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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/15/opinion/15rauch.html?ex=1093677668&ei=1&en=dd2f8b45f36e2b01

Imperfect Unions

August 15, 2004

By JONATHAN RAUCH

Washington - What happened to Governor McGreevey - that is,James E. McGreevey, the Democratic governor of New Jersey,who announced his resignation on Thursday because he was secretly gay and had "shamefully" conducted an extramarital affair - was strange, to say the least. Pundits wondered whether there would be broader ramifications for gay civil rights, same-sex marriage or American politics. I doubt it. A rich and seemingly unique concatenation of homosexuality, adultery, suspicions of political featherbedding, and rumors of extortion and sexual harassment made the McGreevey scandal look like an aberration. What happened to Mr. McGreevey - the man, not the governor - was not strange at all. It was familiar to almost every gay American of Mr. cGreevey's generation. Marriage, not homosexuality, lies at the heart of it. Mr. McGreevey is 47. I am 44. We have in common being among the early members of the post-Stonewall generation. We came of age in the 1970's, when overt expressions of anti-gay animus were becoming unacceptable in polite company. The worst of official repression was past. Vice-squad raids and scandalous arrests and federal witch hunts were not central fears in our lives. There was still plenty of unofficial discrimination and ugly and ignorant rhetoric, and we all feared the low-grade terrorism known as gay-bashing. But on the whole we were free, as no previous generation had been, to get on with our lives. There was one thing, however, we knew we could never aspire  to do, at least not as homosexuals. We could not marry. By that I mean not just that gay couples could not marry. Self-acknowledged gay people - coupled or single, adult or adolescent, open or closeted - also could not hope to marry. The very concept of same-sex marriage had yet to surface in public debate. We grew up taking for granted that to be  homosexual was to be alienated and isolated, not just for now but for life, from the culture of marriage and all the blessings it brings.

Social-science research has established beyond reasonable doubt that marriage, on average, makes people healthier, happier and financially better off. More than that, however, the prospect of marriage shapes our lives from the  first crush, the first date, the first kiss. Even for people who do not eventually choose to marry, the prospect  of marriage provides a destination for love and the expectation of a stable home in a welcoming community.  The gay-marriage debate is often conducted as if the whole issue were providing spousal health insurance and Social Security survivors' benefits for existing same-sex couples. All of that matters, but more important, and often overlooked, is the way in which alienation from marriage twists and damages gay souls. In my own case, I did not understand and acknowledge my homosexuality until well into adulthood, but I somehow understood even as a young boy that I would probably never marry. (Children understand marriage long before they understand sex or sexuality.) I coped by struggling for years to suppress every sexual and romantic urge. I convinced myself that I could never love anybody, until the strain of denial became too much to bear.  Others coped differently. Some threw themselves into rebellion against marriage and the bourgeois norms it seemed to represent. Some, to their credit, built firmly coupled gay lives without the social support and investment that marriage brings. And some, determined to lead "normal" lives (meaning, largely, married lives), married.  At what point Mr. McGreevey realized and acknowledged he was gay I don't know. I do know that many gay husbands begin by denying and end by deceiving. Perhaps that was so in his case.  Opponents of same-sex marriage sometimes insist that gays can marry. Marriage, they say, isn't all about sex. It can be about an abstinent, selfless love. Well, as Benjamin Franklin said, where there is marriage without love there will be love without marriage. I'm always startled when some of the same people who say that gays are too promiscuous and irresponsible to marry turn around and urge us into marriages that practically beg to end in adultery and recklessness.

For most human beings, the urge to find and marry one's other half is elemental. It is central to what most people regard as the good life. Gay people's lives are damaged when that aspiration is quashed, of course. Mr. McGreevey  can probably attest to that. But so are the lives of spouses, of children. Mr. McGreevey can probably attest to that, too.  The country is still making up its mind about same-sex marriage. Massachusetts has it. Most states have pre-emptively banned it. On Thursday, the California Supreme Court invalidated about 4,000 same-sex marriages performed by the city of San Francisco, but gay-marriage advocates hope that this is a temporary setback. Through litigation now working its way through the system, California's highest court may yet overturn the state's gay-marriage ban.  The McGreevey debacle suggests why all Americans, gay and straight alike, have a stake in universalizing marriage. The greatest promise of same-sex marriage is not the tangible improvement it may bring to today's committed gay couples, but its potential to reinforce the message that marriage is the gold standard for human relationships: that adults and children and gays and straights and society and  souls all flourish best when love, sex and marriage go together. Nothing will ever make the discovery of homosexual longings easy for a young person. But homosexuality need not mean growing up, as Jim McGreevey and I and many others did, torn between marriage and love.

 Jonathan Rauch is the author of "Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights and Good for America."

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An article that covers many of the implications that the current gay marriage discussion opens up. This could have done with some editing in places but time is short…

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/938xpsxy.asp

Beyond Gay Marriage

From the August 4 / August 11, 2003 issue: The road to polyamory. by Stanley Kurtz

AFTER GAY MARRIAGE, what will become of marriage itself? Will same-sex matrimony extend marriage's stabilizing effects to homosexuals? Will gay marriage undermine family life? A lot is riding on the answers to these questions. But the media's reflexive labeling of doubts about gay marriage as homophobia has made it almost impossible to debate the social effects of this reform. Now with the Supreme Court's ringing affirmation of sexual liberty in Lawrence v. Texas, that debate is unavoidable.

Among the likeliest effects of gay marriage is to take us down a slippery slope to legalized polygamy and "polyamory" (group marriage). Marriage will be transformed into a variety of relationship contracts, linking two, three, or more individuals (however weakly and temporarily) in every conceivable combination of male and female. A scare scenario? Hardly. The bottom of this slope is visible from where we stand. Advocacy of legalized polygamy is growing. A network of grass-roots organizations seeking legal recognition for group marriage already exists. The cause of legalized group marriage is championed by a powerful faction of family law specialists. Influential legal bodies in both the United States and Canada have presented radical programs of marital reform. Some of these quasi-governmental proposals go so far as to suggest the abolition of marriage. The ideas behind this movement have already achieved surprising influence with a prominent American politician.

None of this is well known. Both the media and public spokesmen for the gay marriage movement treat the issue as an unproblematic advance for civil rights. True, a small number of relatively conservative gay spokesmen do consider the social effects of gay matrimony, insisting that they will be beneficent, that homosexual unions will become more stable. Yet another faction of gay rights advocates actually favors gay marriage as a step toward the abolition of marriage itself. This group agrees that there is a slippery slope, and wants to hasten the slide down.

