HOW THE LGBT MINORITY BECAME A RULING BEHEMOTH



The Homosexual Jewish Billionaire Funding the LGBT Movement - Jon Stryker

There is nothing spontaneous or grass roots about the LGBT movement. Cabalist Jews are using gender dysphoria to destabilize society. Thanks to them, the LGBT rights agenda—note the addition of "T"—has become a powerful, aggressive force in American society. Its advocates stand at the top of media, academia, the professions, and, most important, Big Business and Big Philanthropy.
Meanwhile, Russian society is shoring up their defenses against this onslaught of homosexual perversions. They are literally changing the Russian constitution, defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
Originally appeared at: Truth to Power
Not long ago, the homosexual rights movement was a small group of people struggling to follow their dispositions within a larger heterosexual culture. Homosexuals and lesbians were underdogs, vastly outnumbered and loosely organized, sometimes subject to discrimination and abuse. Their story was tragic, their suffering dramatized by AIDS and Rock Hudson, Brokeback Mountain and Matthew Shepard. 
Today’s movement, however, looks nothing like that band of persecuted outcasts. The LGBT rights agenda—note the addition of “T”—has become a powerful, aggressive force in American society. Its advocates stand at the top of media, academia, the professions, and, most important, Big Business and Big Philanthropy. Consider the following case.
Jon Stryker, 62, is the heir to Stryker Corp., a medical device and equipment manufacturer. He has given nearly $250 million of his personal wealth to groups supporting homosexual rights and Jewish settlers in Arab East Jerusalem.
Jon Stryker is the grandson of Homer Stryker, an orthopedic surgeon who founded the Stryker Corporation. Based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the Stryker Corporation sold $13.6 billion in surgical supplies and software in 2018. Jon, heir to the fortune, is homosexual. In 2000 he created the Arcus Foundation, a nonprofit serving the LGBT community, because of his own experience "coming out" as homosexual. Arcus has given more than $58.4 million to programs and organizations doing LGBT-related work between 2007 and 2010 alone, making it one of the largest LGBT funders in the world. Stryker gave more than $30 million to Arcus himself in that three-year period, through his stock in Stryker Medical Corporation.  
Stryker founded Arcus right when the AIDS epidemic was being brought under control in the U.S. Before he started Arcus, he was president of Depot Landmark LLC, a development company specializing in rehabilitating historical buildings. This would serve him well when he later renovated space for Arcus in Kalamazoo. He was also a founding board member of Greenleaf Trust, a privately held wealth management firm also in Kalamazoo.
Stryker with his husband?/wife?, Slobodan Randjelović
Jon’s sister Ronda Stryker is married to William Johnston, chairman of Greenleaf Trust. She is also vice chair of Spelman College, where Arcus recently bestowed a $2 million grant in the name of lesbian feminist Audre Lorde. The money is earmarked for a queer studies program. Ronda and Johnston have gifted Spelman $30 million dollars overall, the largest gift from living donors in its 137-year history. She is also a trustee of Kalamazoo College (where Arcus bestowed a social justice leadership grant for $23 million in 2012), as well as a member of the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows.  
Pat Stryker, another sister to Jon, has worked closely with homosexual male Tim Gill. Gill operates one of the largest LGBT nonprofits in America and has been close to the Stryker family since Jon created Arcus. In 1999, Tim Gill sold his stakes to Quark, his computer software company, and went to work running the Gill Foundation in Colorado. Working closely with Pat Stryker and two other wealthy philanthropists, who together became known as the four horsemen due to their ruthless political strategies, they set out to change Colorado, a red state, to blue. They proceeded to pour half a billion dollars into small groups advocating LGBT agendas. Gill noted in his opening introduction for Jon Stryker at the 2015 GLSEN Respect Awards that, since knowing each other, he and Jon have “plotted, schemed, hiked and skied together,” while also “punishing the wicked and rewarding the good.”  
Prior to 2015, Stryker had already built the political infrastructure to drive gender identity ideology and transgenderism across the globe, donating millions to small and large entities. These included hundreds of thousands of dollars to ILGA, an LGBT organization for equality in Europe and Central Asia with 54 countries participating, and Transgender Europe, a voice for the trans community in Europe and Asia with 43 countries participating (Transgender Europe has also funded smaller organizations like TENI, Transgender Equality Network Ireland). 
