Neat!

I was going to post a link to a speech about polyamory giv­en by valerie_white at the Bed­ford Lyceum. As I was read­ing it more close­ly than I did the first time, I was sur­prised to find myself read­ing my own words!

I’d com­plete­ly for­got­ten that Valerie had asked my per­mis­sion to quote a post I’d sent to the UUPA list way back in May 2002.

I want affir­ma­tion of polyamory in the UUA. I want [my poly fam­i­ly] to be treat­ed pre­cise­ly the same as a monog­a­mous cou­ple would be in terms of how much of my rela­tion­ships can be shared with my spir­i­tu­al com­mu­ni­ty. I want to be able to stand up dur­ing Joys & Con­cerns and say “This is our lover J, who is here to vis­it us for a week. We only get to see her every cou­ple of months, so this is a very joy­ous time for us.” I want to see 4 or 5 par­ents with their infant at a child ded­i­ca­tion ser­vice. I want to see com­mit­ment cer­e­monies announced and greet­ed with the same shar­ing of joy we usu­al­ly see reserved for wed­dings. I want to have my lover be my maid of hon­or or best man at my wed­ding and not hide the rela­tion­ship. I want respon­si­ble non-monogamy includ­ed in the Our Whole Lives cur­ricu­lum and addressed just as ful­ly and affirm­ing­ly as monog­a­mous rela­tion­ships or celiba­cy. I don’t want to have any ques­tions regard­ing whether a par­tic­u­lar UUA con­gre­ga­tion is going to be ful­ly affirm­ing of GLBT OR poly peo­ple and rela­tion­ships. And I do not hon­est­ly think that’s too much to ask, even if it will take along time to get there.

I’m inor­di­nate­ly tick­led about the quote.

But—the main point here was sup­posed to be her speech. I encour­age you to read it whether you’re polyamorous or not. It’s a very good piece about polyamory and the expe­ri­ences of poly peo­ple in general.