To consider what comes after gay marriage is not to say that gay marriage itself poses no danger to the institution of marriage. Quite apart from the likelihood that it will usher in legalized polygamy and polyamory, gay marriage will almost certainly weaken the belief that monogamy lies at the heart of marriage. But to see why this is so, we will first need to reconnoiter the slippery slope.

Promoting polygamy

DURING THE 1996 congressional debate on the Defense of Marriage Act, which affirmed the ability of the states and the federal government to withhold recognition from same-sex marriages, gay marriage advocates were put on the defensive by the polygamy question. If gays had a right to marry, why not polygamists? Andrew Sullivan, one of gay marriage's most intelligent defenders, labeled the question fear-mongering--akin to the discredited belief that interracial marriage would lead to birth defects. "To the best of my knowledge," said Sullivan, "there is no polygamists' rights organization poised to exploit same-sex marriage and return the republic to polygamous abandon." Actually, there are now many such organizations. And their strategy--even their existence--owes much to the movement for gay marriage.

Scoffing at the polygamy prospect as ludicrous has been the strategy of choice for gay marriage advocates. In 2000, following Vermont's enactment of civil unions, Matt Coles, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project, said, "I think the idea that there is some kind of slippery slope [to polygamy or group marriage] is silly." As proof, Coles said that America had legalized interracial marriage, while also forcing Utah to ban polygamy before admission to the union. That dichotomy, said Coles, shows that Americans are capable of distinguishing between better and worse proposals for reforming marriage.

Are we? When Tom Green was put on trial in Utah for polygamy in 2001, it played like a dress rehearsal for the coming movement to legalize polygamy. True, Green was convicted for violating what he called Utah's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on polygamy. Pointedly refusing to "hide in the closet," he touted polygamy on the Sally Jessy Raphael, Queen Latifah, Geraldo Rivera, and Jerry Springer shows, and on "Dateline NBC" and "48 Hours." But the Green trial was not just a cable spectacle. It brought out a surprising number of mainstream defenses of polygamy. And most of the defenders went to bat for polygamy by drawing direct comparisons to gay marriage.

Writing in the Village Voice, gay leftist Richard Goldstein equated the drive for state-sanctioned polygamy with the movement for gay marriage. The political reluctance of gays to embrace polygamists was understandable, said Goldstein, "but our fates are entwined in fundamental ways." Libertarian Jacob Sullum defended polygamy, along with all other consensual domestic arrangements, in the Washington Times. Syndicated liberal columnist Ellen Goodman took up the cause of polygamy with a direct comparison to gay marriage. Steve Chapman, a member of the Chicago Tribune editorial board, defended polygamy in the Tribune and in Slate. The New York Times published a Week in Review article juxtaposing photos of Tom Green's family with sociobiological arguments about the naturalness of polygamy and promiscuity.

The ACLU's Matt Coles may have derided the idea of a slippery slope from gay marriage to polygamy, but the ACLU itself stepped in to help Tom Green during his trial and declared its support for the repeal of all "laws prohibiting or penalizing the practice of plural marriage." There is of course a difference between repealing such laws and formal state recognition of polygamous marriages. Neither the ACLU nor, say, Ellen Goodman has directly advocated formal state recognition. Yet they give us no reason to suppose that, when the time is ripe, they will not do so. Stephen Clark, the legal director of the Utah ACLU, has said, "Talking to Utah's polygamists is like talking to gays and lesbians who really want the right to live their lives."

All this was in 2001, well before the prospect that legal gay marriage might create the cultural conditions for state-sanctioned polygamy. Can anyone doubt that greater public support will be forthcoming once gay marriage has become a reality? Surely the ACLU will lead the charge.

Why is state-sanctioned polygamy a problem? The deep reason is that it erodes the ethos of monogamous marriage. Despite the divorce revolution, Americans still take it for granted that marriage means monogamy. The ideal of fidelity may be breached in practice, yet adultery is clearly understood as a transgression against marriage. Legal polygamy would jeopardize that understanding, and that is why polygamy has historically been treated in the West as an offense against society itself.

In most non-Western cultures, marriage is not a union of freely choosing individuals, but an alliance of family groups. The emotional relationship between husband and wife is attenuated and subordinated to the economic and political interests of extended kin. But in our world of freely choosing individuals, extended families fall away, and love and companionship are the only surviving principles on which families can be built. From Thomas Aquinas through Richard Posner, almost every serious observer has granted the incompatibility between polygamy and Western companionate marriage.

Where polygamy works, it does so because the husband and his wives are emotionally distant. Even then, jealousy is a constant danger, averted only by strict rules of seniority or parity in the husband's economic support of his wives. Polygamy is more about those resources than about sex. Yet in many polygamous societies, even though only 10 or 15 percent of men may actually have multiple wives, there is a widely held belief that men need multiple women. The result is that polygamists are often promiscuous--just not with their own wives. Anthropologist Philip Kilbride reports a Nigerian survey in which, among urban male polygamists, 44 percent said their most recent sexual partners were women other than their wives. For monogamous, married Nigerian men in urban areas, that figure rose to 67 percent. Even though polygamous marriage is less about sex than security, societies that permit polygamy tend to reject the idea of marital fidelity--for everyone, polygamists included.

Mormon polygamy has always been a complicated and evolving combination of Western mores and classic polygamous patterns. Like Western companionate marriage, Mormon polygamy condemns extramarital sex. Yet historically, like its non-Western counterparts, it de-emphasized romantic love. Even so, jealousy was always a problem. One study puts the rate of 19th-century polygamous divorce at triple the rate for monogamous families. Unlike their forebears, contemporary Mormon polygamists try to combine polygamy with companionate marriage--and have a very tough time of it. We have no definitive figures, but divorce is frequent. Irwin Altman and Joseph Ginat, who've written the most detailed account of today's breakaway Mormon polygamist sects, highlight the special stresses put on families trying to combine modern notions of romantic love with polygamy. Strict religious rules of parity among wives make the effort to create a hybrid traditionalist/modern version of Mormon polygamy at least plausible, if very stressful. But polygamy let loose in modern secular America would destroy our understanding of marital fidelity, while putting nothing viable in its place. And postmodern polygamy is a lot closer than you think.

