Polyamory rights protection coming to more cities. The first one keeps drawing attention. New book. New coming-out film. And more.
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| Shea Tomac |
It's been a while; I've had a time of loss and recovery. Thank you for your love and care. You know who you are.
BTW, If there's a Unitarian-Universalist community in your area, check it out in these crazy times. Don't be isolated.
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Shifting gears to upbeat,
● Three more cities and towns should soon pass anti-discrimination rules protecting people in poly relationships and other extended or chosen families.
Below is from a January 14th letter that OPEN, the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy, sent to its members. OPEN is a key coordinator aiding these developments, alongside PLAC, the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition.
If you want to do this work in your city or town, they want to hear from you! They're all set up to help you do it. See email address at the end of this letter.
In the next 90 days alone, we expect three major wins that will double the number of people covered by non-discrimination protections for non-monogamy.
Olympia, WA is on track to pass protections in the first weeks of February. This campaign moved remarkably fast – conversations with the city council only began in October. When elected officials understand what's at stake and see the momentum building nationwide, they can move quickly!Portland, OR is poised to become the largest city yet to pass these protections, covering 650,000 residents. We've been in conversation with council members for nearly a year, and the legislation has been drafted and is expected to be filed within the next two weeks. From there, we anticipate passage by February or March, marking a huge win for the Pacific Northwest.
West Hollywood, CA passed a referral last spring, essentially instructing the city attorney to draft legislative language and bring it back to council. We've been told the item will return in February or March and should pass smoothly.
These three cities alone will protect over 750,000 people.
But the momentum doesn't stop there. Seattle is building strong support, with endorsements from both the city's Human Rights Commission and LGBTQ Commission, and ongoing conversations with the mayor and council members. In San Francisco, we've secured support from a majority of supervisors and are working to identify a lead sponsor. And we're in active discussions with organizers, elected officials, and commissioners in cities across Washington, Oregon, California, and Michigan. ..
Some of these campaigns have been in the works for over a year. Others came together in a matter of months. Each win builds credibility and momentum for the next city. Each protection passed makes it easier for the next city council to say yes. And each new campaign creates a model that organizers in other communities can follow. ...
Want to see protections in your community?We want to hear from you. Contact me [David Carlson], OPEN's Campaign Coordinator, at david@open-love.org to learn about bringing this work to your area. ...
Local coverage from Olympia, Washington: Olympia may become first WA city with protections for polyamorous families (The Olympian, Jan. 14, updated Jan. 15)
The Olympia City Council unanimously approved a referral Tuesday from council member Robert Vanderpool to draft an ordinance that would ultimately create protections for polyamorous families and other diverse family structures. ...If adopted the ordinance would add “family or relationship structure” to protected groups within city code. It states the city-specific legislative language can be drafted by the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition alongside the city’s attorney. ...
Vanderpool said during the meeting that the ordinance opens conversation for other cities, the county, the state and federal government to add similar protections for all family types. “Moreover, family and relationship structure includes, and is not limited to, single parent, multi generational, blended, chosen, non-monogamous and polyamory households, homes that have existed since the concept of homes existed,” Vanderpool said. ... He said the ordinance is for anyone who lives with anyone. He said it could be their mother-in-law, their friends or family, non-blood relatives and even a single mother or father. ...
Vanderpool said it gives folks legal protections and more civil liberties at a time when the federal government “acts as if liberties don’t matter or exist.” In an interview with The Olympian on Jan. 14, Vanderpool said the ordinance comes after several community members have reached out asking for expanded protections. He gave real-world examples of how the ordinance could play out in the city. ...
Vanderpool said folks with the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy (OPEN), which is headquartered in California, helped draft ordinance language for Olympia based on state code and other ordinances passed in California cities such as Berkeley and Oakland. OPEN founder Brett Chamberlin told The Olympian on Jan. 14 that Olympia will become the fifth city nationwide and the first in Washington to put these protections in place. He said the cities of Somerville and Cambridge, Massachusetts, adopted nondiscrimination protections around “family and relationship structure” in 2023. The following year, the cities of Berkeley and Oakland, California, followed suit. Chamberlain said all the bills are based, to varying degrees, on model legislation developed by the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition. ...
