Is polyamory like sexual orientation, a deep trait felt to be at the core of one’s being? Would a polyamorous person feel as incomplete without multiple partners as a lesbian or gay person might feel without one?
Source: Salon.com
There is no real simple answer to this question, but I think it's a damn good question. All I can say is it doesn't matter how many people you love or what the sex is of the person you love, it's when you take the ability away from a person to love who and how they want that is the core issue here. It's not about having to have more than one partner, it's about the freedom, openness, honesty and ability to have more than one if we meet more than one person we love or care about. It's about knowing I am capable of loving more than one person and acting on the feelings that might come up without guilt or deception. Polyamory for me is apart of who I am. It is what I believe. If you take that right away from me to love who I want and how I want, I will fight back and just as hard as any gay or lesbian person. The feeling and identity is a right. It is who I am and when you tell me I can't be who I am, that's where I draw the line.
Quite honestly, I am unsure how I feel about the legislation part of Poly when it comes to being legally allowed to marry more than one person. With the law against, I do understand and accept why it's in place. I do not agree with gay marriage not being legal, though. That I am whole heartedly against. However, when it comes to being allowed to marry more than one person legally, I am unsure of my stance on that. What I am talking about here is where I stand with the right to love someone, no matter who they are and how many.
LGBT rights hold a special place in my heart for a lot of reasons as well. One being that I am bisexual, and that is a part of who I am, so to tell me it's wrong to love someone of the same-sex and try to make something illegal you consider immoral is an issue for me. When you try to make love about law, when will the line be drawn? It honestly scares me where that line might end up. Not just because I'm bisexual, but because I am Poly as well.
I will admit some people do tend to just slip into this lifestyle, are forced into it or stumble into it. But in the ones that choose to be here and honestly are Poly, I have found that they all say the same thing. They have felt this way their whole life but have either been told it was morally and ethically wrong or they had no clue it existed as a life with other people who feel the same way. To that I will say it's because we don't educate enough. Not about homosexuality, bisexuality, kink, polyamory….the list goes on. There are so many things society is not educated about in this world and it saddens and frightens me. It's because people aren't educated that we get judged or worse…among so many other reasons.
So I can't sit here and tell you it is how we identify with ourselves from birth, because I haven't met many that say they started out feeling this way. I do know that some say they have a burning feeling they can't explain their whole lives until they find this lifestyle. So maybe it is at the core of one's being. Maybe it isn't. I can't say for sure, nor am I willing to admit either way. What I know about myself is that I did feel like something was there my whole life, but I never knew what it was. When I even thought about loving more than one person at a time, I felt guilty and like it was wrong because that was what I was taught growing up. It is ingrained into most of us that it's morally and ethically wrong. Some of us get shown a different world and learn that we need to make our own opinions and decisions for our own happiness. I admit, I railed against it at first because I hadn't made my own conclusions, but only those that someone else fed me. This seems to be the story with a lot of Poly folk.
But really, the point is regardless if it's a part of our core being or not, you're still talking about censoring who we can love and how. You're still talking about mixing love and law and neither of these should have to do with the other. Point is, love is a part of our core being and it's as simple as that, no matter how we love or who. What people don't understand is that while we may have a choice to be monogamous or polyamorous, the wrong choice can make us feel just as unhappy or make us feel like we are lying to ourselves and others.