Polyamory

AMERICA'S NEW, souped-up version of polygamy is called "polyamory." Polyamorists trace their descent from the anti-monogamy movements of the sixties and seventies--everything from hippie communes, to the support groups that grew up around Robert Rimmer's 1966 novel "The Harrad Experiment," to the cult of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Polyamorists proselytize for "responsible non-monogamy"--open, loving, and stable sexual relationships among more than two people. The modern polyamory movement took off in the mid-nineties--partly because of the growth of the Internet (with its confidentiality), but also in parallel to, and inspired by, the rising gay marriage movement.

Unlike classic polygamy, which features one man and several women, polyamory comprises a bewildering variety of sexual combinations. There are triads of one woman and two men; heterosexual group marriages; groups in which some or all members are bisexual; lesbian groups, and so forth. (For details, see Deborah Anapol's "Polyamory: The New Love Without Limits," one of the movement's authoritative guides, or Google the word polyamory.)

Supposedly, polyamory is not a synonym for promiscuity. In practice, though, there is a continuum between polyamory and "swinging." Swinging couples dally with multiple sexual partners while intentionally avoiding emotional entanglements. Polyamorists, in contrast, try to establish stable emotional ties among a sexually connected group. Although the subcultures of swinging and polyamory are recognizably different, many individuals move freely between them. And since polyamorous group marriages can be sexually closed or open, it's often tough to draw a line between polyamory and swinging. Here, then, is the modern American version of Nigeria's extramarital polygamous promiscuity. Once the principles of monogamous companionate marriage are breached, even for supposedly stable and committed sexual groups, the slide toward full-fledged promiscuity is difficult to halt.

Polyamorists are enthusiastic proponents of same-sex marriage. Obviously, any attempt to restrict marriage to a single man and woman would prevent the legalization of polyamory. After passage of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, an article appeared in Loving More, the flagship magazine of the polyamory movement, calling for the creation of a polyamorist rights movement modeled on the movement for gay rights. The piece was published under the pen name Joy Singer, identified as the graduate of a "top ten law school" and a political organizer and public official in California for the previous two decades.

Taking a leaf from the gay marriage movement, Singer suggested starting small. A campaign for hospital visitation rights for polyamorous spouses would be the way to begin. Full marriage and adoption rights would come later. Again using the gay marriage movement as a model, Singer called for careful selection of acceptable public spokesmen (i.e., people from longstanding poly families with children). Singer even published a speech by Iowa state legislator Ed Fallon on behalf of gay marriage, arguing that the goal would be to get a congressman to give exactly the same speech as Fallon, but substituting the word "poly" for "gay" throughout. Try telling polyamorists that the link between gay marriage and group marriage is a mirage.

The flexible, egalitarian, and altogether postmodern polyamorists are more likely to influence the larger society than Mormon polygamists. The polyamorists go after monogamy in a way that resonates with America's secular, post-sixties culture. Yet the fundamental drawback is the same for Mormons and polyamorists alike. Polyamory websites are filled with chatter about jealousy, the problem that will not go away. Inevitably, group marriages based on modern principles of companionate love, without religious rules and restraints, are unstable. Like the short-lived hippie communes, group marriages will be broken on the contradiction between companionate love and group solidarity. And children will pay the price. The harms of state-sanctioned polyamorous marriage would extend well beyond the polyamorists themselves. Once monogamy is defined out of marriage, it will be next to impossible to educate a new generation in what it takes to keep companionate marriage intact. State-sanctioned polyamory would spell the effective end of marriage. And that is precisely what polyamory's new--and surprisingly influential--defenders are aiming for.

The family law radicals

STATE-SANCTIONED polyamory is now the cutting-edge issue among scholars of family law. The preeminent school of thought in academic family law has its origins in the arguments of radical gay activists who once opposed same-sex marriage. In the early nineties, radicals like longtime National Gay and Lesbian Task Force policy director Paula Ettelbrick spoke out against making legal marriage a priority for the gay rights movement. Marriage, Ettelbrick reminded her fellow activists, "has long been the focus of radical feminist revulsion." Encouraging gays to marry, said Ettelbrick, would only force gay "assimilation" to American norms, when the real object of the gay rights movement ought to be getting Americans to accept gay difference. "Being queer," said Ettelbrick, "means pushing the parameters of sex and family, and in the process transforming the very fabric of society."

Promoting polyamory is the ideal way to "radically reorder society's view of the family," and Ettelbrick, who has since formally signed on as a supporter of gay marriage (and is frequently quoted by the press), is now part of a movement that hopes to use gay marriage as an opening to press for state-sanctioned polyamory. Ettelbrick teaches law at the University of Michigan, New York University, Barnard, and Columbia. She has a lot of company.

Nancy Polikoff is a professor at American University's law school. In 1993, Polikoff published a powerful and radical critique of gay marriage. Polikoff stressed that during the height of the lesbian feminist movement of the seventies, even many heterosexual feminists refused to marry because they believed marriage to be an inherently patriarchal and oppressive institution. A movement for gay marriage, warned Polikoff, would surely promote marriage as a social good, trotting out monogamous couples as spokesmen in a way that would marginalize non-monogamous gays and would fail to challenge the legitimacy of marriage itself. Like Ettelbrick, Polikoff now supports the right of gays to marry. And like Ettelbrick, Polikoff is part of a movement whose larger goal is to use legal gay marriage to push for state-sanctioned polyamory--the ultimate subversion of marriage itself. Polikoff and Ettelbrick represent what is arguably now the dominant perspective within the discipline of family law.

Cornell University law professor Martha Fineman is another key figure in the field of family law. In her 1995 book "The Neutered Mother, the Sexual Family, and Other Twentieth Century Tragedies," she argued for the abolition of marriage as a legal category. Fineman's book begins with her recollection of an experience from the late seventies in politically radical Madison, Wisconsin. To her frustration, she could not convince even the most progressive members of Madison's Equal Opportunities Commission to recognize "plural sexual groupings" as marriages. That failure helped energize Fineman's lifelong drive to abolish marriage.

But it's University of Utah law professor Martha Ertman who stands on the cutting edge of family law. Building on Fineman's proposals for the abolition of legal marriage, Ertman has offered a legal template for a sweeping relationship contract system modeled on corporate law. (See the Harvard Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Review, Winter 2001.) Ertman wants state-sanctioned polyamory, legally organized on the model of limited liability companies.

In arguing for the replacement of marriage with a contract system that accommodates polyamory, Ertman notes that legal and social hostility to polygamy and polyamory are decreasing. She goes on astutely to imply that the increased openness of homosexual partnerships is slowly collapsing the taboo against polygamy and polyamory. And Ertman is frank about the purpose of her proposed reform--to render the distinction between traditional marriage and polyamory "morally neutral."