...According to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data, familial status discrimination accounted for 8.5% of all housing discrimination complaints under the Fair Housing Act in 2024. And a 2024 survey by the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy (OPEN) found “significant stigma and discrimination reported by adults in non-monogamous relationships across multiple life domains.”...
The Polyamory Foundation is proud to have supported the formation of both OPEN and PLAC. Your donations at work, folks!
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In other news, here are two items to keep handy for rebutting two stereotypes about us.
● Is polyamory all about white upper-class elites? Commentators left and right sometimes say so. Justin Lehmiller
reminds us that research keeps clearly finding otherwise: Who's Into Polyamory? (Psychology Today professionals' blogs, Dec. 18)
Key points:
– The stereotype of polyamorists as young, wealthy, White, and liberal isn't supported by the data.– Polyamorists come from highly diverse demographic backgrounds [race, income, education level, region, religion].– People who identify as polyamorous tend to be more non-conformist in general.
Maybe upper-class white elites are just more able and willing to go
public. Maybe the media just think they're the most camera-ready.
● And a comprehensive new meta-analysis (statistically rigorous combination of many studies) confirms that monogamists and polyfolks are equally happy (or unhappy) with their relationships: Major review challenges the “monogamy-superiority myth” (PsyPost, Jan. 5)
● And a comprehensive new meta-analysis (statistically rigorous combination of many studies) confirms that monogamists and polyfolks are equally happy (or unhappy) with their relationships: Major review challenges the “monogamy-superiority myth” (PsyPost, Jan. 5)
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● Lofty establishment media seem ever less scared to be seen
recognizing us as... well... normal. The Wall Street Journal: One Throuple Had Three Separate Design Tastes. How Did They Manage a
Renovation? (in the WSJ's "Mansion" home section, Dec. 17. Paywalled).
After buying a ‘plain vanilla’ box, a Chicago trio brought in an interior designer who blended their aesthetics and added elements like a moody den for socializing and a three-person bed.
Lucy Hewett / WSJ When corporate strategist David Gobberdiel and pharmacist Ryan Tungate started living together in Chicago in 2013, they never intended to open their relationship, let alone their home, to a third partner. But when they met consultant Michael Cowell, 35, through mutual friends in the summer of 2018, things took an unexpected turn.“We just clicked,” says Gobberdiel of the instant connection. The throuple, which is a committed romantic or sexual relationship between three people, took it slow at first. ...
.
● The New York Times just gave prestigious op-ed space to
Alison Bechdel, the legendary Dykes to Watch Out For cartoonist and popularizer of the Bechdel test, now in her graying years. She presents a sardonic update on modern life for
some of her old characters, including herself, and capitalism's ever-ready adaptations: 8 Things You Need to Start Your Own Commune (Jan. 11). That's her holding the blueprint.
● Also in the New York Times, in a year-end
summary: Quiz: Do You Speak 2025? "...words like slop, brat, brain rot, skibidi toilet, and solo
polyamory had become part of some people’s everyday life...." (Dec.
23)
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● Another look at today's poly Somerville, where the movement for polyamory-rights legislation first took hold.
Two weeks after the Times of the UK ran that big, glowing feature from across the ocean, the student-run Harvard Crimson just a few blocks from Somerville published their version: Love and the Law: A Look at Polyamorous Camberville (Oct. 18.) "Camberville" is localspeak for Cambridge and Somerville; they're socially similar and share a long border.
Victoria Chen
By Rose C. Giroux and Claire Jiang
Five years ago, longtime Somerville resident Suzanne was writing more thank you letters than usual, and to a surprising recipient: the City Council. ... The Somerville government had just passed an ordinance that made national headlines: this was the first time that any U.S. city had redefined the bounds of a domestic partnership — a legal arrangement that allows partners to formalize their relationship – to “entity formed by people.”
