Gallup’s poll on the morally objectionable

A poll from Gallup:

Gallup apparently got the idea to conduct this survey from the Mark Sanford mess, but beyond that, the data presents some interesting comparisons. Are there any taboos left in American life on which we can have broad agreement? Yes there are, although surprisingly few. Here are the taboos still getting majority agreement:

• Married men and women having affairs: 92%
• Polygamy: 91%
• Cloning humans: 88%
• Suicide: 80%
• Cloning animals: 63%
• Abortion: 56%

Hot Air, 7 juli 2009

Polyamory: My Kind of Mix-Up

As a woman fully involved in her professional life, I find that there is precious little time for a relationship in the few hours of my waking personal life. This being the case, I had better find a relationship wherein I am in constant contact with my significant other at work, not have a job, or have a relationship that can be figured into the 5 hours after work and before bed. That’s like a part-time relationship, and an ideal one for someone like me.

L’esprit de L’escalier, 7 juli 2009

Polyamory and Me

I keep meaning to post about this, but then end up getting all worked up about something else. Unlike being gay, being poly doesn’t so much affect my day to day life at this point. Yeah, I get some weird looks when I explain the rules of my and Parker’s relationship to people, but since we’re not actively seeking a third that’s really the worst of it.

Wikipedia has a pretty good entry for polyamory if anyone’s really that interested. Basically it’s having more than one partner with the consent of all parties involved. The italicised part is crucial, if consent is not given then you’re cheating and I have ethical issues with that. There’s some debate as to whether or not one night stands are included or only long term relationships, but for these purposes we’ll assume that both are possible.

Blogs @ KolyaFloit.com, 5 juli 2009

Polyamory discussion – in the beginning

So I met with *him* last night to discuss what was going to happen with this relationship. There are so many things to talk about (safe sex, how we would handle relationships with other people, what kind of disclosure we wanted…) that I wanted to start with something simple and basic. I decided that I would like to explore this with him because I have so many questions that I would like answered about love and relationships, and this path might lead me to them. Fo example: What is real love? Is it the acceptance of someone to the point that no matter what you cherish that they are happy? Is love truly the essence of freedom? Or is ownership indicative of love? Also, how is trust borne?

Curiosity Killed the Cat, 4 juli 2009

Yay for polyamory!

Oh, wait. According to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, polyamory and polygamy are risk factors to our way of life.

I was unaware that “[p]olygamy, however, offers children a model not of security but of rivalry, not of confidence but of permanent insecurity, as the members of a single household compete to be favorites. It is a toxic environment in which men are kings and women are courtiers.”

Nor was I unaware that polygamy indicated, specifically, polygyny.

And give me a moment to laugh at this:
“Marriage is the very foundation of every civilized society precisely because of its civilizing influences. Marriage takes a man and a woman who are strangers to each other, orchestrates them together into inseparable flesh, and lends children a stable and secure environment within which to be raised.”

The story of my life, 3 juli 2009

The Governor Mark Sanford affair

It’s been more than a week since South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s disappearance, reappearance, and tearful revelation on national TV of his tragic love affair with the Argentine woman he calls his soul mate.

Yes, he’s a screwup for cheating on his wife, deserting his post, and failing to “choose the difficult right over the easy wrong” — both by his own Christian lights and my poly ones. But this isn’t about another scummy politico getting nookie on the side. This is about a conservative, middle-aged man who was utterly blindsided by falling genuinely, life-changingly in love — while boxed inside an ideology of Christian monogamy that leaves him no basis to understand what happened to him, except maybe that the Devil attacked.

So, I seized on this as a teachable moment. I posted to the new Polyamory Leadership Network1 saying we ought to crank out a press release explaining that while dishonesty and cheating are never good, there are other ways to love more than one; that falling in love while partnered does not have to be a tragedy; and that some people are making it work wonderfully all around.

Polyamory in the News!, 2 juli 2009

[SchoolofTantra] PITFALLS OF POLYAMORY by Janet Kira Lessin

Sasha and I are getting closer to our goals of loving oneness in a polyamorous relation, family and community. Sash says behavioral psychologists call getting closer The Method of Successive Approximations. We’re narrowing the field of potential lovers, fine-tuning and zeroing in on “the ones”. I know we’ll get what we seek.

Sasha’s had lots of experience. His poly life actually stretches back in the 60s when he’d loved in groups after anti-war protests. I discovered polyamory in `66, when I was twelve. I resonated with The Harrad Experiment by Robert Rimmer and Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert Heinlein. Rimmer and Heinlein gave me a container for thoughts that helped me to think bigger than conventional society. When Sasha and I joined, we had to create a form of polyamory that would delight and support us both. We wanted to live in harmony with a dozen adults who love each other equally.

That’s what we wanted. What I got was jealousy, pain, fear, insecurity, lack consciousness and limitation. So we backed off from that vision of polyamory. We started over, renegotiated our relation to a form that works well for both of us. So now, how do we do this with three or four? And what happened on the way to where we are now?

adult-advice, 2 juli 2009

PolyPDA

I think many folks who’re new to poly are concerned with how to handle PDA (Public Displays of Affection) in public, particularly if they’re hanging with their multiple partners at the same time. I recall I was more than a little concerned the first time I was out in public with PF and PG. PF was physically amorous with us both at the restaurant and then at the movie theater. I could “feel” the eyes, “hear” the whispers, like, “OMG – Who’s that chic with?”, or even witnessed the disdainful glances as parents covered the eyes of their children and whisked them away to watch more comfortable things, like, huge iron wrecking balls dangling from a giant robot’s groin…

Journals of a Polyamorous Triad, 1 juli 2009

New Poly Group for Southern Indaina/Tristate area

Greetings. I am not often active on LJ, but I wanted to spread the word to any of you in Southern Indiana, Southern Illinois, and Northern Kentucky or reasonably nearby there: some friends and I are looking to create a communication and meeting network for poly people in this conservative and somewhat isolated area. We have started a group on Facebook called TriState Polyamory Group. We hope to get discussions going through the group to discuss poly issues and local poly networking, and eventually to organize group meetings in Evansville, IN. If you know anybody in this area who might be interested, please let them know.

compersion, 29 jumi 2009

Compersion: Love as Space

There are good reasons compersion feels like such a radical idea; why for example feeling good about your partner’s relationship with someone else feels so different. To most, the notion seems unconscionable. There are the ordinary ones: we ‘don’t want to think about that kind of thing’ or we equate monogamy (or the appearance of monogamy) with loyalty. That loyalty is the razor’s edge between being ‘with someone’ and ‘being alone’.

Planet Waves, 30 juni 2009