A sociologist rather than a professor of law, Judith Stacey, the Barbra Streisand Professor in Contemporary Gender Studies at USC, is another key member of this group. Stacey has long championed alternative family forms. Her current research is on gay families consisting of more than two adults, whose several members consider themselves either married or contractually bound.

In 1996, in the Michigan Law Review, David Chambers, a professor of law at the University of Michigan and another prominent member of this group, explained why radical opponents of marriage ought to support gay marriage. Rather than reinforcing a two-person definition of marriage, argued Chambers, gay marriage would make society more accepting of further legal changes. "By ceasing to conceive of marriage as a partnership composed of one person of each sex, the state may become more receptive to units of three or more."

Gradual transition from gay marriage to state-sanctioned polyamory, and the eventual abolition of marriage itself as a legal category, is now the most influential paradigm within academic family law. As Chambers put it, "All desirable changes in family law need not be made at once."

Finally, Martha Minow of Harvard Law School deserves mention. Minow has not advocated state-sanctioned polygamy or polyamory, but the principles she champions pave the way for both. Minow argues that families need to be radically redefined, putting blood ties and traditional legal arrangements aside and attending instead to the functional realities of new family configurations.

Ettelbrick, Polikoff, Fineman, Ertman, Stacey, Chambers, and Minow are among the most prominent family law theorists in the country. They have plenty of followers and hold much of the power and initiative within their field. There may be other approaches to academic family law, but none exceed the radicals in influence. In the last couple of years, there have been a number of conferences on family law dominated by the views of this school. The conferences have names like "Marriage Law: Obsolete or Cutting Edge?" and "Assimilation & Resistance: Emerging Issues in Law & Sexuality." The titles turn on the paradox of using marriage, seemingly a conservative path toward assimilation, as a tool of radical cultural "resistance."

One of the most important recent family law meetings was the March 2003 Hofstra conference on "Marriage, Democracy, and Families." The radicals were out in full force. On a panel entitled "Intimate Affiliation and Democracy: Beyond Marriage?" Fineman, Ertman, and Stacey held forth on polyamory, the legal abolition of marriage, and related issues. Although there were more moderate scholars present, there was barely a challenge to the radicals' suggestion that it was time to move "beyond marriage." The few traditionalists in family law are relatively isolated. Many, maybe most, of the prominent figures in family law count themselves as advocates for lesbian and gay rights. Yet family law today is as influenced by the hostility to marriage of seventies feminism as it is by advocacy for gay rights. It is this confluence of radical feminism and gay rights that now shapes the field.

Beyond conjugality

YOU MIGHT THINK the radicals who dominate the discipline of family law are just a bunch of eccentric and irrelevant academics. You would be wrong. For one thing, there is already a thriving non-profit organization, the Alternatives to Marriage Project, that advances the radicals' goals. When controversies over the family hit the news, experts provided by the Alternatives to Marriage Project are often quoted in mainstream media outlets. While the Alternatives to Marriage Project endorses gay marriage, its longer-term goal is to replace marriage with a system that recognizes "the full range" of family types. That includes polyamorous families. The Alternatives to Marriage Project's statement of purpose--its "Affirmation of Family Diversity"--is signed not only by Ettelbrick, Polikoff, and Stacey but by several polyamorists as well. On a list of signatories that includes academic luminaries like Yale historian Nancy Cott, you can find Barry Northrup of Loving More magazine. The Alternatives to Marriage Project, along with Martha Ertman's pioneering legal proposals, has given polyamory a foothold on respectability.

The first real public triumph of the family law radicals has come in Canada. In 1997, the Canadian Parliament established the Law Commission of Canada to serve Parliament and the Justice Ministry as a kind of advisory board on legal reform. In December 2001, the commission submitted a report to Parliament called "Beyond Conjugality," which stops just short of recommending the abolition of marriage in Canada.

"Beyond Conjugality" contains three basic recommendations. First, judges are directed to concentrate on whether the individuals before them are "functionally interdependent," regardless of their actual marital status. On that theory, a household consisting of an adult child still living with his mother might be treated as the functional equivalent of a married couple. In so disregarding marital status, "Beyond Conjugality" is clearly drawing on the work of Minow, whose writings are listed in the bibliography.

"Beyond Conjugality"'s second key recommendation is that a legal structure be established allowing people to register their personal relationships with the government. Not only could heterosexual couples register as official partners, so could gay couples, adult children living with parents, and siblings or friends sharing a house. Although the authors of "Beyond Conjugality" are politic enough to relegate the point to footnotes, they state that they see no reason, in principle, to limit registered partnerships to two people.

The final recommendation of "Beyond Conjugality"--legalization of same-sex marriage--drew the most publicity when the report was released. Yet for the Law Commission of Canada, same-sex marriage is clearly just one part of the larger project of doing away with marriage itself. "Beyond Conjugality" stops short of recommending the abolition of legal marriage. The authors glumly note that, for the moment, the public is unlikely to accept such a step.

The text of "Beyond Conjugality," its bibliography, and the Law Commission of Canada's other publications unmistakably reveal the influence of the radical theorists who now dominate the discipline of family law. While Canada's parliament has postponed action on "Beyond Conjugality," the report has already begun to shape the culture. The decision by the Canadian government in June 2003 not to contest court rulings legalizing gay marriage is only the beginning of the changes that Canada's judges and legal bureaucrats have in mind. The simultaneity of the many reforms is striking. Gay marriage is being pressed, but in tandem with a registration system that will sanction polyamorous unions, and eventually replace marriage itself. Empirically, the radicals' hopes are being validated. Gay marriage is not strengthening marriage but has instead become part of a larger unraveling of traditional marriage laws.

Ah, but that's Canada, you say. Yet America has its rough equivalent of the Law Commission of Canada--the American Law Institute (ALI), an organization of legal scholars whose recommendations commonly shape important legal reforms. In 2000, ALI promulgated a report called "Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution" recommending that judges effectively disregard the distinction between married couples and longtime cohabitors. While the ALI principles do not go so far as to set up a system of partnership registration to replace marriage, the report's framework for recognizing a wide variety of cohabiting partnerships puts it on the same path as "Beyond Conjugality."

Collapsing the distinction between cohabitation and marriage is a proposal especially damaging to children, who are decidedly better off when born to married parents. (This aspect of the ALI report has been persuasively criticized by Kay Hymowitz, in the March 2003 issue of Commentary.) But a more disturbing aspect of the ALI report is its evasion of the polygamy and polyamory issues.