“It just makes it feel like it’s a community that sees and supports who I am,” Suzanne said.
...Others expressed personal pride that their city was the first place in the U.S. to protect polyamorous practice. Still others characterized the legislation as “mostly placating” or “mostly symbolic.”
These ordinances also resulted in an onslaught of media coverage — much of which focused on the sexual logistics of large polycules — that promoted a sensationalized view of Somerville’s polyamory community.
...Our conversations with 10 polyamorous residents in Cambridge and Somerville revealed a more nuanced picture. ...
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[Anthony C.] Byrne had just broken up with a long-term partner, and [Haley J.] Slavick was preparing to get married to her long-term girlfriend.Because Bryne was still fairly new to this form of relationship, he had researched extensively to understand the intricacies of polyamory. “Anthony’s probably read more books about polyamory than I have. He had all of the terms. He seemed really well-versed,” [Haley] recalls.For Slavick, one of the tricky parts of polyamory — especially with marriage involved — is navigating its legal and social implications. Unlike her budding romantic relationship with Bryne, Slavick’s marriage meant that her partnership would be legally recognized by the government. ...----------------------... [Sam] Jones grew up in Melrose, often escaping to Cambridge and Somerville on the Red Line. ... Jones was already seeing polyamory in action. Dinners at his childhood best friend’s home were crowded — his friend’s parents hosted their partners for meals each night. “It became very normalized for me,” he says.
“There were a bunch of adults around who knew my friend and cared about him and his siblings,” Jones says.
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...“Everyone on the City Council knows someone who is polyamorous. This is Somerville,” J.T. Scott, a Somerville city councilor, says.
...[In 2020] the 11 city councilors drafted an ordinance for domestic partnerships, previously nonexistent in the municipal code. As they were finalizing the legislation that would define domestic partnerships between two people, Scott asked a modest but far-reaching question: why only two?
This question led the city council to expand the definition of domestic partnership to “between people” rather than “between two people.” The one-word deletion and intentionally vague language allowed the ordinance to cover a number of communities without specifying terms like “polyamory” or “consensual nonmonogamy.”
...Since 2020, there have been 487 domestic partnerships in Somerville, 22 of which are multi-member.
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Three years after the 2020 ordinance, the city council passed another series of bills defining “family or relationship structure” as a protected class, akin to race, gender, or sexual orientation. The ordinances also extended specific anti-discrimination protections in police interactions, employment, and housing.
These additions, [councillor Willie] Burnley says, have legal implications beyond polyamorous unions. They also apply to families that look different than the nuclear family of two parents and two children — intergenerational families, adults taking care of an elderly parent, and more.
“The point was that the government should not be discriminating against people based on the shape and contours of their family,” Burnley adds.
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Chelsea R. Martinez, who recently moved to the area, says that focusing on polyamory and the Somerville ordinances detracts from other, more pressing issues. “If one thing is clear, it’s that existing rights are not being protected,” she says. To her, there are currently bigger issues at stake: ICE camp-outs in Camberville, infringements on academic freedom, and housing affordability.
“Arguing for rights for a very small and relatively privileged group of people who already have more rights than most people — I just don’t think that’s interesting,” she adds.
...When we ask Scott to explain the relationship between legislation, identity, and labeling — trying to solidify connections between layers of analysis — he stops us in our tracks. To him, this story is simple: “This costs communities nothing. To recognize the dignity and existence of our neighbors costs us nothing.”
