Polyfolks face down the authoritarian threat. Legal advice available. Christians on our side. And more.

Do not obey in advance. Do not self-censor to please the censors. Do not display fear; fear is contagious, but courage is contagious too. Speak and act, in your personal and professional life, as you would in a free and open society. Stay calm, and do not do the tyrant's work for him. If something happens, be the first in the room to speak. If someone else speaks first, be the first to back them up.  

Those are among the 20 lessons, drawn from life under the authoritarian regimes of the 20th century, that Timothy Snyder lays out in his little best-seller On Tyranny. These lessons also show how authoritarian regimes were successfully overturned. 

Among the people heeding such advice, apparently, are those at the National Public Radio affiliate KBIA at the University of Missouri. It has a program called Alphabet Soup, which "shares LGBTQ+ Missourians’ stories through portraiture and personal narratives." It just put up Lydia Bennett: in polyamory, 'Each of these different relationships kind of fall into a different niche.' (Jan. 17).

This while the new administration is loudly threatening to abolish National Public Radio and to silence universities.

Lydia Bennett is a poly queer resident physician working in emergency medicine.

Lydia Bennett, right, sits with their nesting partner, Rynn Bennett, and their dog
Nimbus at their home in Columbia [MO].  (Bailey Stover / KBIA)

By Bailey Stover

...We met in a dining hall. It was a pretty standard story. We were functionally monogamous for a very long time.

But from the very start, I was always discussing what I could see a relationship being in the future and the things about non-monogamy that I didn't even have terms for yet at the time.

And so, that's been able to grow and take off and become so many different relationships over time, as we both grew into different types of people.

...My other main relationship right now is Anna, who's my girlfriend of about one year now, and we met through the dating apps – because that's the easiest way to meet anyone these days.

But it took off better than either of us probably expected. We've got a lot of chemistry. We really like hanging out and spending time together.

And we both work in the medical field, so sometimes we talk about, you know, the same thing that normal couples talk about, like TV shows and movies, and other times we're talking about psychological research, and, you know, how personality disorders affect people's interactions with each other and relationships with each other and, and what can be done to kind of help them through that.

And so, it's just kind of very different relationship for my primary one because they are a musician, so they don't understand quite as much of the science though they still are happy to listen to me when I talk about work.

I do have another partner who's kind of – or they're a platonic partner, Alexis, and we also met through the apps.

...So, each of these different relationships kind of fall into a different niche in my life and help hit another requirement or something else that kind of fulfills my life.

Included is a link to the audio (4 minutes). 

● Another example of gentle, public bravery in these times: Alex Alberto, the nonbinary author of Entwined: Essays on Polyamory and Creating Home, continues the intimate public explication of their life with Do I Still Call You My Metamour? (The Queer Love Project, Dec. 22).

It's about their metamour Aly when they were becoming something more.

Alex Alberto and book

 

...Alone in my bed, at six in the morning, I feel a familiar intrusive thought emerging, but this time I don’t push it away. I roll on my side and hug one of my pillows, closing my eyes again. I have to admit to myself that my feelings for you have been evolving, and what I thought was purely platonic love may be morphing into desire for a more physical love. I think about our coffee shop outing from yesterday, in the village nearby, and how nice it would have been to hold your hand when we walked to the counter, past the mismatched tables and antique coffee pots, and ordered your vanilla oat latte and my decaf Americano. And after you gave the wired barista your rainbow mug that I gifted you, I could have pulled you toward me and raised my chin slightly to kiss your lips, and maybe your fingers could have brushed the shaved hair above my neck.

I flip on my back and pull the wolf quilt to my chin. I press the side button on my phone: It’s now past seven. I don’t want to be attracted to you. I've been preaching that metamour relationships are the best thing in polyamory. I've been telling people that not all polyamorists end up dating each other. But here I am, longing for a girlfriend and missing sex with women. And I know you miss queer sex, too. Are we living a romantic comedy cliché, when two close friends take the whole movie to realize they have been looking for each other? Our relationship has evolved into something so difficult to grasp, describe, understand. 

 ------------

You enter my bedroom at three in the morning, your hair in a messy ponytail, your eyes half closed. Canned laughs and comedic voices play on my phone at low volume.

“Don is snoring so loudly,” you say grumpily, sliding under the covers.

I pause the sitcom and put the phone on my nightstand between the white noise machine and my bottle of sleeping pills.

You press your back against me. I fold my left arm under my pillow, and my right arm pulls you in tightly. You drift to sleep in less than a minute. We breathe in unison; your back and my chest expand and press into each other at regular intervals. My left arm is falling asleep, my cheek is itchy, but I stay put. I usually never fall asleep without a show, but I do this time.

