{"id":68429,"date":"2013-07-07T13:35:35","date_gmt":"2013-07-07T17:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=68429"},"modified":"2013-07-07T13:35:35","modified_gmt":"2013-07-07T17:35:35","slug":"post-doma-whats-behind-the-early-attacks-on-poly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/polyamory\/post-doma-whats-behind-the-early-attacks-on-poly\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-DOMA, What\u2019s Behind the Early Attacks on Poly?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Did so much really have to happen all at once? I can hear everyone asking this question, as the Supremes did their dances, states such as Texas raced the clock, and the people of countries all over the world burst out in protests. <\/p>\n

\"Poly
Poly Paradise at Burning Man. Photo by Eric.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you\u2019ve ever popped amaranth grain — which I\u2019ve been trying to master recently — you\u2019ll recognize the dynamic. The tiny grains are even trickier than popcorn; they all start to pop at once and they go in split seconds from toasting to popping to burning. <\/p>\n

Chris has had a minor surgery and is still recovering, I\u2019ve been pushing away depression, hormonal wackitude and 51-year-old disillusionment, and Isaac, employed by a corporation executing today\u2019s corporate strategy of rapidly cutting off positions, resources and capabilities so it can be as agile, responsive and dynamic as an oyster, just plain fuqing works all the fuqing time. Then my daughter got sick (better now), and my downstairs flooded. <\/p>\n

I have been sorting through things and washing and throwing away, in between wishing I had just thrown it all away in the first place (and losing work and billable hours while dealing with it all). It\u2019s a feeling akin to drowning in debt — owing resources, but borrowing others\u2019 patience and goodwill and, most of all, time — which one can never repay. Way to go, water trine with Saturn in Scorpio!<\/p>\n

But in the back of my mind I was struggling with how to see the trouncing of the Defense of Marriage (whose?) Act and the subsequent opening of marriage equality, as well as speculation on how that might open the door to group marriage or at least decriminalization of polyamorous living arrangements. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Luckily, poly activists and educators are on the case. Eric presented the latest from some prominent leaders in the subscriber edition of Planet Waves (individual editions are often made available to people for the asking, and Planet Waves is also open to negotiating subscription terms for people in hardship, or for media, when needed — so please don\u2019t fear the paywall is a block to learning more if you\u2019re interested.) <\/p>\n

Among those tapped for comment by the mainstream media was the always sensible and courageous Anita Wagner Illig, whose quotes in U.S. News & World Report<\/a><\/em> were widely circulated.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Supreme Court could rule any day on challenges to two laws blocking legal recognition for same-sex marriages — the federal Defense of Marriage Act and California’s voter-approved Proposition 8 — but advocates for polyamorous couples say “marriage equality” for that minority group is unlikely in the immediate future.<\/p>\n

Anita Wagner Illig, a longtime polyamory community spokesperson who operates the group Practical Polyamory, is unsure of the direct impact of a ruling that would legalizes same-sex marriage nationwide.<\/p>\n

Until recently, she noted, “the polyamory community has expressed little desire for legal marriage,” but now more options seem possible in the future. “We polyamorists are grateful to our [LGBT] brothers and sisters for blazing the marriage equality trail,” Illig said.<\/p>\n

Illig believes there is indeed a “slippery slope” toward legal recognition for polygamy if the court rules in favor of nationwide same-sex marriage, an argument typically invoked by anti-gay marriage advocates. “A favorable outcome for marriage equality is a favorable outcome for multi-partner marriage, because the opposition cannot argue lack of precedent for legalizing marriage for other forms of non-traditional relationships,” she said.<\/p>\n

But Illig concedes, “there will be quite a lot of retooling of the legal system necessary to establish marriage equality for marriages of more than two people. A marriage of two people of the same sex requires a lot less in terms of adapting today’s systems, such as Social Security, for example, to accommodate it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note that she\u2019s correctly identified with polyamory and the headline refers to polyamory. References are to marriage equality and \u201cother multiperson relationships.\u201d She\u2019s quoted along with Jonathon Turley, the George Washington University lawyer and professor who has been defending the Utah family in \u201cSister Wives\u201d for years now, a group whose women chose their situation freely and which doesn\u2019t fit the profile of \u201cgroup marriage equals abuse.\u201d The Utah law involved criminalizes any kind of multiple relationship, even if you don\u2019t attempt to call it a marriage. <\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve said many times here, I don\u2019t think there\u2019s anything superior about polyamory, monogamy, or living and loving solo. But it\u2019s undeniable that cultures through the years have framed each of these states (and other ways of living, loving, and having children) to support and convenience whoever is in power and wants to stay that way. Considering this, perhaps monogamous marriage does indeed need to be defended, because it\u2019s been grievously used.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s my belief that the nuclear family as it\u2019s expressed in America currently was carefully tended and developed as a profit-producing vehicle for corporations, much like a Roundup-ready kernel of corn. Rather than evolving as a solution to human needs, it was developed as a response to a manufactured problem. Got weeds? (E.g., sexual practices counter to religious teachings, children lacking care because the king or the employer won\u2019t give adequate compensation, people losing property because of laws designed to take rights from women and people of color?) This will kill the weeds (the ones we planted). <\/p>\n