-------------------------While Suzanne and their first polyamorous partner separated romantically over time, they still live near each other. “Having room for that type of shift, and still being able to be important people in each other’s lives has been really lovely,” they say.It’s a common theme for Suzanne, who prioritizes building a strong network around themselves. “I like to create a web around me to support me, whether that’s romantic or platonic or family,” they say. “I just need support. Not even emotional support, just people-in-my-life support.”-------------------------In the rather noisy warmth of The Burren — [a bar that's] the unofficial heart of Somerville’s social life — [Sarah K.] Biddle and their partner Routt have managed to stake out a spot for themselves near the stage. The banjos are loud, and the sound of fiddles weave in and out the conversation....Biddle and Routt met through a Boston Queer Poly Women’s group meet-up, where they discovered their shared love for lists. Two months into dating, they were already ¾ finished with an exhaustive “Relationship Checklist.”....Together, Biddle and Routt explain [the] labels, using escalators, gardens, and kitchen tables to build their world. The “home” of polyamorous vocabulary helps with understanding occasionally complicated dynamics — words are the wooden framing that gives polyamory shape.--------------------------...There are stumbles and mishaps....When Martinez went on her first date in Boston, she quickly realized that the person sitting across from her did not want to be there. “It was very clear that they had really been pushed to go date so that it would make the other person’s dating okay,” she says.Others, like “Polysecure” author Jessica Fern, note how polyamory has been over-sexualized by major news outlets in recent years. According to Fern, a recent article “distorted much of what I shared, over-sexualizing and sensationalizing me as a polyamorous woman, while overlooking the real depth of my poly family’s day-to-day life.”To the locals in Camberville like Slavick, polyamory is also not so sex-motivated or “sexually deviant.” ... “Realistically, most poly people are just normal people that have more than one partner.” ...-------------------------
Suzanne wrote thank-you letters to the Somerville
City Council after the passage of the ordinance
on domestic partnerships. (Mae T. Weir)While Suzanne and their first polyamorous partner separated romantically over time, they still live near each other. “Having room for that type of shift, and still being able to be important people in each other’s lives has been really lovely,” they say.It’s a common theme for Suzanne, who prioritizes building a strong network around themselves. “I like to create a web around me to support me, whether that’s romantic or platonic or family,” they say. “I just need support. Not even emotional support, just people-in-my-life support.”-------------------------In the rather noisy warmth of The Burren — [a bar that's] the unofficial heart of Somerville’s social life — [Sarah K.] Biddle and their partner Routt have managed to stake out a spot for themselves near the stage. The banjos are loud, and the sound of fiddles weave in and out the conversation....Biddle and Routt met through a Boston Queer Poly Women’s group meet-up, where they discovered their shared love for lists. Two months into dating, they were already ¾ finished with an exhaustive “Relationship Checklist.”....Together, Biddle and Routt explain [the] labels, using escalators, gardens, and kitchen tables to build their world. The “home” of polyamorous vocabulary helps with understanding occasionally complicated dynamics — words are the wooden framing that gives polyamory shape.--------------------------...There are stumbles and mishaps....When Martinez went on her first date in Boston, she quickly realized that the person sitting across from her did not want to be there. “It was very clear that they had really been pushed to go date so that it would make the other person’s dating okay,” she says.Others, like “Polysecure” author Jessica Fern, note how polyamory has been over-sexualized by major news outlets in recent years. According to Fern, a recent article “distorted much of what I shared, over-sexualizing and sensationalizing me as a polyamorous woman, while overlooking the real depth of my poly family’s day-to-day life.”...To the locals in Camberville like Slavick, polyamory is also not so sex-motivated or “sexually deviant.” ... “Realistically, most poly people are just normal people that have more than one partner.” ...
