THEFUTUREPOLYAMORY

Divorced from reality

Stanley Kurtz

On September 23, 2005, 46-year-old Victor de Bruijn and his 31-year-old wife of eight years, Bianca, presented themselves to a notary public in the small Dutch border town of Roosendaal. And they brought a friend. Dressed in wedding clothes, Victor and Bianca were formally united with a bridally bedecked Mirjam Geven, a recently divorced 35-year-old whom they'd met several years previously through an internet chatroom. As the notary validated a samenlevingscontract, or cohabitation contract, the three exchanged rings, held a wedding feast and departed for their honeymoon.

Although neither Gevens nor Bianca had had a prior relationship with a woman, each had believed for years that she was bisexual. Victor, who describes himself as "100 per cent heterosexual", attributes the trio's
success to their bisexuality, which he says has the effect of preventing jealousy.

The De Bruijns' triple union caused a sensation in The Netherlands. The story spread through the conservative side of the internet like wildfire, raising a chorus of "I told you so" from bloggers who'd long warned of a slippery slope from gay marriage to polygamy.

Meanwhile, gay marriage advocates scrambled to put out the fire. M.V. Lee Badgett, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and research director of the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies, told a sympathetic website, "Don't be fooled - Dutch law does not allow polygamy." Prominent gay marriage advocate Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, offered up a detailed legal account of Dutch cohabitation contracts, treating them as a matter of minor significance, in no way comparable to state-recognised registered partnerships.

But to observers on both sides of the Dutch gay marriage debate, the De Bruijns' triple union is an unmistakable step down the road to legalised group marriage. For what gay marriage is to homosexuality, group marriage is to bisexuality. The De Bruijn trio is the tip-off to the fact that a connection between bisexuality and the drive for multipartner marriage has been developing for some time.

This is important because the Dutch campaign for same-sex marriage was famously premised on a "small step" strategy, with each small increment of recognition creating an impetus for further steps. The popularity of cohabitation contracts among Dutch gays in the 1980s helped create laws in the early '90s forbidding employer discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

So the use of cohabitation contracts was an important step along the road to same-sex marriage in The Netherlands. And the link between gay marriage and the De Bruijns' triple contract was immediately recognised by the Dutch.

The slippery-slope implications of were evident to the SGP, a small religious party. SGP member of parliament Kees van der Staaij noted the substantial overlap between marriage rights and the rights embodied in cohabitation contracts and sent a series of queries to Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner, asking him to dissolve the De Bruijn contract and to bar more than two persons from entering into cohabitation contracts in the future.

The minister's answers represent yet another small step - actually several small steps - towards legal and cultural recognition for group marriage in The Netherlands. Donner reaffirmed the legality of multipartner
cohabitation contracts and pointedly refused to consider any attempt to ban such contracts in the future.

Donner also went so far as to assert that contracts regulating multipartner cohabitation can fulfil "a useful regulating function". In other words, Donner has articulated the rudiments of a "conservative case for group
marriage".

Minority religious parties and their newspapers excepted, a mixture of approval and indifference seems to be the mainstream Dutch reaction so far. The public has not been inclined to protest these developments, and the De Bruijn trio have been welcomed by their neighbours.

Given the stir in The Netherlands, it's remarkable that no mainstream US media outlet carried the story. Of course the media were all over the Dutch gay marriage story when it thought the experiment had been a success. The common theme was that The Netherlands had experienced no ill effects from gay marriage, and that the issue was no longer contentious. Unsurprisingly, the chief sources for these articles were prominent advocates of gay marriage, who dismissed any notion that the reform might have had negative consequences. Still, the US media is correct to report that the majority of Dutch citizens have accepted the innovation. The press has simply missed the meaning of that public shift. Broad Dutch acceptance of same-sex marriage means that marriage as an institution has been detached from parenthood in the public mind. That is why the practice of parental cohabitation has grown so quickly in The Netherlands.

By the same token, the shoulder shrug that followed the triple wedding story shows that legalised group marriage in The Netherlands is now a real possibility.

If the calm Dutch response to same-sex marriage is news, it's tough to see why the Dutch public's fascinated acceptance of a triple union isn't also news. But, of course, the mainstream American press understands that the triple Dutch union cannot be spun in a way that helps the cause of same-sex marriage with the American public. Thus the silence.

Although the triple Dutch union has been loosely styled polygamy, it's actually a sterling example of polyamory. Polyamorists practise "responsible non-monogamy" - open, loving and stable relationships among more than two people. Polygamous marriages among fundamentalist Mormons or Muslims don't depend on a blending of heterosexuality and bisexuality. Yet that combination perfectly embodies the spirit of polyamory. Almost any combination of partner number and sexual orientation is possible in a polyamorous sexual grouping.

