Right to ‘free love’: Activists fight for polyamory to be recognized as sexual orientation

RAEL’S COMMENT:

Yes!!! Support them and the right to live the sexual or sentimental life of your choice, with as many people as you wish, without any marriage, civilian or religious, without it being “sanctioned” or “officialised” by any authority. Freedom!

The ever-growing acronym of LGBTQI might be adding a ‘P’ if polyamorous rights activists get their way and become officially recognized as a sexual orientation.

The term, which means ‘true love’ in Latin and has been described as “consensual non-monogamy,” describes those who have more than one sexual partner, but only if all those involved are aware and supportive.

The model of nuclear relationships involving cisgender men and women having a few children and settling down for life faces competition from the emergence of other orientations into the mainstream, prompting discrimination, intimidation, and violence from those threatened by the redefinition of what’s considered to be “normal.”

The polyamory community has experienced some of that backlash and, as a result, certain activists want to receive the protections offered to their gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer counterparts.

Speaking to Vice, polyamorist Melissa Marie Legge said she always knew she was different.

“Consensual non-monogamy gives me the freedom to involve people in my life on my own terms and to negotiate relationships individually and contextually without having to follow a social script,” she said. “It’s something that I value highly and that I would say is a big part of my sexual identity overall.”

In the US, around 500,000 people are believed to be in polyamory relationships, according to Newsweek.

Across the border, the Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association, which calls for the rights of the “Poly Majority,” says the community has “custom-made” relationships.

“We believe every adult should create her own relationships,” the group says on their website. “No loving, life-enhancing possibility is out of bounds. That means women or men can have more than one partner… if everybody involved agrees it’s best for them. That’s not empty theory; we live all gender combinations.”

Many of the same religious conservatives who oppose the LGBTQI community are against poly relationships, but recognition of poly as an orientation has also faced push back from the popular sex columnist Dan Savage, who identifies as gay, when he said polyamory is “not a sexual orientation… it’s not something you are, it’s something you do.”

https://www.rt.com/viral/357799-polyamory-recognized-sexual-orientation/