● And more local Somerville. Not to be outdone, the Tufts Daily at Tufts
University in Somerville itself then ran a similar feature talking to local
folx: Polyamorous citizens of Somerville prove that more really is merrier (Nov. 24)
Shea Tomac
...Four polyamorous Somerville residents spoke to the Daily and 44 additional locals shared their thoughts on polyamory in Somerville through a survey.Michael, a software engineer, has been polyamorous since 2015. ... “It’s something that feels pretty intrinsic to me, and I don't think that I’d be able to do relationships any other way,” they said. “Orientation is the wrong word, but it’s the best one I’ve got.”...Cameron, another Somerville resident, finds that perspectives around polyamory have shifted. ...“A lot of earlier poly literature from when I was first exploring [polyamory] would say people are hardwired to be polyamorous or monogamous,” he said. “Since then, the discourse has evolved into it being something that you can proactively choose as a value. … It can just be important to you not to restrict other people’s behavior. And that’s different from it being something that’s inherent to you.”--------------------------Another local, K, has always felt polyamorous, though they didn’t understand polyamory at the beginning.“...[It] was just what we did, and we were gothy, anime dweebs. … It just made sense to be a kind of counter culture.”Before they settled into a polyamorous lifestyle, K’s desire to have multiple relationships ended many of their past unions.“I [cheated] on people that I felt really bad about, but … I [couldn’t] seem to not want [it],” they said. “[If] I had the language, maybe I could have said, ‘I want to do this with somebody else, and it has nothing to do with you.’ ”--------------------------A significant amount of overlap exists between the polyamorous community and the LGBTQ+ community. Out of the 21 polyamorous survey respondents, only three do not identify as LGBTQ+....Cameron agreed . “The queer community has a lot of polyamorous people, various artistic communities, people who play [Dungeons and Dragons] and do [live action role-playing] and stuff. There’s a lot of overlap between all these groups,” he said.--------------------------...K recently welcomed a child with both of their partners and cited difficulty in including both partners on all of said child’s paperwork. K and their child’s biological parent are the default parents on all documentation, but they have to work to include the third parent in all things legal.“It’s just death by bureaucracy,” K said.They’ve been able to make it work, though, and share parenting duties between all three caregivers. And, by virtue of living in Somerville, a lot of this documentation has been made easier.In fact, K recently entered a formal domestic partnership with their child’s biological parent. Though they only intended to enter a domestic partnership with one of their partners, the form presented to them in this effort featured enough lines for multiple partners.“It was like, … ‘These below people shall enter henceforth into domestic partnership’: line, line, line, line, line,” K said. ... That’s so mind boggling. there is a room for us. We have a form, for God’s sake. It’s a form for me!”...K also added that having multiple partners has been “fantastic” in raising their child. ...--------------------------Local culture contributes a lot to the ability of polyamorous to thrive. 59.1% of (the paper's 44) survey respondents find Somerville very accepting of polyamory and non-monogamous unions and an additional 27.3% find Somerville somewhat accepting....70.4% of survey respondents find polyamory to be very or somewhat common in Somerville, and Michael and Cameron noted that it doesn’t feel like a particularly unusual identity here.“At least in my age range, [for] the people I’m around all the time, [polyamory] feels like a potential default in a way that it doesn’t in other places,” Michael said....In addition to being polyamory-friendly, many cite Somerville’s LGBTQ+-forward culture as contributing to their desire to live there. “Knowing that there is a high density of polyamorous and also a lot of LGBTQ+ people — that was attractive to me because it just felt like a place where I could be myself,” Cameron said.Polyamory is so common and interconnected in Somerville that some people joke about (or even believe in) the existence of a city-wide polycule. ...
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● The Pope says no. But why now? First a short news
summary (from Deutche Welle in Germany):
The Vatican has issued a warning about the growing acceptance of polyamory, reaffirming its teaching that marriage is a lifelong, exclusive union between a man and a woman. Its new 40-page document, "One Flesh—In Praise of Monogamy," approved by Pope Leo XIV, addresses the rise in non-monogamous relationships, including polyamory—where people engage in multiple consensual romantic relationships—and polygamy, where one man has multiple wives.The document argues that these forms of relationships stem from a misunderstanding of love and warns that they contribute to rising divorce rates and increasingly weaker relationships, which the Church views as harmful to lasting commitment. Polygamy is still widely practiced in parts of Africa, whereas polyamory is more openly practiced in Europe and other Western countries.
The Vatican's message (Una Caro, "One Flesh"), which the Pope approved, was prompted by African bishops
complaining about a local rise in traditional polygamy. To that a Vatican
council added polyamory, because we've become such a thing.
Why now? CNN's chief data analyst Harry Enten explained, in shocked tones, on Erin Burnett's Out Front show
(Nov. 26):
Building a trend line as to how many people are in a polyamorous relationship now versus 20 years ago is a little bit difficult. But we do know that the percentage who say it’s morally acceptable is up like a rocket. I mean, you compare it to 20 years ago, we were talking about just 6%. Look at it now, 21% say polygamy [sic] is morally acceptable.
