Poly Ideology

From what I've been able to gather, most people who identify as polyamorous – that's including yours truly – subscribe to the following set of beliefs:

* ethical non-monogamy is possible

* ethical people are honest people
* everyone has an equal right to engage in multiple simultaneous sexual relationships, regardless of sex or sexual orientation

*there's plenty of love to go around

My mother holds that my “lifestyle” is both immoral and unethical. (Some other heavyweight words she's used to describe my situation: toxic and addiction. But we'll get to that later.) In her mind, the fact that I'm honest about what I'm doing does not address the underlying wrongness of it. According to her, abstinence and monogamy are the only ethical options, and she claims that “99.5 percent of the population agrees” with her.

I can't verify the accuracy of her statistic, but I'm sure she's right that the U.S. mainstream would side with her. So we'll let her argue her point for a moment.

Mom: “If you commit murder, you aren't going to make it okay by being honest about it. If you rob someone, it doesn't matter if you warn them you're going to do it beforehand. What you're doing is wrong, and telling the truth doesn't make it more moral.”

Me: “Wait a sec. If you take fifty bucks from someone without asking, it's called theft. If you ask the person beforehand, 'Hey, do you mind if I take this fifty bucks?' and the answer is, 'No problem, go ahead,' that's okay, right?”

Mom: “Adultery is a sin. Period. No matter whether you have permission from your spouse or not.”

When it comes to people like my mother, people who believe that God is the ultimate go-to whenever a moral question arises, there's nothing I or any other polyamorous person can say that will change their minds.

Nevertheless, I'd like to submit that there are some strange contradictions in the religious position. First of all, there is that embarrassing stuff in the Bible about concubines and multiple wives. If it was okay then, but not now, what's the reason for the change? Is it possible that different eras and different cultures have different criteria for determining which behaviors are moral?

In our culture, men and women supposedly have the same basic rights. Is anyone really going to say that it's okay for men to have multiple sexual partners, provided that some religious leader performs the requisite official ceremonies before they engage in any shenanigans, but that women must be monogamous? [Yes, there are religious fundamentalists who argue precisely that – they're called polygamists. More on the difference between polyamory and polygamy later.]

Secondly, I've never understood why people who violate their own moral code are so often forgiven for what's shrugged off as a lapse in judgment, as human weakness, whereas people who take pains to adhere to a moral code that differs from that of the mainstream are so often condemned as being scary, sick and wrong. Oh, okay, fine, on some level, I do get it.

After all, most of us feel some sympathy for the criminal who can say, “Yes, I realize that what I did was bad, but I lost control of myself in the heat of the moment!” This attitude makes sense when the crime we're talking about is something like murder: we're understandably creeped out by murderers who are capable of dispassionately evaluating how best to execute their evil deed before they kill their unsuspecting victim. But bias toward human stupidity makes a lot less sense when the “crime” we're talking about involves engaging in sex with someone to whom one is not legally married. Surely it's better to think through the possible consequences of one's actions before engaging in sexual activities? Surprise – the probable answer to that question, at least in the Mormon community in which I grew up, is a resounding No.

To illustrate: the average Mormon is pretty indulgent when a hapless teenager finds herself knocked up: “Oh, the poor girl got carried away in the heat of the moment, and now she's having to pay the consequences!” In contrast, the girl who actually thinks through her decision beforehand, taking care to procure some reliable form of birth control before engaging in sex, is liable to get excommunicated. Apparently, it's completely unacceptable to commit a premeditated crime of passion. I know, because I was once the eighteen-year-old Mormon girl who visited Planned Parenthood. The only reason I didn't get excommunicated is because I kept my mouth (mostly) shut, and because I stopped going to church before my behavior became too obviously outrageous.

The long and short of it is this: as long as I remain unrepentant and unapologetic, I'm going to get nowhere whenever I try to explain myself to people who are convinced that adultery is a sin, no matter the circumstances. In fact, the more trouble I take to come up with well-reasoned arguments in support of my own moral code, the more vehemently they'll reject whatever I might have to say.

“What? She's committing adultery IN COLD BLOOD?!? Stone her!”