The reality is that people themselves have developed myriad ways of ensuring that children are cared for and property is maintained for the good of the tribe — more or less humane ways over the course of history — and relatively few of these have resembled the rather precious strain of American Nuclear Family. To codify and ensure the good of some of these other strains would be of great benefit to the world, to my mind; but then I am not heavily invested in the ANF Corporation, barely holding onto that one certificate required to show up and vote at shareholder meetings.<\/p>\n

Aptly named Nuclear, this family model carries within it the seeds of its own destruction, making it always simultaneously endangered and endangering. It manages to turn any discussion of itself into a discussion of how to preserve itself, for its destruction would leave the kind of fallout, we\u2019ve been taught, that is beyond our capacity to manage or absorb. <\/p>\n

These fears — from the reality-based ones about how children will fare to the delusional \u201cpeople will marry dogs\u201d slippery slope nonsense — push away the realities of divorce rates and single parenting, as well as the alternate arrangements that don\u2019t come right out and call themselves polyamory but which happen all the damned time nonetheless and it\u2019s No Big Deal. (That\u2019s a corporation I\u2019d get in on an IPO for: NBD.)<\/p>\n

So it becomes important to look carefully every time at who is defending the American Nuclear Family; who and what is behind the restrictions on abortion law in Wisconsin (at least as frightening as those passed in Texas); who and what motivates the clampdown on birth control? The fight against poly (and it is that, even if those doing so don\u2019t yet understand it as such) is just another prong, so to speak, in a desperate battle to preserve the ANF. Who cares so much about the ANF, and why is it so important for them to preserve it?<\/p>\n

One motivating factor is, I believe, the value of keeping us separated and alienated from each other. A simple and obvious manifestation is the everyone-needs-a-toaster phenomenon; nearly everyone can see that the ANF arrangement makes selling more stuff much easier. This dilutes our power and our understanding (which are perhaps one and the same) and promotes fear. <\/p>\n

Please understand that I\u2019m not against anyone\u2019s choice to live in an American Nuclear Family — I\u2019m against being steered culturally and legally into that choice solely to benefit people whose values I don\u2019t share.<\/p>\n

If poly families can live in the open and work out these problems daily and survive on one toaster for five or six people, what\u2019s to stop monogamous or single people from doing the same? That\u2019s the real slippery slope — not that same-sex marriage will lead to a human marrying a frog, but that different kinds of designs for living and loving will loosen the grip of fear and magnify our resources. <\/p>\n

The constant conflation of polyamory with polygamy, for instance, I\u2019m beginning to see as less a matter of misunderstanding by some media groups and more as a strategy, unconscious or otherwise, to fuse polyamory — which has the potential to maximize women\u2019s autonomy — with polygamy, which has been presented largely as a way to oppress women. And the women speaking up for polyamory (and most of those quoted in the recent rounds are, indeed, women) must be devalued and presented as deluded, perhaps even in thrall to some patriarchal Svengali back on the compound.<\/p>\n

So it is that in an apparent attempt to garner clicks, the Washington Times<\/em> crafted an article out of quotes from elsewhere, including Illig\u2019s quotes, and put a headline on top reading \u201cPolygamists hope Supreme Court ruling will pave way to decriminalization.\u201d <\/p>\n

To frost that cupcake, commentary section editor and former fearless leader Wesley Pruden<\/a> put in his two commemorative coins (worth slightly less than $.02, but be assured, these are an extraordinary investment opportunity but you must act now!). <\/p>\n

Dr. Deborah Taj Anapol, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist who calls herself one of the founders of the polyamory movement, which is sort of like a bowel movement without the inconvenience. A big and hearty blonde, she\u2019s an authority, or at least an advocate, for something called erotic spirituality, something else called \u201cecosex\u201d (which sounds like something both green and fun), and \u201ctantra and pelvic heart integration,\u201d which doesn\u2019t sound either very green or very much fun.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, Dr. Anapol writes in her book, Polyamory in the 21st Century<\/em>, a group marriage where everybody shares everything, from toothbrushes to wives, will be nirvana. Parking spaces will be at a premium but there will never be a shortage of sitters for the babies we can expect to be showered on the crowded hearth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He scoffs at Anapol’s assertion (backed by those who have been actually doing this for years) that a poly household can be a fine place for children, and praises dissenting Justice Scalia for remaining true to the cause, unlike his colleagues: <\/p>\n