Polyamorists would call the De Bruijn union a triad. In a triad, all three partners are sexually connected. The bisexuality of Bianca and Mirjam classifies the union as a polyamorous bisexual triad. In another sense, it is also a gay marriage. The Bianca-Mirjam component of the union is gay, and legalised gay marriage in The Netherlands has clearly helped make the idea of a legally recognised bisexual triad thinkable.

The germ of an organised effort to legalise polyamory in the US can be found in the Unitarian Church. Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness was established in the northern summer of 1999. "Our vision," says UUPA's website, "is for Unitarian Universalism to become the first poly-welcoming mainstream religious denomination."

UUPA's political goals are spelled out by Harlan White, a physician and leading UUPA activist, on the society's website. White maintains that American polyamorists are growing in number: "Attendance at conferences is up, email lists and websites are proliferating, and poly support groups are growing in number and size."

As for the Unitarian polyamorists, their email list has several hundred subscribers, and the group has put on well-attended workshops at Unitarian General Assemblies since 2002. Some Unitarian ministers already perform "joining ceremonies" for polyamorous families.

Two developing lines of legal argument may some day bring about state recognition of polyamorous marriage: the argument from polyamory, and the argument from bisexuality. In a 2004 law review article, Elizabeth F. Emens, of the University of Chicago law school, offers the argument from polyamory. Polyamory is more than the mere practice of multiple sexual partnership, says Emens. Polyamory is also a disposition, broadly analogous to the disposition towards homosexuality. Whether for biological or cultural reasons, says Emens, some people simply cannot live happily without multiple simultaneous sexual partners. And for those people, Emens argues, our current system of marriage is every bit as unjust as it is for homosexuals.

The second legal strategy available to the polyamorists is the argument from bisexuality. The groundwork is being laid by Kenji Yoshino, a professor at Yale Law School. Yoshino argues that bisexuality is far more prevalent than is usually recognised. The relative invisibility of bisexuality, says Yoshino, can be attributed to the mutual interest of heterosexuals and homosexuals in minimising its significance. But according to Yoshino, the bisexuality movement is on the rise, and bound to become more visible, with potentially serious consequences for the law and politics of sexual orientation.

In addition to establishing the numerical and political significance of bisexuality, Yoshino lays down an argument that could easily be deployed to legalise polyamory: "To the extent that bisexuals are not permitted to express their dual desires, they might fairly characterise themselves as harmed."

Clearly, visibility and acceptance are on the rise. The real uptick in public bisexuality-polyamory began with the October 2005 release in New York of the documentary Three of Hearts: A Postmodern Family.

Three of Hearts is the story of the real-life 13-year relationship of two men and a woman. Together for several years in a gay relationship, two bisexual-leaning men meet a woman and create a threesome that produces two children, one by each man. Although the woman marries one of the men, the entire threesome has a commitment ceremony. The movie records the trio's eventual break-up, yet the film's website notes their ongoing commitment to the view that "family is anything we want to create".

Although Three of Hearts is in limited release , its New York premiere drew media attention to polyamory.

Of course, many argue that true bisexuality does not exist. From this perspective, so-called bisexuals are either in confused transition from heterosexuality to homosexuality, or simply lying about their supposedly dual sexual inclinations.

Whatever view we take, it is a fact that a bi-poly rights movement exists and is growing.

Somehow the idea has taken hold that tolerance for sexual minorities requires a radical remake of the institution of marriage. That is a mistake. The fundamental purpose of marriage is to encourage mothers and fathers to stay bound as a family for the sake of their children. Unfortunately, once we radically redefine marriage in an effort to solve the problems of adults, the institution is destined to be shattered by a cacophony of grown-up demands.

It took four years after the full legalisation of gay marriage in The Netherlands for the first polyamory test case to emerge. With a far larger and more organised polyamory movement, it might not take even that long after the legalisation of gay marriage in the US.

It's easy to imagine that, in a world where gay marriage was common and fully accepted, a serious campaign to legalise polyamorous unions would succeed - especially a campaign spearheaded by anorganised bisexual-rights movement.

Yet win or lose, the culture of marriage will be battered for years by the debate. Just as we're now continually reminded that not all married couples have children, we'll someday be endlessly told that not all marriages are monogamous (nor all monogamists married).

For a second time, the fuzziness and imperfection found in every real-world social institution will be contorted into a rationale for reforming marriage out of existence.

Source: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17884618^28737,00.html>