Ruth Institute Blog

We often protest when homophobes insist that same sex marriage will change marriage for straight people too. But in some ways, they’re right. Here’s how gay relationships will change the institution—but for the better. By Ari Karpel

When birth control pills were making Megan’s sex drive almost nonexistent, she told her boyfriend, Colin, what many gay men in a similar position might say to theirs: “If you want to have sex, feel free to sleep with someone else; just don’t tell me about it.” Read more…

“This is what happens when you take bad advice.”

By ROSE MCDERMOTT

Polygamy is a popular punchline these days, from HBO’s drama “Big Love” to TLC’s documentary “Sister Wives” and the Broadway musical “The Book of Mormon,” written by the creators of “South Park.” Yet plural marriage is as serious an issue as it’s ever been—and is even on the rise in the West. Read more…

One has to wonder sometimes if Western Civilization is even going to bother showing up for the the future of the world.

Well, not the way things are going in America lately, at least not according to recent government data as reported in the LA Times:

LA Times:
The maternity business has experienced a recession, too, it appears. Births fell 4% from 2007 to 2009, the biggest drop for any two-year period since the mid-1970s, according to federal government data released Thursday.

Meanwhile across the pond, our British cousins are procreating, but not bothering to get married. Consider a few items published recently by their Office for National Statistics: Read more…

from WinnipegFreePress.com:
The last time Canadians had a debate about the definition of marriage, it was over whether gays and lesbians had a constitutional right to marry.

In the end, the courts decided they did.

Now, as a British Columbia judge weighs whether polygamy should be decriminalized, advocates on both sides of the debate are pointing to the legalization of same-sex marriage to bolster their claims.

Keep reading…

LGBTweekly.com:
The Irish edition of tabloid news magazine The Sun recently covered the story of Penny Lawrence, a 28-year-old woman suffering from Genetic Sexual Attraction (GSA) who is now pregnant with her father’s child.

If you seriously don’t think there are folks waiting in the wings for same-sex ‘marriage’ to set the legal precedent they need to make what is described above legal – along with absolutely anything else you could imagine – then check out a website called Full Marriage Equality. (They refer to this father and daughter’s relationship as “consanguinarmory”.)

Philosopher Francis Beckwith has posted a short, but incisive, comment on patheos.com concerning the legal implications of the ‘reasoning’ undergirding the Obama administration’s refusal to continue to defend DOMA.

This is the core of his argument: Read more…

by Ruth Institute board member William C. Duncan

While the United States is occupied with the federal challenge to California’s Proposition 8, Canada has its own pending marriage case, which is likely headed for the Canadian Supreme Court. Canada, which redefined marriage nationwide to include same-sex couples in 2005, against the backdrop of successful provincial lawsuits against the country’s marriage law, could be moving on to bigger things — literally. Specifically, polygamy and polyamory, as this case invokes the question of whether the government can continue to criminalize multiple-partner marriages. The case itself, initiated by the British Columbia Attorney General under a special provision of that Province’s law, arises in the wake of failed prosecutions of polygamous sect members in British Columbia. Read more…

Gross. Like these relationships are really going to last. Clearly they’re in it for love of each other rather than for themselves–not!

Carolyn Moynihan

Africans have some excuse for polygamy — after all, it is traditional. But how do certain Bostonians justify what they are calling “polyamory” and what is just a polished-up version of free love?

The Boston Globe kicked off the New Year with a feature on a group of 500 or so people who identify themselves as polyamorous. Meaning? A spokesman says:

“There’s monogamy where two people are exclusive. There’s cheating in which people are lying about being exclusive. And poly is everything else.”

Or again, says the Globe:

Though common descriptors used for monogamy don’t easily apply to polyamory, there is a recognizable spectrum of how open these partnerships may be. On the closed end, you might have a couple in a primary relationship who will then have one or more secondary relationships that are structured to accommodate the primary one. There’s also polyfidelity, in which three or more people are exclusive with one another. On the open end, there might be chains of people where, for example, Sue is dating Bill and Bill is dating Karen and Karen is dating Jack, who is also dating Sue.

The Globe dignifies this particular form of self-seeking with some nice words:

“Polyamory has a decidedly feminist, free-spirited flavor, and these are real relationships with the full array of benefits and complexities — plus a few more — as the members of Poly Boston’s hypercommunicative, often erudite, and well-entwined community will explain”

Oh, and they have a work ethic — it is hard work maintaining two or more relationships, they say.

Keep reading.

This puff piece promoting a non-judgemental approach to polyamory finally mentions children in the last 3 paragraphs.  Ah, yes, the kids will be fine. Except they’ll be upset when their parents’ partners leave.  They look just like mundane blended families, (who have lots of problems we aren’t going to mention in our puff piece.)  Excuse me while I barf.

Poly Boston members Alan and Michelle Wexelblat of Burlington take turns attending the cafe gatherings. As the parents of two boys, 6 and 9, the poly couple find that the get-togethers — though child-friendly — conflict with homework and dinnertime. Read more…

Here is a puff piece in the Boston Globe on the next phase of the Sexual Revolution: Polyamory, meaning “many loves.”  Just another day in the deconstruction of marriage and family. Marriage is whatever we say it is.  Kids will be fine, as long as we are all grown up mature people and don’t get all excited or jealous or anything.

responsible non-monogamy or polyamory, and the nontraditional practice is creeping out of the closet, making gay marriage feel somewhat last decade here in Massachusetts. What literally translates to “loving many,” polyamory (or poly, for short), a term coined around 1990, refers to consensual, romantic love with more than one person. Framing it in broad terms, Sekora, one of the three founders and acting administrator of the 500-person-strong group Poly Boston, says: “There’s monogamy where two people are exclusive. There’s cheating in which people are lying about being exclusive. And poly is everything else.”… Read more…