Prior to publication of the ALI Principles, the report's authors were pressed (at the 2000 annual meeting of the American Law Institute) about the question of polygamy. The authors put off the controversy by defining legal cohabitors as couples. Yet the ALI report offers no principled way of excluding polyamorous or polygamous cohabitors from recognition. The report's reforms are said to be based on the need to recognize "statistically growing" patterns of relationship. By this standard, the growth of polyamorous cohabitation will soon require the legal recognition of polyamory.

Although America's ALI Principles do not follow Canada's "Beyond Conjugality" in proposing either state-sanctioned polyamory or the outright end of marriage, the University of Utah's Martha Ertman has suggested (in the Spring/Summer 2001 Duke Journal of Gender Law and Policy) that the American Law Institute is intentionally holding back on more radical proposals for pragmatic political reasons. Certainly, the ALI Principles' authors take Canadian law as the model for the report's most radical provisions.

Further confirmation, if any were needed, of the mainstream influence of the family law radicals came with Al and Tipper Gore's 2002 book "Joined at the Heart," in which they define a family as those who are "joined at the heart" (rather than by blood or by law). The notion that a family is any group "joined at the heart" comes straight from Harvard's Martha Minow, who worked with the Gores. In fact, the Minow article from which the Gores take their definition of family is also the article in which Minow tentatively floats the idea of substituting domestic partnership registries for traditional marriage. ("Redefining Families: Who's In and Who's Out?" University of Colorado Law Review, Volume 62, Number 2, 1991.) So one of the guiding spirits of Canada's "Beyond Conjugality" report almost had a friend in the White House.

Triple parenting

POLYGAMY, POLYAMORY, and the abolition of marriage are bad ideas. But what has that got to do with gay marriage? The reason these ideas are connected is that gay marriage is increasingly being treated as a civil rights issue. Once we say that gay couples have a right to have their commitments recognized by the state, it becomes next to impossible to deny that same right to polygamists, polyamorists, or even cohabiting relatives and friends. And once everyone's relationship is recognized, marriage is gone, and only a system of flexible relationship contracts is left. The only way to stop gay marriage from launching a slide down this slope is if there is a compelling state interest in blocking polygamy or polyamory that does not also apply to gay marriage. Many would agree that the state has a compelling interest in preventing polygamy and polyamory from undermining the ethos of monogamy at the core of marriage. The trouble is, gay marriage itself threatens the ethos of monogamy.

The "conservative" case for gay marriage holds that state-sanctioned marriage will reduce gay male promiscuity. But what if the effect works in reverse? What if, instead of marriage reducing gay promiscuity, sexually open gay couples help redefine marriage as a non-monogamous institution? There is evidence that this is exactly what will happen.

Consider sociologist Gretchen Stiers's 1998 study "From this Day Forward" (Stiers favors gay marriage, and calls herself a lesbian "queer theorist"). "From this Day Forward" reports that while exceedingly few of even the most committed gay and lesbian couples surveyed believe that marriage will strengthen and stabilize their personal relationships, nearly half of the surveyed couples who actually disdain traditional marriage (and even gay commitment ceremonies) will nonetheless get married. Why? For the financial and legal benefits of marriage. And Stiers's study suggests that many radical gays and lesbians who yearn to see marriage abolished (and multiple sexual unions legitimized) intend to marry, not only as a way of securing benefits but as part of a self-conscious attempt to subvert the institution of marriage. Stiers's study suggests that the "subversive" intentions of the radical legal theorists are shared by a significant portion of the gay community itself.

Stiers's study was focused on the most committed gay couples. Yet even in a sample with a disproportionate number of male couples who had gone through a commitment ceremony (and Stiers had to go out of her research protocol just to find enough male couples to balance the committed lesbian couples) nearly 20 percent of the men questioned did not practice monogamy. In a representative sample of gay male couples, that number would be vastly higher. More significantly, a mere 10 percent of even this skewed sample of gay men mentioned monogamy as an important aspect of commitment (meaning that even many of those men who had undergone "union ceremonies" failed to identify fidelity with commitment). And these, the very most committed gay male couples, are the ones who will be trailblazing marital norms for their peers, and exemplifying gay marriage for the nation. So concerns about the effects of gay marriage on the social ideal of marital monogamy seem justified.

A recent survey of gay couples in civil unions by University of Vermont psychologists Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solomon confirms what Stiers's study suggests--that married gay male couples will be far less likely than married heterosexual couples to identify marriage with monogamy. Rothblum and Solomon contacted all 2,300 couples who entered civil unions in Vermont between June 1, 2000, and June 30, 2001. More than 300 civil union couples residing in and out of the state responded. Rothblum and Solomon then compared the gay couples in civil unions with heterosexual couples and gay couples outside of civil unions. Among married heterosexual men, 79 percent felt that marriage demanded monogamy, 50 percent of men in gay civil unions insisted on monogamy, while only 34 percent of gay men outside of civil unions affirmed monogamy.

While gay men in civil unions were more likely to affirm monogamy than gays outside of civil unions, gay men in civil unions were far less supportive of monogamy than heterosexual married men. That discrepancy may well be significantly greater under gay marriage than under civil unions. That's because of the effect identified by Stiers--the likelihood that many gays who do not value the traditional monogamous ethos of marriage will marry anyway for the financial benefits that marriage can bring. (A full 86 percent of the civil unions couples who responded to the Rothblum-Solomon survey live outside Vermont, and therefore receive no financial benefits from their new legal status.) The Rothblum-Solomon study may also undercount heterosexual married male acceptance of monogamy, since one member of all the married heterosexual couples in the survey was the sibling of a gay man in a civil union, and thus more likely to be socially liberal than most heterosexuals.

Even moderate gay advocates of same-sex marriage grant that, at present, gay male relationships are far less monogamous than heterosexual relationships. And there is a persuasive literature on this subject: Gabriel Rotello's "Sexual Ecology," for example, offers a documented and powerful account of the behavioral and ideological barriers to monogamy among gay men. The moderate advocates say marriage will change this reality. But they ignore, or downplay, the possibility that gay marriage will change marriage more than it changes the men who marry. Married gay couples will begin to redefine the meaning of marriage for the culture as a whole, in part by removing monogamy as an essential component of marriage. No doubt, the process will be pushed along by cutting-edge movies and TV shows that tout the new "open" marriages being pioneered by gay spouses. In fact, author and gay marriage advocate Richard Mohr has long expressed the hope and expectation that legal gay marriage will succeed in defining monogamy out of marriage.