In 2008 Arcus founded Arcus Operating Foundation, an arm of the foundation that organizes conferences, leadership programs, and research publications. At one 2008 meeting in Bellagio, Italy, 29 international leaders committed to expanding global philanthropy to support LGBT rights. At the meeting, along with Stryker and Ise Bosch, founder of Dreilinden Fund in Germany, was Michael O’Flaherty—one of the rapporteurs for the Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (principles outlined in Indonesia in 2006). With the Yogyakarta Principles, the seeds were planted to bring in and attach gender-identity ideology to our legal structures. O’Flaherty has been an elected member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee since 2004.
Out of the Bellagio meeting, Arcus created MAP, the LGBT Movement Advancement Project, to track the complex system of advocacy and funding that would promote gender identity/transgenderism in the culture. Simultaneously, the LGBTI Core Group was formed as an informal cross-regional group of United Nations member countries to represent LGBTI human rights issues to the U.N. Core Group members funded by Arcus include Outright Action International and Human Rights Commission. Core Group member countries include Albania, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, El Salvador, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Montenegro, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uruguay, and the European Union, as well as the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. 
These initiatives promote gender identity and transgenderism by training leaders in political activism, leadership, transgender law, religious liberty, education, and civil rights. The lineup of Arcus-supported organizations advancing the cause is daunting: Victory Institute, the Center for American Progress, the ACLU, the Transgender Law CenterTrans Justice Funding Project, OutRight Action InternationalHuman Rights WatchGATE, Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA), The Council for Global Equality, the U.N., Amnesty International, and GLSEN. The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SIECUS), in partnership with Advocates for Youth, Answer, GLSEN, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), has initiated a campaign using a rights-based framework to inform approaches in reshaping cultural narratives of sexuality and reproductive health. Sixty-one additional organizations have signed a letter supporting an overhaul of current curriculums.
In 2013 Adrian Coman, a veteran of George Soros’s Open Society Foundations (a driver of transgender ideology that has begun initiatives to normalize transgender children), was named director of the international human rights program at the Arcus Foundation, to drive gender identity ideology globally. Previously, Coman served as program director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. And in 2015, Arcus worked closely with and funded NoVo Foundation programs for transgenderism. NoVo was founded by Peter Buffett, son of billionaire Warren Buffett.  
These programs and initiatives advance gender identity ideology by supporting various faith organizations, sports and cultural associations, police department training and educational programs in grade schools, high schools (GLSEN, whose founder was brought to Arcus in 2012 as board of directors, has influenced many K-12 school curricula), and universities and medical institutions—including the American Psychological Foundation (APF). Arcus funds help APF (the leading psychology organization in the United States) develop guidelines for establishing trans-affirmative psychological practices. Psychologists are “encouraged” by those monies to modify their understanding of gender, broadening the range of biological reality to include abstract, medical identities.
Concurrently, Arcus drives gender identity ideology and transgenderism in the marketplace by encouraging businesses to invest in LGBT causes. Lest we forget, Stryker is heir to a $13.6 billion medical corporation. One only has to look at the corporations supporting LGBT during pride month this year to ascertain the success Arcus has had in this arena.
As the example of the Arcus Foundation shows, the LGBT civil rights movement of yore has morphed into a relentless behemoth, one that has strong ties to the medical industrial complex and global corporatists. The pharmaceutical lobby is the largest lobbying entity in Congress. Although activists present the LGBT movement as a weak, powerless group suffering oppression and discrimination, in truth it wields enormous power and influence—power it increasingly uses to remake our laws, schools, and society.
Jennifer Bilek writes from New York City

