Lavendar Lens/ Part 2

I received a comment to my original Lavender Lens post and figured I should respond to it in part 2. This is the comment I received:

"My impression is that the standard word for a three-person relationship is "triad."

I feel like the losing-ground-for-gay-marriage argument is a dangerous one. If there's a majority shift away from monogamous relationships, wouldn't that indicate a problem with prioritizing marriage, and therefore prioritizing the recognition of monogamous queer relationships over multipartner relationships? Monogamous gay politics often takes a worrying "us first" attitude towards polyamorous lifestyles, just as cis gay politics sometimes does toward trans folks.

The marriage debate in general tends to do this -- many of the rights associated with marriage are things that people in nonmonogamous relationships want and deserve, and even that single people want and deserve. People sometimes neglect the need to challenge why it makes sense to be restricting these rights to people in particular kinds of relationships in the first place, in the process of trying to expand the category of relationships to which they're restricted -- and by doing so, they can leave out not only poly people but asexuals and single people."

Here's where this gets tricky. Let me just state here that I've never been part of a polyamorous relationship, so my views are relatively young and sheltered, and I am more than willing to listen to others' views and opinions to help enlighten myself on this topic.

When discussing the multi-partner relationships I had originally assumed there is a level of fidelity involved. I thought that, though there are more than two people in the relationship, sexual interactions would be pretty limited to the people in the relationship, somewhat like a group marriage. A group marriage has no main husband or wife with whom the others interact (polygamy), but rather everyone interacts equally(polyamory). I had imagined this scenario with love and lasting affection.

That is my ideal multi-partner relationship. A group marriage situation, where everyone is equal, individual, and safe. I feel like if I were in a relationship with two or three people and those individuals were having sex outside the relationship, I wouldn't be able to handle it. I would feel "cheated on" because that person is having sex outside the relationship we have established with however many people.

Is there a level of required fidelity in these types of situations? As of right now I don't know.

This is part of the reason why I'm reluctant to get into a marriage debate here. At what point can you give everyone equal rights to marriage without spreading the umbrella so far that people can cheat the government? Marriage is to bind. Marriage is to become family. Marriage is to show that you are the most important thing in each others' lives. So while I see a group marriage situation as one that definitely qualifies for the right to bind to each other, I'm not sure how like that example most polyamorous relationships are.

To be realistic, American mainstream society is more comfortable with gay monogamous relationships than they are of polygamy or polyamory. The Mormon sects who promote polygyny (which means one husband with multiple wives) have created a bad public image of having multi-partner relationships that fall under many catagories. To gain equal rights, I feel like gay marriage has to come first. It has to be a stable stepping stone before mainstream society will even think about the possibility of legalizing group marriage.

Expect more pros and cons as I mentally think this through, day after day.

To be continued...

Activism/Compassion

I made a better activist for LGBT issues as a straight high school student than I do now as a gay, capable, intelligent adult.

I had this moment today where I realized that I had stopped caring. I had stopped caring about marriage equality and social equality and everything else. I went to the rallys, sure, but not for the right reasons. I went because I was gay, because these are my people, because I owe it to this community to be there.

When I was in high school, I never even thought about liking girls. It just didn't even register that I could. "The small valley I grew up in didn't really have any gay people, so how could I be gay?"

But even as a heterosexual teenager, I followed gay marriage every moment of every day. I organized campaigns, I got kicked out of classes for protesting, demonstrating, arguing against my Mormon teachers.

I followed it because my heart broke for every couple who loved each other and couldn't get married. My heart broke for the lesbian couples where one person had to legally adopt the child that was rightfully their own. It broke for the gay couples who weren't allowed to adopt. For the couples that were ridiculed and discriminated against. For partners who weren't allowed to stay together when the other was dying in a hospital.

My heart broke for them. And now I know for us, for me. So why is it that when I became a part of the LGBT community my heart stopped breaking? I lost all compassion. I was so caught up in the fact that there were cute girls at the rallys, and so fed up with organizations asking me for money, so fed up that we were losing in every part of the country, that I think I just shut down. I stopped thinking about it all so that I could ignore it all and not feel the disappointment and the heartbreak.

I realized today that I didn't care anymore, and that made me feel awful. I felt cold, callous, and completely detached. I don't want to be detached. I don't want to forget that this isn't just about marriage equality. That term sounds so detached from the issue it is representing. Like it's all about wanting to be married. That's scratching the surface, to say the least. It's about the struggle that LGBT couples go through every day that straight people don't. About the injustice that we receive. About all the places that won't rent to gay couples, and the adoption agencies who refuse to trust us with children.

I remembered today, why I cared. Why this was so important to me. Even though my heart is breaking all over again, I'm glad that I'm not detached and jaded anymore.