Lesbians, for their part, do value monogamy. Over 82 percent of the women in the Rothblum-Solomon study, for example, insisted on monogamy, regardless of sexual orientation or marital status. Yet lesbian marriage will undermine the connection between marriage and monogamy in a different way. Lesbians who bear children with sperm donors sometimes set up de facto three-parent families. Typically, these families include a sexually bound lesbian couple, and a male biological father who is close to the couple but not sexually involved. Once lesbian couples can marry, there will be a powerful legal case for extending parental recognition to triumvirates. It will be difficult to question the parental credentials of a sperm donor, or of a married, lesbian non-birth mother spouse who helps to raise a child from birth. And just as the argument for gay marriage has been built upon the right to gay adoption, legally recognized triple parenting will eventually usher in state-sanctioned triple (and therefore group) marriage.

This year, there was a triple parenting case in Canada involving a lesbian couple and a sperm donor. The judge made it clear that he wanted to assign parental status to all three adults but held back because he said he lacked jurisdiction. On this issue, the United States is already in "advance" of Canada. Martha Ertman is now pointing to a 2000 Minnesota case (La Chapelle v. Mitten) in which a court did grant parental rights to lesbian partners and a sperm donor. Ertman argues that this case creates a legal precedent for state-sanctioned polyamory.

Gay marriages of convenience

IRONICALLY, the form of gay matrimony that may pose the greatest threat to the institution of marriage involves heterosexuals. A Brigham Young University professor, Alan J. Hawkins, suggests an all-too-likely scenario in which two heterosexuals of the same sex might marry as a way of obtaining financial benefits. Consider the plight of an underemployed and uninsured single mother in her early 30s who sees little real prospect of marriage (to a man) in her future. Suppose she has a good friend, also female and heterosexual, who is single and childless but employed with good spousal benefits. Sooner or later, friends like this are going to start contracting same-sex marriages of convenience. The single mom will get medical and governmental benefits, will share her friend's paycheck, and will gain an additional caretaker for the kids besides. Her friend will gain companionship and a family life. The marriage would obviously be sexually open. And if lightning struck and the right man came along for one of the women, they could always divorce and marry heterosexually.

In a narrow sense, the women and children in this arrangement would be better off. Yet the larger effects of such unions on the institution of marriage would be devastating. At a stroke, marriage would be severed not only from the complementarity of the sexes but also from its connection to romance and sexual exclusivity--and even from the hope of permanence. In Hawkins's words, the proliferation of such arrangements "would turn marriage into the moral equivalent of a Social Security benefit." The effect would be to further diminish the sense that a woman ought to be married to the father of her children. In the aggregate, what we now call out-of-wedlock births would increase. And the connection between marriage and sexual fidelity would be nonexistent.

Hawkins thinks gay marriages of convenience would be contracted in significant numbers--certainly enough to draw the attention of a media eager to tout such unions as the hip, postmodern marriages of the moment. Hawkins also believes that these unions of convenience could begin to undermine marriage's institutional foundations fairly quickly. He may be right. The gay marriage movement took more than a decade to catch fire. A movement for state-sanctioned polygamy-polyamory could take as long. And the effects of sexually open gay marriages on the ethos of monogamy will similarly occur over time. But any degree of publicity for same-sex marriages of convenience could have dramatic effects. Without further legal ado, same-sex marriages of convenience will realize the radicals' fondest hopes. Marriage will have been severed from monogamy, from sexuality, and even from the dream of permanence. Which would bring us virtually to the bottom of the slippery slope.

WE ARE FAR CLOSER to that day than anyone realizes. Does the Supreme Court's defense of sexual liberty last month in the Lawrence v. Texas sodomy case mean that, short of a constitutional amendment, gay marriage is inevitable? Perhaps not. Justice Scalia was surely correct to warn in his dissent that Lawrence greatly weakens the legal barriers to gay marriage. Sodomy laws, although rarely enforced, did provide a public policy basis on which a state could refuse to recognize a gay marriage performed in another state. Now the grounds for that "public policy exception" have been eroded. And as Scalia warned, Lawrence's sweeping guarantees of personal autonomy in matters of sex could easily be extended to the question of who a person might choose to marry.

So it is true that, given Lawrence, the legal barriers to gay marriage are now hanging by a thread. Nonetheless, in an important respect, Scalia underestimated the resources for a successful legal argument against gay marriage. True, Lawrence eliminates moral disapprobation as an acceptable, rational basis for public policy distinctions between homosexuality and heterosexuality. But that doesn't mean there is no rational basis for blocking either same-sex marriage or polygamy.

There is a rational basis for blocking both gay marriage and polygamy, and it does not depend upon a vague or religiously based disapproval of homosexuality or polygamy. Children need the stable family environment provided by marriage. In our individualist Western society, marriage must be companionate--and therefore monogamous. Monogamy will be undermined by gay marriage itself, and by gay marriage's ushering in of polygamy and polyamory.

This argument ought to be sufficient to pass the test of rational scrutiny set by the Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas. Certainly, the slippery slope argument was at the center of the legislative debate on the federal Defense of Marriage Act, and so should protect that act from being voided on the same grounds as Texas's sodomy law. But of course, given the majority's sweeping declarations in Lawrence, and the hostility of the legal elite to traditional marriage, it may well be foolish to rely on the Supreme Court to uphold either state or federal Defense of Marriage Acts.

This is the case, in a nutshell, for something like the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution, which would define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. At a stroke, such an amendment would block gay marriage, polygamy, polyamory, and the replacement of marriage by a contract system. Whatever the courts might make of the slippery slope argument, the broader public will take it seriously. Since Lawrence, we have already heard from Jon Carroll in the San Francisco Chronicle calling for legalized polygamy. Judith Levine in the Village Voice has made a plea for group marriage. And Michael Kinsley--no queer theorist but a completely mainstream journalist--has publicly called for the legal abolition of marriage. So the most radical proposal of all has now moved out of the law schools and legal commissions, and onto the front burner of public discussion.

Fair-minded people differ on the matter of homosexuality. I happen to think that sodomy laws should have been repealed (although legislatively). I also believe that our increased social tolerance for homosexuality is generally a good thing. But the core issue here is not homosexuality; it is marriage. Marriage is a critical social institution. Stable families depend on it. Society depends on stable families. Up to now, with all the changes in marriage, the one thing we've been sure of is that marriage means monogamy. Gay marriage will break that connection. It will do this by itself, and by leading to polygamy and polyamory. What lies beyond gay marriage is no marriage at all.

Stanley Kurtz is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.