HOW THE LGBT MINORITY BECAME A RULING BEHEMOTH



The Homosexual Jewish Billionaire Funding the LGBT Movement - Jon Stryker

There is nothing spontaneous or grass roots about the LGBT movement. Cabalist Jews are using gender dysphoria to destabilize society. Thanks to them, the LGBT rights agenda—note the addition of "T"—has become a powerful, aggressive force in American society. Its advocates stand at the top of media, academia, the professions, and, most important, Big Business and Big Philanthropy.
Meanwhile, Russian society is shoring up their defenses against this onslaught of homosexual perversions. They are literally changing the Russian constitution, defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
Originally appeared at: Truth to Power
Not long ago, the homosexual rights movement was a small group of people struggling to follow their dispositions within a larger heterosexual culture. Homosexuals and lesbians were underdogs, vastly outnumbered and loosely organized, sometimes subject to discrimination and abuse. Their story was tragic, their suffering dramatized by AIDS and Rock Hudson, Brokeback Mountain and Matthew Shepard. 
Today’s movement, however, looks nothing like that band of persecuted outcasts. The LGBT rights agenda—note the addition of “T”—has become a powerful, aggressive force in American society. Its advocates stand at the top of media, academia, the professions, and, most important, Big Business and Big Philanthropy. Consider the following case.
Jon Stryker, 62, is the heir to Stryker Corp., a medical device and equipment manufacturer. He has given nearly $250 million of his personal wealth to groups supporting homosexual rights and Jewish settlers in Arab East Jerusalem.
Jon Stryker is the grandson of Homer Stryker, an orthopedic surgeon who founded the Stryker Corporation. Based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, the Stryker Corporation sold $13.6 billion in surgical supplies and software in 2018. Jon, heir to the fortune, is homosexual. In 2000 he created the Arcus Foundation, a nonprofit serving the LGBT community, because of his own experience "coming out" as homosexual. Arcus has given more than $58.4 million to programs and organizations doing LGBT-related work between 2007 and 2010 alone, making it one of the largest LGBT funders in the world. Stryker gave more than $30 million to Arcus himself in that three-year period, through his stock in Stryker Medical Corporation.  
Stryker founded Arcus right when the AIDS epidemic was being brought under control in the U.S. Before he started Arcus, he was president of Depot Landmark LLC, a development company specializing in rehabilitating historical buildings. This would serve him well when he later renovated space for Arcus in Kalamazoo. He was also a founding board member of Greenleaf Trust, a privately held wealth management firm also in Kalamazoo.
Stryker with his husband?/wife?, Slobodan Randjelović
Jon’s sister Ronda Stryker is married to William Johnston, chairman of Greenleaf Trust. She is also vice chair of Spelman College, where Arcus recently bestowed a $2 million grant in the name of lesbian feminist Audre Lorde. The money is earmarked for a queer studies program. Ronda and Johnston have gifted Spelman $30 million dollars overall, the largest gift from living donors in its 137-year history. She is also a trustee of Kalamazoo College (where Arcus bestowed a social justice leadership grant for $23 million in 2012), as well as a member of the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows.  
Pat Stryker, another sister to Jon, has worked closely with homosexual male Tim Gill. Gill operates one of the largest LGBT nonprofits in America and has been close to the Stryker family since Jon created Arcus. In 1999, Tim Gill sold his stakes to Quark, his computer software company, and went to work running the Gill Foundation in Colorado. Working closely with Pat Stryker and two other wealthy philanthropists, who together became known as the four horsemen due to their ruthless political strategies, they set out to change Colorado, a red state, to blue. They proceeded to pour half a billion dollars into small groups advocating LGBT agendas. Gill noted in his opening introduction for Jon Stryker at the 2015 GLSEN Respect Awards that, since knowing each other, he and Jon have “plotted, schemed, hiked and skied together,” while also “punishing the wicked and rewarding the good.”  
Prior to 2015, Stryker had already built the political infrastructure to drive gender identity ideology and transgenderism across the globe, donating millions to small and large entities. These included hundreds of thousands of dollars to ILGA, an LGBT organization for equality in Europe and Central Asia with 54 countries participating, and Transgender Europe, a voice for the trans community in Europe and Asia with 43 countries participating (Transgender Europe has also funded smaller organizations like TENI, Transgender Equality Network Ireland). 