\u201c… Justice Kennedy\u2019s remarkable descent into the dark side clears the way for many versions of what he imagines marriage can be. His nose for the law detects the hint of orange blossoms when the rest of us only smell the sewer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jesus. At least G. Gordon Liddy\u2019s old radio show used to be kind of fun to listen to. This shit is just — if I might also indulge in scatological references — strained. (Gotta like the gratuitous body-snark, too, from one who\u2019s hardly a Gov. Schwarzenegger himself.)<\/p>\n

Just the other day, a guest columnist for the newspaper called the Supreme Court \u201cthe most prominent hate group in the country\u201d and called a full-page ad on gay marriage placed by the ACLU a \u201cjihad.\u201d<\/p>\n

So who and what is behind this defense of the ANF? Who is devaluing the women spokespeople and conflating polyamory with polygamy? This instance is pretty instructive.<\/p>\n

For those who don\u2019t know, The Washington Times<\/em> was begun as an explicitly right-wing newspaper and a mouthpiece of what many call a religious cult leader; Google it and draw your conclusions. It\u2019s a day\u2019s work to explain the Unification Church\u2019s 40-odd years of funk and how it and its spinoffs and little friends here and there have made such big piles of money. The Unification Church and its spinoffs and connections have reportedly sunk more than a billion dollars in life support into The Washington Times<\/em> media outlet. <\/p>\n

The Unification Church is known publicly for its attempts to re-shape the family into something that looks a lot like the ANF. Central to its tenets is a belief in the \u201cTrue Family,\u201d that is, that if Jesus would have lived, he would have married and created a True Family. Failing that, the church\u2019s very tip-top leaders have been deemed as uniquely qualified to step in as humankind\u2019s True Parents. <\/p>\n

The public is also well aware of the church\u2019s mass \u201cwedding blessing\u201d ceremonies. These are not legal and official marriages, but consist of thousands of couples (who become legally married before or after the ceremony) dressing up in identical bride and groom costumes. The church says it does not force marriage or match up members to be married. I have heard differently. The church boasts a very low divorce rate and says its members\u2019 marriages are happy and healthy ones. I can only cite anecdotal evidence to the contrary; does getting hit on at bars by married church members who dread going home count? <\/p>\n

In the latest, The Washington Times<\/em> media group says it is going to begin a television broadcast called the One America News Network, which was supposed to launch on July 4. I could detect no signs of that having happened, and so far, the presumptive CNN competitor seems to be content to issue press releases complaining about Al-Jazeera.<\/p>\n

But \u201cchurch\u201d ownership, even of that kind, isn\u2019t inherently objectionable; freedom of the press means you\u2019re free to start a media group, and good Fourth Estate work can be done even under shady funding. What\u2019s proven a problem for The Washington Times<\/em> is the way it has sheltered old-line racism and its attendant pundits. It\u2019s a safe house for creepers — the kind who also get their heads on the teevee, so a lot of people don\u2019t realize the extent of their creepitude.<\/p>\n

Some of them and the media outlet itself have been called to task by their own kind, who say the virulent opposition to immigration, for instance, threatens the progress and continued strength of the right-wing agenda. This, and a deeper look at the culture of the media outlet, were the subject of an extensive article in the Columbia Journalism Review<\/em> this year, headlined \u201cThe Washington Times<\/em> Takes a Big Step Backwards<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

I\u2019m quoting a big chunk here because it really captures what\u2019s behind people who are right now fighting very hard to control your rights to live, love and reproduce freely or not, in Washington and in the states:<\/p>\n

… But while some conservative leaders are courting minority groups, one of the movement\u2019s ideological lodestars is taking a hard turn in the other direction. Last month, The Washington Times<\/em> tapped Wesley Pruden, its one-time editor in chief, who was pushed out amid allegations that he allowed racism to fester in the newsroom, to run its Commentary section. Pruden\u2019s return — part of a wide-ranging shakeup following the death of the Times<\/em>\u2019s founder — is a troubling sign for the opinion pages, long a key pipeline for conservative ideas and a training ground for right-of-center pundits.<\/p>\n

Under Pruden\u2019s leadership, from 1992 to 2008, the Times<\/em> became a forum for the racialist hard right, including white nationalists, neo-Confederates, and anti-immigrant scare mongers (all of which the Southern Poverty Law Center and The Nation<\/em> magazine have documented at length). <\/p>\n

Many Times<\/em> insiders fear his return will stain the paper\u2019s image, especially in the current political climate. \u201cIts a huge blow to the influence and credibility of the paper,\u201d says a senior Times<\/em> official who worked closely with Pruden during his earlier reign.<\/p>\n