That's from Gallup polling. Enten added that the younger the people
being polled, the more the support goes up. For "younger folks" he said,
the figure was "more than 30%!"
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Some points in the Vatican's declaration deserve rebuttal.
– Many studies have found that kids raised in ethical-poly households are at least as healthy, emotionally adjusted, and successful as kids raised in monogamous households of the same
socio-economic status. And for what they're worth, here are 29
recent stories from poly-household kids looking back after they grew up.
– From my years of experience in the community and following
social media, there's good reason to believe that modern, ethical polyamory saves at least as many marriages as it breaks up. And some of the failures were headed that way already; the
troubled couple tried poly as a last resort, such as after one got
caught cheating.
● Poly activist and educator Natalie Davis has her
book out: Saying Yes: My Adventures in Polyamory. She writes us, "Yesterday [Jan. 13] was the book launch. I had over
70 people at People’s Book in Takoma Park, Maryland." Her book tour continues.
An early review in the Los Angeles Times: ‘Polyamory made me feel like a teenager.’ One woman’s chaotic, sexy
journey (Jan. 13). Some bits:
By Julia M. Klein
...The book’s main thread is Davis’ journey from a conventional, mostly happy but imperfect marriage to a full-throated embrace of polyamory, a subject that’s recently earned its share of cultural buzz. This account has no great literary merit, but it’s an undeniable page-turner with utility to anyone contemplating the lifestyle....Davis, to her credit, doesn’t sugarcoat just how difficult it can be, especially for those new to its often inchoate norms. Not everyone can shed jealousy, let alone manage “compersion,” which entails rejoicing in a partner’s happiness with someone else. Another issue is just how “out” to be, at work and elsewhere, about one’s preferences; the Davises worry about how and when to break the news to their teenage son.Salient to Davis’ particular story is her lack of early romantic and sexual experience. ... “More often than I would have expected,” she writes, “polyamory made me feel like a teenager.”...Sensing that monogamy was not [her husband Eric's] jam, Davis agreed to try swinging. That meant going to sex clubs and looking online for couples who might be a fit for them both, a challenging endeavor — and just a waystation, it turned out, to something more ambitious....“My first year of polyamory was one of the worst years of my life,” Davis admits. Eric eventually moved on to other (in Davis’ view, far nicer) girlfriends, and welcomed them into their marital home, practicing “kitchen table polyamory.” In Davis’ description, he is devoid of jealousy, a generous soul always rooting on her efforts to find worthy secondary partners.Davis, in contrast, struggled. Finding lovers was not a problem. She comes across as intensely sex-positive, easily orgasmic and devoid of any trauma or shame around sex. ... But for a while, a new love — a mutual one — proves elusive. ... Felix, whom she meets on a kink site, is a sexy dominant who thrills her but keeps canceling dates. Hank, from OkCupid, describes himself as “completely bloody insane.” He nevertheless becomes both her first real boyfriend and an object of obsession. ...As Davis becomes a more experienced polyamorist, her satisfaction grows. She chooses more emotionally intelligent partners and finds more accepting metamours too. She and Eric attend gatherings — from a poly conference to a “kink camp” — in which strangers quickly become lovers and friends.Per her author bio, Davis is now a force in the poly community [true], presenting workshops on polyamory and [co-]editing an online publication called “Polyamory Today” [on Medium. It has a stable of 74 writers]. ...
She reads a bit of the book on Insta.
Watch for more projects coming from her and Eric.
● A belated, much deserved shout-out for Alex Alberto's short film Coming Out Polyamorous for Thanksgiving. This true story, adapted from a chapter of Alberto's
memoir Entwined, made its public streaming debut in time for Thanksgiving after
showing in film festivals. It's had 19,000 views so far. We at The Polyamory Foundation proudly helped fund it. This is going to be a permanent classic,
especially arould Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and
Christmas.