------------

Nik Shuliahin 💛💙 on Unsplash

Your legs are crossed under your classical guitar, and your russet boot moves slowly in the air to the rhythm of your melodic finger-picking. It’s an old song of yours, but you chose it for me, for my 31st birthday. A wistful and haunting arpeggio draws everyone in, closer to the warmth of the campfire. Everyone is completely still on their log.

And when the storm rolls through

I wanna take care of you

Shelter you

I no longer hear the fire crackling or the crickets chirp. Your voice is soulful, your gravelly lows are rich, alluring. You pluck your strings and gently rock back and forth. I notice a slight ache in my cheeks; I’ve been smiling at you during the whole song.

Won’t you come inside

Rest your head here

Lay on by the fire

Cause you could come inside

There's nothing to fear,

Just lay on by

Lay on by the fire 

We’ve got nothing to fear love . . .

Read the whole thing.

Alberto continues to fundraise to complete their professionally acted short film Coming Out Polyamorous for Thanksgiving. It's a heartful drama based on a true story from the book, as I told here. Their plan is to make a splash with it next Thanksgiving. The fundraiser needs help. 

 ● Surviving Fascism as a Polycule: A Practical Guide (Decolonizing Love, Jan. 21). These are early days; we actually don't know what'll happen or what opportunities might pop up. Some of you may benefit from this Instagram slide deck right now. In any case, read it as an attitude adjuster to get yourself onto a better track.

From the introductory screen:

The authors, Millie and Nick
(Michael Chambers photo)

We are living in a time of global political instability, economic decline, rising inflation, and extreme weather. Historically, during times of crisis, people turn to authoritarian figures for order....

...Fascism and patriarchy go hand in hand... this makes polyamory inherently disruptive to a fascist agenda. If you are both polyamorous and part of another marginalized group, the risks compound. Members of your polycule may need to relocate, take additional precautions, or go stealth, which affects the entire network of relationships.

Having grown up under a Kenyan dictatorship and lived in war zones, I can tell you that the worst part isn’t just losing rights—it’s the paralyzing fear that lingers long after oppression ends. The key to survival is learning to live freely within it, refusing to let external forces dictate who you are. Be polyamorous. Resist. Let no one take that from you.

And remember—you are the descendant of ancestors who survived countless horrors. You have resilience in your blood. You’ve got this.

The deck titles are

Understanding the unique challenges

Prioritize your emotional and mental well-being

Strengthen security and privacy

Resist isolation; organize now

Plan for evacuations

Plan for long-distance relationship

Resist compulsory monogamy

Envision a future beyond fascism

● Don't be too quick to assume that people are against you! For instance, Yes, It’s Possible to Be a Polyamorous Christian. It's by the very outspoken Jennifer Martin writing for the ENM Living site (Dec. 14)

Jennifer Martin with partners and their kids

Polyamorous people tend to be stereotyped as irreligious or pagan, but there actually is a community of people who are Christian but are non-monogamous. 

LGBTQ+ Christian organizations have been around for decades, and many prominent Christian denominations are affirming of LGBTQ+ people....

Polyamory has become the next frontier, and many of those same congregations now welcome non-monogamous families into their folds as well.

...And yes, being polyamorous or exploring non-monogamy without giving up your faith is still possible. 

Progressive or liberal Christianity is the best path forward for any polyamorous Christians.

Healing from Purity Culture

If you dive into non-monogamy before dealing with the trauma from sex-negative messaging, you may retraumatize yourself. ...

Above all: remember that the rules around sex in the Bible came from a time in which birth control did not exist and women and children were considered property. We no longer live in that world. In the same way that the Bible doesn’t have any context about computers, cars, or medication, yet the majority of us still use them – and the same way that today’s Christians eat pork and shellfish – things do and should change.

Polygamy was in the Bible, yes, but we wouldn’t want to return to the Biblical type of polygamy either, as it’s misogynistic, traumatizing, and harmful.

...The first cornerstone of developing a strong ethic about sex as a non-monogamous Christian is consent.

...If you’re in a monogamous relationship but you want to explore polyamory, you need to be honest with yourself and your partner, because it’s a serious step, and not all monogamous relationships can seamlessly move into non-monogamous ones. Honesty – to your partner and to yourself – is just as important as consent. Learn about what “affirmative consent” means and how best to implement that into your sex life.

As a Christian, it’s also important that we be Christ-like: meaning, that we put others’ needs above our own. I consider not only my wants, desires, and well-being, but also the well-being, wants, and desires of the other person. They’re a child of God, and I want to treat them like that.

Most importantly, treat all your partners with utmost respect and honesty, from the most casual one-time hook-up to your lifelong partners. You don’t have to be religious to do that.

----------------------------

...Many polyamorous Christians don’t attend church, and instead, they practice their faith in individual ways at home.