According to Mark Potok of The Southern Poverty Law Center, this kind of coverage helped push fringe ideas into the mainstream. <\/p>\n

As Potok puts it, \u201cThe Washington Times<\/em> helped to legitimize a white nationalist narrative that has spread through much of the political discourse in this country.\u201d The Times<\/em>\u2019s nativist leanings also sowed anguish in the newsroom, as did Pruden\u2019s brash editing. Among other things, Pruden was infamous for rewriting stories to fit his ideological bent — a practice known as \u201cPrudenizing.\u201d (Pruden declined to be interviewed for this story.) …<\/p>\n

\u201cAlready, his influence is apparent in the paper\u2019s opinion pages. Pruden is a gifted prose stylist who is more interested in bludgeoning opponents than in reasoned debate. Under his leadership, the writing in Commentary has become snappier and more colorful, but also more strident and less thoughtful. Rather than offer a mix of perspectives, it continually hammers the same issue from similar angles …\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Full disclosure: I have to acknowledge both personal reasons and projection behind my dislike for Pruden, his history and his arguments. His \u201cPrudenizing\u201d and his editorial and managerial style made things miserable for people whom I respect and made it difficult or impossible for them to do work they were deeply invested in, work that was true to their mission as journalists. It\u2019s also well known that he insisted that a full-page each Saturday be devoted to the Civil War. Yes, you read that right — every week, a full page or more of Lost Cause revisionism. <\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t just him; he had plenty of company at the Company. Generally speaking, as at all workplaces, especially the higher-pressure kind such as media, medicine and politics, there was plenty of fuqing around going on among all kinds of people at these right-wing media outlets, so it’s amusing as well as irritating to have to listen to these types go all moral when they get out in public. <\/p>\n

The projection comes from the fact that I, too, am an aging, irrelevant flame-thrower with an unpublished novel in a drawer who suspects that she’s got a way with a phrase, a little bottle of vitriol and not much else. The not-much-else in my case is, I’d like to believe, compassion, and one of its measures is that I can look at Pruden and fully own that I feel “the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in the glass” (to quote That Big Gay Oscar Wilde, whose dust all of us writers eat eventually).<\/p>\n

You can see that the problem here goes well beyond the need to fight the Battle of Old Irrelevancy reenactment every weekend. The Pruden attack puts polyamory firmly in the list of attack issues. Let’s say a few of the motivating factors for group marriage opponents are racism, the sense that someone’s taking something from them, and frustration over the loss of power. These are the springs from which Teabaggery and, before that, the Angry White Male sentiment fed — the ones from which Pruden and fellow would-be culture-shapers have drunk. <\/p>\n

So this gives a cluster of behavior motivators to remember when you’re working for rights — not only for changes to the structure of marriage, but for abortion rights (see Texas) and even access to birth control, which is under steady attack from many different sides, and which in fact worries me more than anything else among this handful of issues.
\nAnd it reminds us that what feels like a many-headed hydra leaping out to try to cut off human rights in ways that haven’t been tried in decades — and what the right would like to believe is a vital and growing movement — is really just a few old trolls, sock-puppeting like mad. <\/p>\n

Where if you look at the other side of the argument, that poly and group marriage might be something to consider in some way, you see a refreshing variety of perspectives and opinions and voices. We can\u2019t make up our minds about any damn thing, and that\u2019s a good thing! You even get an influx of newbies that some longtime poly people are frankly finding mystifying or even appalling<\/a> in some cases. <\/p>\n

A lot of what’s coming in with newbies is the failure to respect others in a relationship as being as important as oneself, with those others disproportionately being women (for example, what longtime columnist The Polyamorous Misanthrope dubs the “One Penis Policy” imposed to limit poly relationships, one to which I obviously don\u2019t subscribe). If an effort to make group marriage possible within our culture is represented by this kind of thinking, we may share the blame if we get conflated with the gang of welfare abusers holding brides captive at the compound.<\/p>\n

Also lost to some in all the DOMA hoopla is a very scary fact of the area that is not only relevant but treacherous: the rollback of the Voting Rights Act. (I\u2019ll leave it to the astrology experts to look at how Mercury movement is intimately tied to negotiation of the mechanics of voting in the United States.) If every voter isn\u2019t vigilant about every last damned regulation coming from anywhere about the least detail of the registration and voting process, we risk having a country where most of us are disenfranchised — a far worse state than the mere social insult of being irrelevant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Maria Padhila Did so much really have to happen all at once? I can hear everyone asking this question, as the Supremes did their dances, states such as Texas raced the clock, and the people of countries all over the world burst out in protests. If you\u2019ve ever popped amaranth grain — which I\u2019ve … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[207],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68429"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}