***********************************************************************************************

Next a polyamory FAQ to highlight the possibilities that some people are exploring which don't fit into the usual understanding of  "I do"..

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/polyamory/faq/

Subject:  2). What's polyamory, then?

     (Glad you asked that. ;-) ) Polyamory means "loving more than

     one".  This love may be sexual, emotional, spiritual, or any

     combination thereof, according to the desires and agreements of

     the individuals involved, but you needn't wear yourself out

     trying to figure out ways to fit fondness for apple pie, or

     filial piety, or a passion for the Saint Paul Saints baseball

     club into it. "Polyamorous" is also used as a descriptive term by

     people who are open to more than one relationship even if they

     are not currently involved in more than one. (Heck, some are

     involved in less than one.)  Some people think the definition is

     a bit loose, but it's got to be fairly roomy to fit the wide

     range of poly arrangements out there.

     Subject:  3). But isn't that "cheating"?  

      Nope.

      Oh, you wanted a longer answer.  Okay.  According to the OED,

     cheating means "fraud, deceit, swindling."  There's a nice quote

     from 1532: "The first...ground of Chetinge is...a studdy to seme

     to be, and not to be in deede."  In other words, cheating is to

     convey through deliberate action the impression that one is of a

     particular nature while one is, in fact, something quite

     different. What this boils down to with polyamory is that

     polyamorous people do not tell partners, lovers, or prospective

     members of those groups that they are monogamous when in fact

     they are not -- nor do they allow these people to assume they are

     monogamous, regardless of how convenient or personally

     advantageous such assumptions might be.  The words "honest",

     "negotiate", "communication" and "being out" occur frequently in

     discussions of how polyamory usually works.

      As Stef puts it: 

      "I think the key in defining polyamory is *openness*, that is,

     having multiple relationships with the knowledge and consent of

     your partner(s) rather than by deceit.  (How much openness, how

     many details are shared, of course varies widely.)  A great many

     people have secret affairs while they're in a supposedly

     monogamous relationship. I think those people might have the

     potential to be polyamorous, but I do not think they are

     practicing polyamory.  Another key in defining polyamory, IMO, is

     that it need not involve sex (although it often does)."

      Generally speaking, if someone openly practices "more than one

     love" and calls themself polyamorous, they probably are; if they

     practice "more than one love" and call themself monogamous, do

     not adjust your television: the problem is *not* in your

     receiver.

 Subject: 4). Primaries, secondaries, vees and triads: polyjargon and

             polygeometry

      Since there are lots of different ways to organize (or not

     organize, if one is blessed by the Goddess of Chaos, or has a

     taste for happy anarchy, or is a principled egalitarian)

     relationships, it follows that there are ways of describing these

     various arrangements.  This polyjargon has evolved in the

     newsgroup over time, and the words are merely descriptives.  No

     approval or disapproval of any particular arrangement is to be

     expressed or implied.

      Primary - word often used in a hierarchal multi-person

     relationship to denote the person with whom one is most strongly

     bonded.  In some cases this bond or commitment takes the form of

     legal marriage.  As bigamy is not legal, the option of having two

     (or more) legally wedded primaries simultaneously is not

     currently practicable, though non-legal ceremonies may certainly

     be performed.  In some cases "primary" refers to the lover with

     the most seniority.

      Secondary - follows from primary, in a hierarchal relationship,

     denotes a person with whom one is involved without the emotional,

     legal, or economic complexities and commitments of primary

     bonding.

     Yes, some people talk about tertiaries and so on.  Some people

     also don't like the terms primaries and secondaries or the

     concepts behind the terms, preferring to have "a circle of

     equals" as one poly person called it.  Stef contributed the term

     "Non-hierarchical Polyamory" for this kind of arrangement.

      Triads - three people involved in some way.  Often used in a

     fairly committed sense, in some cases involving ceremonies of

     commitment, but also used simply to mean "three people who are

     connected".  Example: "Jodine, Mischa and Mickey are a FMM triad

     living in Excelsior."

      Vee - Three people, where the structure puts one person at the

     bottom, or "hinge" of the vee, also called the pivot point. In a

     vee, the arm partners are not as commonly close to each other as

     each is to the pivot.

      Triangle (or equilateral triangle) - relationship where three

     people are each involved with both of the others.  Sometimes also

     called a triad.

      Line Marriage - term from the works of Robert A. Heinlein,

     science fiction writer, meaning a marriage that from time to time

     adds younger members, eventually establishing an equilibrium

     population (spouses dying off at the same rate as new ones are

     added).  This is a different form of familial immortality than

     the traditional one of successive generations of children.

     (Definition courtesy of M. Schafer, and yes, there are people who

     are in situations like this who use the term to describe their

     family.)

      Polyfidelity: Relationship involving more than two people who

     have made a commitment to keep the sexual activity within the

     group and not have outside partners.  (Rumor has it that this

     term was coined by the group Kerista.)

      Quads, pentacles, sextets and more: There are polyfolk who exist

     in multiple arrangements with more than three members.  Geometry

     can get complicated, and creative nomenclature abounds. As in

     every other aspect of polyamory, the precise bonds of intimacy

     vary from group to group and from member to member within groups.

 Subject:  5). What about jealousy?

      Some people seem to have no jealousy; it's as if they didn't get

     that piece installed at the factory.  Others, including some

     long-term polyamorists, feel jealousy, which they regard as a

     signal that something needs investigation and care, much as they

     would regard depression or pain.  Jealousy is neither a proof of

     love (and this is where polyamory differs from possessive or

     insecure monogamy) nor a moral failing (and this is where

     polyamory differs from emotionally manipulating one's partner(s)

     into relationships for which they are not ready).

 Subject:  6). Are there rules for being polyamorous?

      Nobody has a trademark on How It's Done, if that's what you mean.

     The best anyone can do is tell how it works for them, and as with

     most other things, YMMV. (That means "Your Mileage May Vary.")

      Some people have "rules of thumb".

      Joe and Kat:

          "Your needs come first.

          We'll talk about everything.

          What they said."

      Elise:

          "Since a certain 'learning experience' I have felt strongly

         that I should never allow my relationship with a new person

         to be a tool used to avoid dealing with a 'broken' other

         relationship.  In fact, one of the things I am most careful

         about is 'emotional spillover'; I have a policy of not

         spending intense time with otherloves when there is something

         out of balance with one love.  Naturally this tends to speed

         up the opening of negotiations about the difficulty. ;-) I

         think it's unfair to my loves to use the time I spend with

         them as a palliative when there's trouble elsewhere; it keeps

         me from doing the work I need to do, the work I agreed to do

         when I took on the reality of the relationship."