In 2008 Arcus founded Arcus Operating Foundation, an arm of the foundation that organizes conferences, leadership programs, and research publications. At one 2008 meeting in Bellagio, Italy, 29 international leaders committed to expanding global philanthropy to support LGBT rights. At the meeting, along with Stryker and Ise Bosch, founder of Dreilinden Fund in Germany, was Michael O’Flaherty—one of the rapporteurs for the Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (principles outlined in Indonesia in 2006). With the Yogyakarta Principles, the seeds were planted to bring in and attach gender-identity ideology to our legal structures. O’Flaherty has been an elected member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee since 2004.
Out of the Bellagio meeting, Arcus created MAP, the LGBT Movement Advancement Project, to track the complex system of advocacy and funding that would promote gender identity/transgenderism in the culture. Simultaneously, the LGBTI Core Group was formed as an informal cross-regional group of United Nations member countries to represent LGBTI human rights issues to the U.N. Core Group members funded by Arcus include Outright Action International and Human Rights Commission. Core Group member countries include Albania, Australia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, El Salvador, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Montenegro, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uruguay, and the European Union, as well as the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. 
These initiatives promote gender identity and transgenderism by training leaders in political activism, leadership, transgender law, religious liberty, education, and civil rights. The lineup of Arcus-supported organizations advancing the cause is daunting: Victory Institute, the Center for American Progress, the ACLU, the Transgender Law CenterTrans Justice Funding Project, OutRight Action InternationalHuman Rights WatchGATE, Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA), The Council for Global Equality, the U.N., Amnesty International, and GLSEN. The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SIECUS), in partnership with Advocates for Youth, Answer, GLSEN, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), has initiated a campaign using a rights-based framework to inform approaches in reshaping cultural narratives of sexuality and reproductive health. Sixty-one additional organizations have signed a letter supporting an overhaul of current curriculums.
In 2013 Adrian Coman, a veteran of George Soros’s Open Society Foundations (a driver of transgender ideology that has begun initiatives to normalize transgender children), was named director of the international human rights program at the Arcus Foundation, to drive gender identity ideology globally. Previously, Coman served as program director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. And in 2015, Arcus worked closely with and funded NoVo Foundation programs for transgenderism. NoVo was founded by Peter Buffett, son of billionaire Warren Buffett.  
These programs and initiatives advance gender identity ideology by supporting various faith organizations, sports and cultural associations, police department training and educational programs in grade schools, high schools (GLSEN, whose founder was brought to Arcus in 2012 as board of directors, has influenced many K-12 school curricula), and universities and medical institutions—including the American Psychological Foundation (APF). Arcus funds help APF (the leading psychology organization in the United States) develop guidelines for establishing trans-affirmative psychological practices. Psychologists are “encouraged” by those monies to modify their understanding of gender, broadening the range of biological reality to include abstract, medical identities.
Concurrently, Arcus drives gender identity ideology and transgenderism in the marketplace by encouraging businesses to invest in LGBT causes. Lest we forget, Stryker is heir to a $13.6 billion medical corporation. One only has to look at the corporations supporting LGBT during pride month this year to ascertain the success Arcus has had in this arena.
As the example of the Arcus Foundation shows, the LGBT civil rights movement of yore has morphed into a relentless behemoth, one that has strong ties to the medical industrial complex and global corporatists. The pharmaceutical lobby is the largest lobbying entity in Congress. Although activists present the LGBT movement as a weak, powerless group suffering oppression and discrimination, in truth it wields enormous power and influence—power it increasingly uses to remake our laws, schools, and society.
Jennifer Bilek writes from New York City

