"Local Flavours of Open" series: Portland, Oregon

"Local Flavours of Open" series: Portland, Oregon

MultipleMatch.com

Louisa Leontiades (Louloria) in Sweden has been publishing a steady stream of high-quality articles about ethical non-monogamy at her online magazineMultipleMatch.com (logo above). Many are also syndicated on her blogsite at The Huffington Post.

She recently started a new series, Local Flavours of Open, "which explores how polyamory is practiced in and influenced by different cultures across the world. If you would like to contribute your local flavour, get in touch!"

One of the first is about Portland, Oregon:

What Does Non-Traditional Relationship Utopia Look Like?

By sexualityreclaimed

What if you could be openly welcomed with both your lovers at the local chemist… what if coming out as trans, queer or poly was simply one of many choices during adolescence… what if going to a dungeon to play kinky games on a Saturday night was as accepted as going out for a curry… What would the world look like?

Welcome to Poly-Mecca, Portland Oregon

Powell’s is Portland’s claim to bookstore fame. And it was there that I bought the book which was to change my life. It was – predictably – Sex at Dawn. Because although my partner and I met in Berkeley, California, which seems to outsiders to be a liberal, bohemian heaven, we didn’t open our relationship until we had moved to Portland for graduate school. Portland is my idea of Poly-Mecca. A city with the social capital to support my wildest explorations and adventures.

Oregon boasts laws that protect some sexual expression as freedom of speech; thus, walking around naked is legal. Even if most don’t… most of the time ;-) ....

Poly in Putin's Russia

Poly in Putin's Russia

I've done hardly any reporting lately on poly in foreign-language media. Google News Alerts hasn't been serving me poliamoria, polyamor, polyamour, polyamorie, полиамория, polyamourøse, polyamorösa, פוליאמוריה, wielomiłość, ljubavništvo, etc., and I know lots of material has slipped by. 

From Russia, correspondent Anton now writes (somewhat edited):

Hi, Alan!

Five years ago, you posted about polyamory recognition in Russian media. In these years since, there have been many articles on Russian news sites and even in printed media, but they can be divided into these sorts:

* Positive translations of English articles (rare).

* Negative translations of English articles; with a preface about "Western debauchery", prefixing all words like "family" with "so called", and so on.

* Compilations without knowing the topic, with great errors (for example, in one article I've read that poly people don't tolerate homosexuality), hatred, and contempt.

But today I accidentally found an article in mainstream web media, not a translation and well written with understanding of the subject and with sympathy: Семьи на троих / Family of Three. It was posted a year ago, but after 5 years of silence that doesn't seem like a big gap.

The Google translation isn't perfect but seems understandable.

Excerpts:

Family of three

...Poliamoriya, in a broad sense, is a system of ethical views on love admitting the possibility of multiple love relationships with several people (or between several people) at the same time, with the consent of all parties to those relationships. [Compared to] polygamy in the traditional sense, modern polyamorous families differ in the equality of all participants, with relationship based not on tradition but on an agreement reached together.

...Polyamorous relationship can take many forms — some are a couple with other people, [in which] the couple remains primary. It can also happen that three or more people form a quite equal relationship.

Of course, a polyamorous relationship is not easy to build and maintain....

...I talked with two polyamorous families who have been living together. They shared with me their life stories and their understanding of family, love and loyalty.

Anna and Andrew are enrolled in graduate school; in addition Andrew has worked as a teacher in high school. Kate works as an editor, and Anya, who answered my questions, said of himself: "I'm such a house-husband, moonlighting doing freelance translations, but not regularly." All three of them are about 25....

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Sociologists Bashkirov and colleagues asked 2,000 Russians about their attitudes toward family formation. It was found that more than 30% of young people aged 25 to 35 considered marriage to be a social atavism. Following Europeans and our fellow Americans, they are starting to take advantage of new forms of the family. Marriage without children, seasonal marriage, polygamy and polyandry, serial polygamy — that's just a partial classification of the modern types of relationships between a man and a woman....

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...Victor is a middle manager in a real-estate office and a part-time one-man band. Olga is the lead lawyer of a construction company, and Alexander aka Jerry is a freelancer. All three are about 40, and they have two children.