For the first time since coming out as polyamorous, spouses Alex and Don are hosting Don’s Southern parents for Thanksgiving in their New York City apartment. The fifth seat at the table is for Aly,Don’s partner of three years. Aly and Alex have developed a deep metamour connection, and introducing Aly to Don’s parents is an important step for integrating the lives of all three. But tensions escalate when Don’s parents struggle to understand the relationship dynamics between their son and his partners, and the polycule must weigh biological family against their chosen one.
Trailer, with many viewers' comments. Alex is played by the person in the brown
vest.
Watch the whole the whole film for free on YouTube (19 minutes). At the very end we get a glimpse of the
real-life three of them.
● And speaking of
Thanksgiving, learn from others' holiday catastrophes. Such as, Never lie to your partner about your parents being fine with poly when in fact your
parents haven't a clue what's going on.
A family's turkey-table drama blew up on Reddit and then
in People magazine, which has an online readership of tens of
millions. The young, engaged couple in this were not poly; the bride's parents were in a triad. Woman Says Thanksgiving ‘Blew Up’ After Fiancé Hid Her Parents’
Poly Relationship from His Family for Years. (People, Nov. 28)
...This year, both [sets of parents]were finally able to come together for Thanksgiving at the home she shared with her fiancé. Everything felt normal until she stepped away to check on the food, and when she returned, she sensed tension, writing that “things were noticeably awkward” and that everyone except her fiancé “looked uncomfortable.”She described the meal as painfully quiet, saying her fiancé’s parents “left for their hotel as soon as we’re done eating,” skipping dessert and offering no explanation. Confused, she later learned what had happened from her mother, who pulled her aside to talk.Her mother [who was in the throuple] told her that during a casual conversation about an upcoming trip, her fiancé’s mother asked, “Rose is going with you?” When her mother replied “of course,” the fiancé’s parents grew visibly disturbed. Her mother then clarified that they were all in a relationship, which, as the poster put it, “even further disturbed them.”She wrote that her mom was hurt because she believed her daughter had lied about the fiancé’s parents being accepting, telling her, “She was hurt I lied that his parents were okay with them.” The poster insisted she had told the truth and that her fiancé had misled both sides.She said her parents soon left, and afterward she confronted her fiancé, sparking what she described as “a huge argument.” She wrote that he admitted “he didn’t know how to tell them, so he just didn’t,” revealing that he had claimed that Rose was her “aunt” who lived with the family to save on rent. ...
...so the fiance's parents assumed the two women were
sisters and all in a sexual relationship.
People magazine got the story from an AITA that got swarmed on Reddit. Then Bored Panda picked up the story and its aftermath: “He’s Been Lying To Me For 2.5 Years”
So [the] woman asked the internet if she was wrong to blame her fiancé for making their joint Thanksgiving a “disaster” when she discovered that he never told his parents that hers were polyamorous.As it turns out, lying and then refusing to take any responsibility isn’t a good look. ...
The internet hive declared that her fiancé was a cowardly lying coward
and therefore a poor marriage prospect. The gal updated to say she had
paused their engagement.
And the two sets of parents, the couple and the throuple? Minus the kids,
they held their own "do-over dinner" and all became friends.
● Let's close with
a warm fuzzy. Reddit user u/kingtrashbird posts on r/polyamory (it has 218,000 weekly visitors),
“Great use of polyamory”
On his first date with his now-partner, my husband described himself as a “beer snob,” and apparently his date went all starry eyed as my husband explained his beer preferences in great detail. When he came home and told me this story, I laughed and told him that this is a great use of polyamory, since I hate beer, and he’d been looking for someone “to have beers with” for a while.Two years later, the three of us are in a triad, and “great use of polyamory” has stuck around. ...I want German food, and my husband isn’t into it, but my boyfriend is super excited? Great use of polyamory. ... My boyfriend needs to go glitter shopping and my husband is totally out of his depth while I peruse my personal glitter collection for ideas? Great use of polyamory.This phrase has become such a staple in our household, and it’s always a sweet moment when someone reminds you gently that they aren’t the partner you do that activity with, but that they know you have someone who will find so much joy in doing that activity with you.