      If you want rules of thumb, you get to make them up yourself. No

     warranty expressed or implied, and keep checking the instrument

     panel throughout your flight.

 Subject:  7). How do you decide who sleeps where when?  

      This is the most often asked question in panel discussions of

     polyamory, making some polyfolk wonder why sex is more

     interesting than the emotional and other intimacies of

     polyamorous life.  The answer is that the people involved decide,

     and they decide *how* they decide, too.  Some people have

     conferences and divide up the week, some people all pile happily

     into one big bed, and for all I know some people spin a big wheel

     with blinking lights on it each evening....and some people can

     love one another, have no sex, and choose to live in separate

     homes if that is most comfortable for them. The answer usually

     evolves out of discussion, empathy and practice, which makes it a

     lot like good lovemaking.

      As jack says:

      "The thing to remember is that the sexuality of a relationship is

     not the most important aspect of it.  The best thing I can do for

     either of my partners is meet them at the door with a buttered

     biscuit and a smile."

 Subject:  8). Why do some posts talk about Hot Bi Babes?

      It's a newsgroup joke referring to the occasional post from

     someone, almost always identifying himself as a straight male,

     who is seeking "hot" (i.e. sexually arousing) bisexual female

     partners to save him from the monotonies of the back rack at his

     local video rental shop.  The term Hot Bi Babe is almost always

     used sarcastically, occasionally by those of us who really are

     hot bi babes, to lampoon those who regard our sexual preferences

     as a spectator sport.  (Our crankiness has more to do with the

     frequency and ineptitude of clueless approaches than it does with

     the acceptability of fantasies or anything like that.)

      (and where can I get some?)

 Subject:  9). Are all polyfolk bisexual? 

      No.  There are many polyamorous people who are also bisexual, and

     many who are monosexual (i.e. relating only to one gender as

     potential or actual sexual/romantic partners; straight or

     gay/lesbian).  There are also lots of folks who don't do sexual

     preference/orientation labels at all.  One doesn't always know

     until one asks, as with so many other things.  Avoiding

     assumptions is usually worth the exercise.

 Subject: 10). Do polyamorous relationships last?

      Some do, some don't, just like any other kind of relationships.

     Some folks on the newsgroup have been together for many years;

     some own houses and have children together. Being polyamorous is

     no guarantee that relationships will be easier, though there can

     be advantages to shared joys and shared sorrows, as the old

     saying goes.

 
Subject: 13). What will the children think?

      As Martin Schafer says:

          "If you don't think you are doing anything wrong, and can

         honestly explain that, they'll probably think it's pretty

         neat.  For some of us having more people involved in child

         rearing is a big practical benefit of our lifestyle.  The

         details of how this works is a fertile topic for discussion,

         both here and among the individuals involved."

 Subject: 14). How does a person start (or continue) a poly relationship?

      First, there are no rules.  Nobody owns the copyright on

     polyamory.  You get to build your own to fit you and your

     dearloves.

     One thing that comes up in every conversation about polyamory is

     communication.  If there is any basic building block, this is

     probably it. If you can talk about your hopes, you're on the way

     to realizing them.

      If you're in a relationship already, and have not talked about

     how you feel and what you want, and you're asking the question

     "How do I start doing this poly stuff?", you may have some qualms

     about talking to your partner.  What you do will have to be

     determined by your own ethics and your own situation; chances are

     that if you ask on the newsgroup, many polyfolk will suggest you

     talk it over with your partner, and they may point out that even

     if you two do not decide to live polyamorously, you may very well

     increase the intimacy level in your monogamous dyad by having the

     discussion. 

      On the other hand, it may all go blooey, and this is why people

     hesitate.  On the third hand, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

     On the fourth hand, it might be useful to increase the intimacy

     level in the existing relationship and address any outstanding

     difficult issues there *before* having this particular

     discussion. Four more hands and you've got a nice statue of Kwan

     Yin there, and seeing as how she's the Goddess of Mercy, she

     might come in handy at a time like this.

      Joe Avins feels that it's not a good idea to try to force a

     relationship into an attractive model; he favors the "relax, be

     open, and see what happens" approach, and quotes Pete Seeger:

     "Take it easy, but take it."

      If you're already in more than one relationship and haven't

     disclosed this yet, you will find people on the newsgroup who

     have experienced similar things - from all three sides - and are

     willing to discuss their perceptions and the actions they took.

  Subject: 15). How do I explain this to people?

      David Rostcheck says:

          "You don't have to explain yourself at all, or answer to

         anyone.  You're happy. Your feelings require no

         justification. It's a mistake to try to reconcile what you

         feel with a social classification, because the classification

         may not really suit you.  You start with your feelings,

         understand them and be comfortable with them. You, your

         feeling, and the people you care about are the important

         things.  You're getting in this unnatural, inverted position

         of trying to explain yourself. You don't have to explain

         yourself to the world. You just are, and your relationship

         just is. If other people want to understand it, then you try

         to explain to them in basic terms what you feel, and that

         you're happy.

         "Here's how I'd deal with some specific questions:

         ":Are you seeing my daughter or this other girl?

           I'm seeing them both.

         ":So you're cheating on her?

           No. They both know; we're all friends and we're happy that

           way.

         ":Well, which do you love?

           I love them both.

          ":Which do you love more?

           I don't understand the question. They're different

           people. How do you measure?

         ":Why don't you commit to one of them?

           Why can't I commit to both of them?

         "See? You don't have to bend over backwards to express

         yourself in their terms. They may have to learn your terms to

         understand you.  You're not the one who doesn't understand;

         they have to put in the work to comprehend you. Remember, the

         bunch of you have something that comes naturally and feels

         right for you; whether or not other people get it is a

         secondary issue. As long as you do what you want you'll be

         happy.

          "Does that help any?"

 Subject: 16).  Is there a secret alt.poly handshake?

      Not that I know of. ;-) There are several proposed symbols, of

     which the most common seems to be the parrot.  As parrot pins and

     other ornaments are relatively easy to find, this symbol seems

     likely to catch on over the others.  It also has the advantage of

     being humorous, which is a needed quality in such a staid,

     conservative group as alt.poly.  (Joke, folks!  Set irony filters

     on stun.)

Finally an extra link to an exploration of jealousy within polyamory. This is a key issue that I personally have never heard adequately addressed by polys..

http://lovemore.com/articles/heartofjealousy

Thats all folks!

Colin 

847 963 1254