"...Olga and I met five years ago on the Internet, in a historical-game forum.... the third time we got together we decided to go with friends on a tour of the castles of Belarus. And here we go. And somehow it came that were in the same bed.... Then, to this celebration of life joined Victor — it's just for all the participants seemed quite natural to meet together."

"Olga's mother and sister are aware of our relationships, but they pretend that they do not care....

"...That's the strange thing — we have encountered no [official] difficulties. When the prosecutor was needed for temporary registration in St. Petersburg, we went to the passport office and filled out an application, without question — who, what, and why. Child registered at the place of residence of the father. With this reference to him without question straightened health insurance, with which we go to the district hospital, and put on a waiting list in kindergarten.... 'My house is my fortress' and all that. We were quite comfortable ... but let's say we would not mind to register a triple marriage."...

Here's the whole (long) original article (13 August 2012).

Anton continues:

Some words about general picture of nonmonogamy in Russia: There is clericalization here [the Russian Orthodox Church collaborates with the authoritarian Putin government and vice versa –Ed.], but we exist and have some websites (http://www.mirdalubov.com/ for example), communities in social networks, and at least one offline meeting group — on http://vk.com/freelove_spb they write that there are up to 80 people at meetings.

With best regards and great thanks for your polyinthemedia work.

More signs of gay poly acceptance

More signs of gay poly acceptance

Whatever the gay community at large may think about being seen publicly supporting poly relationships, the American gay writers and leaders who've spoken up seem generally supportive. For instance, this columnist is appearing in gay newspapers this week:

Monogamous: To Be or Not to Be?

Rev. Irene Monroe

By Rev. Irene Monroe

The one thing you don’t expect to see in any of the Bible Belt states (where most have amended their constitutions to define marriage between one man and one woman) is an organization promoting polyamory. 

Last month at Atlanta’s Pride Parade the group “Atlanta Polyamory Inc.” did just that — and in the wide open light of day....

...To be non-monogamous in this culture carries pejorative and judgmental connotations for both heterosexuals and LGBTQs. It assumes sexual promiscuity, a sex and love addiction as well as the inability to achieve emotional and sexual intimacy. But it also ignores the reality that some people really are polyamorous, and their ability to love more than one person at a time is not about a lust-fest for them.

Contrary to popular belief, sociologist Elisabeth Sheff forthcoming book “The Polyamorists Next Door” reveals that polyamory is a “legitimate relationship style that can be tremendously rewarding for adults and provide excellent nurturing for children.”

...While sexual jealousy and possessiveness would appear unavoidable in polyamorous relationship, there is also data revealing how having open relationships keeps these couples intact, and the love very much alive.

The practice of polyamory was once thought to be an absurd issue to explore as a relationship choice. But today’s it’s not. More and more organizations like “Atlanta Polyamory Inc.” are popping up across the country. Their members are coming out of the closet. Perhaps this will be the new civil rights battle before us.....

The Rev. Irene Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist who appears in SDGLN, The Huffington Post and other media. She was chosen in October 2009 by MSNBC as one of "10 black women you should know." Monroe has been profiled in O, The Oprah Magazine and in the Gay Pride episode of “In the Life" TV.... Visit her websitehere.

You can read the whole article in San Diego's Gay & Lesbian News (Nov. 7, 2013), Boston's Bay Windows (Nov. 6), The Bilerico Project (Nov. 8),HuffPost's Gay Voices (Nov. 11), and probably elsewhere.

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While we're at it, here's yet another friendly profile of a gay triad by a GLBT writer, this time on HuffPost Gay Voices: Will Polygamy Have Its Day in the Sun? (July 23, 2013). A bunch more in the genre are among these (including this post; scroll down).

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Exceptions to this trend of gay poly acceptance gained some attention in Australia, where the climate seems more hostile to LGBT issues generally than in much of the US. Following a nasty engineered panic by a Murdoch newspaper that a poly marriage bill had been brought in the Australian Senate to follow behind the gay-marriage bill under consideration (the story was made up; no such bill had been brought), a gay pro-monogamy group started up. This followed the public kerfuffle over whether the Sydney poly community's float would be allowed in the main part of the gay Mardi Gras parade, following the "Polyglamorous" float's dramatic presence in 2011. (For Mardi Gras 2014, Syd Poly has plans for a "Love Nest" float with a birdy theme.)