just as easily say something stupid like “Monogamy is just glorified selfishness and possessiveness.” Or “Abstinence is just dressed-up laziness or rejection.”

Polyamory is not cheating. It isn’t necessarily swinging, although swinging can be involved. That is why there are different words: because they are different.

Want to be monogamous? That’s fine. Be with someone else who wants to be monogamous, and leave the polyamorous people alone.

Crimes of the Mind

Over at this blog, the writer rails against criminalizing thought: the thinking of some men that they have more than one wife.

You see, pretty soon, Wendell Nielsen will go on trial in Texas for having one legal wife and some other women whom he thinks of as "wives" (not "daughters"). He is not being charged with incest. He is being charged with "bigamy". In Texas' view, his crime is that he has one legal wife, a handful of other (always adult) partners with whom he has allegedly shared a dwelling or a bed but, WORST OF ALL, he believes in the biblical doctrine of plural marriage as restored through Joseph Smith. That's the kicker - that's what makes him a felon - not the women, the sex, the children, the cohabiting (all protected acts throughout Texas, Canada and the U.S.) - NO, it's the thoughts in his head, the abstract notions of theology and religious doctrine shared by at least 13 million Latter-day Saints.

While I do not agree with all of the writers apparent positions, the writer does have points about the criminalizing of polygamous thought as well as the denial of polygamous marriages.

Consenting adults should be able to marry, whether it is two women, or a man with two women, or four men and three women. Love is love, and not everyone loves or lives the same way.

Wisconsin Man Being Prosecuted For Consensual Adult Sex

He’s being charged under incest law for having consensual consanguineous sex with his adult sister.

The 25-year-old man from Blue River was charged Friday with incest. The felony charge carries a maximum penalty of 12.5 years in prison and a $25,000 fine.

While there is no mention of charges against his sister, there is no indication in the article that their relationship was anything but consensual and he’s not being charged with assault or rape. So why is there a criminal case?

The criminal complaint says the man and his sister had repeated sexual contact between July 4 and Dec. 15, 2009.

Sounds like a loving relationship.

The complaint doesn't list the sister's age but Grant County Sheriff's Sgt. Jim Kopp says she's an adult.

So, Sheriff Kopp, why bother interfering?

The complaint says the man told investigators his sister was the aggressor. He also told investigators his sister filed court documents identifying him as the father of a child she had in February.

Over twelve years in prison for this relationship? Not only should he not be prosecuted, but he should be encouraged to marry his sister. Doesn’t their child deserve married parents? Another example of how a lack of marriage equality has real harms. This issue isn't just about symbols and words. It is about real people and real love.

Malaysia Needs Marriage Equality

Someone was sentenced to a month in jail in Malaysia for getting married. Can you believe it?

A Muslim lawmaker from Malaysia's ruling coalition was sentenced to a month in jail for polygamy on Wednesday after he married an actress without permission from a religious court.

Bung Mokhtar Radin, 50, a leading figure in the Barisan Nasional coalition, and his second wife, Zizie Ezette A. Samad, 31, both pleaded guilty to polygamy last month.

Muslim men in Malaysia are allowed up to four wives, but in certain parts of the country they must obtain written court consent or risk a fine or jail term under Sharia religious law.

Ridiculous. Everyone should be able to freely marry. It should be up to them, and nobody else.

Judge Wan Mahyuddin Wan Muhammad was cited by the official Bernama news agency Wednesday as saying that Bung's "offence should be dealt with severely."

Shame on Judge Wan Mahyuddin Wan Muhammad.

Zizie agreed to pay a 1,000 ringgit (S$430) fine for marrying Bung without court consent.

Activists and women's groups say polygamy is cruel and has deviated from its original purpose in Islam, which was to protect widows and orphans.

This is ignorance. Marriage is about love.

More than 60 percent of Malaysia’s 27 million people are Muslim Malays, and polygamy is illegal for non-Muslims.

Everyone should have the freedom to marry.

Book Thrown at Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza

It was bad enough that they were arrested and convicted in the first place, but now the Malawian court has completed the idiocy by giving Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza the maximum fourteen years in prison for the “crime” of loving each other. It is disgusting that gay men are still being treated this way anywhere in the world.

Shame on magistrate Nyakwawa Usiwa Usiwa and shame on Malawi.

Praise For Portugal

Good news. Portugal is taking a step towards marriage equality.

Portugal's President Anibal Cavaco Silva says he will sign a law legalising same-sex marriage passed by parliament earlier this year.

The law had been fiercely opposed by conservatives in the Catholic country.

The ratification will make Portugal the sixth country in Europe to allow same-sex marriage after Belgium, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden.

Now, Portugal needs to move forward and legalize marriage for three or more, and consanguineous marriage. The country has no laws against consanguineous sex, but hasn’t reached marriage equality in that area, either. One step forward towards full marriage equality – let’s keep it going.

Malawi Needs the Freedom to Marry

One reason I argue for full marriage equality and equality in personal relations is that denial of freedom in one way often contributes to denial in freedom other ways. I’ve already pointed out that Malawi is moving to eliminate polygamy. Now there’s this story from the same country.

Tiwonge Chimbalanga, a 20-year-old hotel janitor, and his unemployed partner Steven Monjeza, 26, were arrested the day after they celebrated their engagement with a party at the hotel where Chimbalanga worked — an apparent first in Malawi.

And now a judge has convicted these two men of “crimes.”

The couple were convicted of unnatural acts and gross indecency under laws dating from the colonial era.

How can it be unnatural for two grown people to love each other? They could be sentenced up to fourteen years in prison.

These two men should be allowed to marry. Anyone should be allowed to marry the consenting partner(s) of their choosing. It is time for people to get with it and stop imposing their hatred and ignorance on others.