My two partners, two children, and I attend a church from the United Church of Christ [UCC], one of the most progressive Christian denominations in the United States. 

...While denominations that are affirming of LGBTQ+ people are far more likely to have individual acceptance of non-monogamous people, couples, and families, there’s no guarantee.

...The Unitarian[-Universalist] church isn’t explicitly Christian, but they are one of the only large religious organizations overall that does have an affirmative statement regarding non-monogamy and varieties of relationship structures. However, I prefer a more Christ-centric religious practice, and so the UCC was the right home for me.

The best thing about UCC churches is that they’re congregational, which means that each church makes its own decisions and has a unique vibe.

Within the UCC, there’s a special designation for churches that are actively committed to open-mindedness for all genders, sexualities, and relationships: ONA, which stands for open and affirming.

They’re educated on non-monogamy – I even know many polyamorous Christian pastors at UCC churches.

At my church we are completely welcome, and open, and nobody gives us a second glance. My legal spouse was even on the church council here and currently runs tech for our congregation each Sunday.

...If you live in a rural area or can’t find a progressive church that feels welcoming of polyamory, no worries. One of my favorite progressive pastors, Dr. Jackie Lewis, runs Middle Church in New York City and has an extensive online worship service that anyone from all over the world can attend. ...

●  How Texas Family Law Treats Polyamorous and Non-Traditional Relationships (Texas Family Law Insights on Medium, Jan. 18). Short answer: Not well.

This piece is another example of mainstream legal professionals commenting on the widening gaps in family law, as nontraditional chosen families (of which polyfamilies are just a part) spread in response to growing societal needs and financial pressures.

...Conclusion:

Polyamorous and non-traditional relationships challenge the conventional boundaries of Texas family law, revealing gaps in protections and recognition. While the current legal framework favors traditional arrangements, individuals in these relationships can take steps to secure their rights through legal agreements, estate planning, and advocacy.

As society continues to embrace diverse family structures, it is imperative for lawmakers and courts to adapt. Recognizing the legitimacy of non-traditional relationships is not only a matter of fairness but also a reflection of the changing values and realities of modern families. By staying informed and proactive, individuals in polyamorous and non-traditional relationships can navigate the complexities of Texas family law with greater confidence and security.

●  And talk about support for the community! Visit the Chosen Family Law Center, headed by Diana Adams, for current advice and help for LGBTQ+ and poly people.  Start with their Protect Yourself, Protect Your Family information page, last updated January 24. Read it to understand the actual immediate legal concerns. 

The Chosen Family Law Center offers free legal help to people in New York State based on financial need.

●  Ending on a lighter note: Among the dating trends that a bunch of New York Times writers predict for 2025 are two that are close to my heart: 

...more exploration around nonmonogamy in married couples and definitely with singles. Even if more “traditional” married people won’t actually open things up, they’ll start talking about the possibilities around and interest in sleeping with other people, or dating outside the marriage, with less tension and angst.

That's thanks to you, dear poly educators.

And the other,

My prediction for 2025 is platonic romance!

Which becomes easier, more natural, and more common in polyamory networks. The whole article: Platonic Romances and A.I. Clones: 2025 Dating Predictions (Jan. 3).

-------------------------------------------------------

And now more people get it.

    

For almost three years I've ended these posts with, of all things, Ukraine. At first some of you didn't get it. Now that Russia's ideological allies have taken power in America and elsewhere, more do.

The postwar consensus is over. We're entering a world struggle over whether free and open societies, or oligarchical fascism, will rule the 21st century. What's happening in America is only a part of it; authoritarian rulers around the world are linking up with direct mutual support that is increasingly stated out loud.

The recent appointments and executive orders in Washington, though planned and carried out by Americans, resemble nothing so much as a decapitation strike.

I've seen too many progressive movements die out, or get wiped out, because they failed to scan the wider world accurately and understand their position in it strategically. We polyamorous people are a small, weird minority of social-rule breakers. Our freedom to choose our relationship structures, and to speak up for ourselves about the truth of ourselves, depends on a free and pluralistic society that respects people's dignity to create their own lives, to access facts, and to speak of what they know.

Such a society is possible only where people have equal agency to build their own lives, combined with legal structures that are at least supposed to guarantee the rights of all.

Innovative people, communities, and societies who create their own lives, and who insist on the democratic structures and legal rights that enable them to do so safely, infuriate and terrify the authoritarians.

Such rulers and would-be rulers seek to stamp out other people's freedom to choose their lives — by censorship, intimidation, repressive laws, inflammatory disinformation and public incitement, stacked courts and agencies, and sometimes, eventually, artillery.

For what it's worth, Polyamory in the News received more pagereads from pre-invasion Ukraine over the years (56,400) than from any other country in eastern Europe.