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BTW, you noticed that Ukraine flag in that Alison
Bechdel strip above? Of course it was part of their
Iwo Jima. Why? Read this anew:
Now we are overtly in a world struggle: for whether free and open
societies, or brutal illiberal oligarchies, will rule the 21st
century. The outcome is unknown.
What's happening in America is only a part. Would-be authoritarian
rulers east and west are making common cause, with direct mutual support that is increasingly stated out loud. Russia's invasion of free, liberalizing Ukraine remains the
active front line so far. Ukraine’s fate in 2026 will likely set the international
order that we will live under for maybe a generation to come.
I've seen too many progressive movements die out, or get wiped out,
because they failed to scan the environment 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 freedom and
dignity to create their own lives and identities, to access facts, and to speak of what they know.
Innovative people, communities, and societies who create their
own lives, and who "choose to live within the truth" per Vaclav Havel — and who insist on the democratic
structures and rights to do so safely — infuriate and terrify
the world's authoritarians.
Such rulers seek to stamp out other people's freedom to choose
their lives — by fear and intimidation, by inflammatory
disinformation and public incitement, by subverting courts and
agencies, by erasure, by shifting wealth and power ever upward,
and eventually, sometimes, by artillery and glide bombs.
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.
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orchestra and chorus answered with the traditional Shchedryk of hope during cold and dark (later rewritten in the West to be Carol of the Bells.) Video. Play it loud. These people are in their fourth winter in the cold and dark. They don't give up. Why should you? |
For those of us born since World War II, this is the most consequential war of our lifetime. Because calculating fascism, at home and abroad, is
rising and sees freedom, liberalism, and social tolerance as weak, degenerate, delusional — inviting easy pushovers. As Russia thought it saw in
Ukraine. All sides worldwide are watching what we will do about
it.
The coming times may require hard things of us. We
don't get to choose the time and place in history we find
ourselves born into; we get to choose how we respond to
it.
Here's an easy start: Join No Kings and your local Indivisible, or at least download Indivisible's guide for good-citizen strategies and tactics. Read and follow
the personal guidelines for likving in such times learned from history, in
Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny.
Stop moping and buck up. Play this, and this, and this, by people heading into a scarier part of the fight than you
or I will face. Another: "My Son, Hold On." Sixteen thousand more of those, sorted for only that one background song
by Shadow Phoenix. (lyrics)
Some people on the Western world's eastern front trying to hold onto an open society. (TW: 2000 Meters to Andriivka documentary. War is awful.) Maybe your granddad did
this facing Hitler's advance — for you, and for 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 few 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.
Some Americans have felt called there because they were more able than
most. They will be points of light in history's darkness. By
comparison, you and I have it easy.
Remember, the Ukrainians say they are doing this for us too. They
are correct. In the global struggle between a brighter future and a fearful revival
of the dark past that's shaping up, the outcome is again uncertain. 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."
And now,
On the morning of November 28 [2025], Ukrainian law enforcement did something it had never before done in its history: It showed up at the apartment of the head of the president’s office to investigate him for graft.
Commentators around the world have noted the strain that an unfolding scandal has put on the Ukrainian presidency at a time when the United States is pressuring the country to make concessions to Russia. But just as striking is the fact that an investigation into energy-sector kickbacks at the highest levels of government and business is happening at all. This is in many ways a victory for Ukrainian democracy, and for a civil society that, since the 2014 revolution on the Maidan, has worked tirelessly to hold its government to account, even during wartime.
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.
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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. As of November 2025, 70,000 women volunteer in the armed forces, not just in support roles
and as drone pilots but 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 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 support to win its security,
freedom, and future. Speak up for it. Like, now.
A Russian writer grieves: "My country has fallen out of time."
Update October 2025: Three years later Vidma
is still alive, her mortar unit graduated to heavy artillery, and a young girl who looks high-school age showed up
to join them. 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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