For those of us born since World War II, this has become the most consequential war of our lifetime. Because we have entered another time when calculating fascism, at home and abroad, is rising and sees freedom and liberalism and social tolerance as weak, degenerate, delusional — inviting easy pushovers. As Russia thought it saw in Ukraine. The whole world is watching what we will do about it.

Background: "The United States has a much higher stake in Russia's war on Ukraine than most people think."  More: "If we stop supporting Ukraine, then everything gets worse, all of a sudden, and no one will be talking about “fatigue” because we will all be talking about disaster."

The coming times may require hard things of us. We don't get to choose the time and place in history we are born into. We do get to choose how we respond to it. 

Need a little help bucking up? Play this. Another version. More? Some people on the Western world's eastern front trying to hold onto an open society. (TW: war is awful.) Maybe your own granddad did this from a trench facing Hitler's tanks — for you, and us, because a world fascist movement was successfully defeated that time, opening the way for the rest of the 20th century.

But the outcome didn't look good for a couple of years then either. Popular history remembers the 1945 victory over the Nazis and the joyous homecoming. Less remembered are the defeats and grim prospects from 1939 through early 1943.

Remember, these people say they are doing it for us too. They are correct. The global struggle between a brighter future and a fearful revival of the dark past that's shaping up, including in our own country, is still in its early stages. The outcome is again uncertain, and it will determine the 21st century and the handling of all its other problems.

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PS: Ukraine should not be idealized as the paragon of an open democratic society. For instance, ‘A Big Step Back’: In Ukraine, Concerns Mount Over Narrowing Press Freedoms. And it has quite the history of being run by corrupt oligarchs — leading to the Maidan Uprising of 2013, the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, and Zelensky's overwhelming election in 2019 as the anti-corruption candidate. So they're working on that. And they're stamping hard on the old culture of everyday, petty corruption.  More on that.  More; "Ukraine shows that real development happens when people believe they have an ownership stake in their own societies."

Wrote US war correspondent George Packer in The Atlantic early in the war, 

Here was a country with a tragic history that had at last begun to build, with great effort, a better society. What made Ukraine different from any other country I had ever seen—certainly from my own—was its spirit of constant self-improvement, which included frank self-criticism. For example, there’s no cult of Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine—a number of Ukrainians told me that he had made mistakes, that they’d vote against him after the war was won. Maxim Prykupenko, a hospital director in Lviv, called Ukraine “a free country aspiring to be better all the time.” The Russians, he added, “are destroying a beautiful country for no logical reason to do it. Maybe they are destroying us just because we have a better life.”

They have a word there, with a deep history, for the horizontal, self-organized, mutual get-it-done that grows from community social trust: hromada. We polyfolks often dream of creating something like that community spirit in miniature, in our polycules and networks. Occasionally we succeed.

It's this tough.  "You've lived your life — come to the front!"
Recruiting pamphlets for white-haired people are
displayed at kiosks in train stations.

----------------------------------

Social attitudes in Ukraine are mostly traditional, rooted in a thousand years of the Orthodox Church. But in the last generation the ideal of modern European civil society has become widely treasured. The status of women has fast advanced throughout society, especially post-invasion. More than 43,000 women volunteer in the armed forces, flooding traditionally male bastions — including as combat officers, artillery gunners, tankers, battlefield medics, snipers, and infantry. Some LGBT folx in the armed forces display symbols of LGBT pride on their uniforms, with official approval, whereas in Russia it's a prison-worthy crime for even a civilian to show a rainbow pin or "say gay." A report on Ukraine's LGBT+ and feminist acceptance revolutions. Another. Another. Another. War changes things.

Polyfolks are like one ten-thousandth of what's at stake globally. Ukraine must have our full material backing for as long as it takes them win their security, freedom, and future. Continue to speak up for it. Like, right now.

                                     

A Russian writer grieves: "My country has fallen out of time."

Women defenders on our world's eastern front

PPS:  U.S. authori-tarians, such as Sen. Ted Cruz, say that allowing women in front-line roles is a woke plot to weaken America's armed forces. Ukraine puts that shit to bed. Do you have a relative who talks like that? Send them this video link to Vidma, who commands a mortar platoon, recounting the story of one of their battles near Bakhmut. Or that other video link above.

Update Jan. 21, 2025: More than two years later Vidma is still alive, still at the front in Donetsk, and posting TikToks. Her mortar unit has graduated to howitzers. A young girl who looks high-school age showed up to join them; another vid with her. Their lives, and their promising society, depend on us. 

And maybe our own? Says Maine's independent Senator Angus King,

Whenever people write to my office [asking why we are supporting Ukraine,] I answer, 'Google Sudetenland, 1938.' We could have stopped a murderous dictator who was bent on geographic expansion…at a relatively low cost. The result of not doing so was 55 million deaths.

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