POLYAMORY CRUSADE: The Next Stage of the Slippery Slope.

 Even the normies thought the slippery slope from legalizing same sex "marriage" was a fiction.

WATCH:  Fake marriage > Polyamory > Incest > MAPS [pedos].

THERE'S A FLAG FOR THAT.

BAKE THE CAKE, YOU BIGOTED HOMOPHOBE !!



 Print

Here's 'polyamory': Multi-partner sexual-rights crusade on the horizon

Activists insist their obstacles will fall, like barriers for transgenders, gays, lesbians

Print
New York's Empire State Building lit up in the rainbow to celebrate the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage in June 2015
[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Investigations.]
By John Murawski
Real Clear Investigations.
It was only a few months ago that someone last treated Cassie Johns like a freak.
During a doctor’s office visit in February, she was asked to list her emergency contacts. Johns, a preschool teacher in Seattle, wrote down two people -- Chris and Joan -- and identified both as her “partners.” They are two of the four romantic interests Johns has been involved with for many years.
TRENDING: White House press secretary fact-checks CNN's Acosta: 'This is false, Jim'
“‘Oh, that’s so dirty,’” Johns recalled the receptionist saying. “And the receptionist literally stepped back from me, in a doctor’s office.”
Johns, 58, is a polyamorist. She follows a non-monogamous lifestyle in which multiple partners give each other consent to date and have sex with others. Johns’s longest polyamorous relationship has lasted 36 years, twice as long as her former marriage to a polyamorous man. She talks openly about her partners to her preschool students and others.
But her forthrightness has a price.
“I have lost jobs, I’ve lost an apartment, I’ve lost a car loan,” because of her lifestyle, Johns said. “I’ve lost friendly relations with neighbors.”
Despite the acceptance of campus hook-up culture and Tinder-arranged trysts, more intentional forms of consensual non-monogamy – which can include polygamy, polyamory, open marriages, group marriages, swinging and “relationship anarchy” – are highly stigmatized. Such behavior is widely considered to be abusive, immoral, or emotionally stunted. People in such relationships not only face rudeness and public shaming, they also lack legal protections against discrimination in employment, housing and child custody disputes.
Polyamorists distinguish their lifestyle from cheating and adultery because, they say, it hinges on the consent of all parties, and can involve unmarried people. Activists say such behavior is more common than many people presume. Some studies suggest that as many as a fifth of Americans have engaged in consensual non-monogamy at some point in their lives. The studies show that at any given time, an estimated 4% to 5% of the population is in a consensually non-monogamous relationship.
While the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing are expected to put a temporary damper on polyamory, those numbers could rise if the social disincentives were removed – in part because some adulterers and cheaters could become consensual non-monogamists.
Activists are moving to dismantle the legal and social barriers, and say their goals are beginning to take shape.
They are laying the groundwork to have their cause become the next domino to fall in a long line of civil rights victories secured by trans people, gays, lesbians, women and blacks. Not too long ago, those marginalized groups were also viewed as unnatural, depraved or inferior, until negative judgments became socially unacceptable and often illegal.
The aspirations of non-monogamists don’t sound like such a moonshot in an increasingly tolerant society where a transgender man can menstruate and experience childbirth, and Pete Buttigieg, a gay man married to another man, can make a serious run for U.S. president.
As the topic breaks into the mainstream, some churches are beginning to grapple with the issue, and polyamorous students are forming university clubs and organizing events. Last fall polyamory got attention, some of it sympathetic, when California Rep. Katie Hill, was forced to resign over allegations she was having an affair with a campaign staffer in a “throuple” with her then-husband. A recent TV episode of “House Hunters" featured three adults searching for a home to build their polyamorous nest, and Hollywood celebrities are opening up about their polyamorous lifestyles as well.
“There is plenty of evidence that consensual non-monogamy is an emerging civil rights movement,” said Heath Schechinger, a counseling psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-chair of the Consensual Non-Monogamy Task Force, recently created within the American Psychological Association. “I've heard from a number of people advocating for relationship structure diversity over the past 20 years who are elated about this issue finally gaining traction.”
Activists are already working with elected officials in more than a dozen local governments, especially in California, to expand local anti-discrimination ordinances to include a new protected class, “relationship structure,” said Berkeley psychologist and poly activist Dave Doleshal.
Most efforts are at the informal stage but the city of Berkeley did consider a formal proposal to extend protections in housing, employment, business practices, city facilities or education to swingers, polyamorists and other non-monogamists. The proposal stalled last year amid concerns that it would have required employers to provide health insurance to numerous sexual and romantic partners outside of marriage.
Undaunted by that setback, advocates continue to generate a body of ideas and theories that normalize non-monogamy as a form of positive sexuality -- and possibly an identity -- following a script followed by other marginalized groups. Their efforts have led to reassessments of non-monogamy in the psychological and legal fields, contending the relationships are emotionally healthy and ethical, and thus forging a social movement with a shared identity, shared vocabulary, shared history and a shared desire for full recognition.
And, yes, there is already a polyamory pride flag.

POLYAMORY CRUSADE: The Next Stage of the Slippery Slope.

 Even the normies thought the slippery slope from legalizing same sex "marriage" was a fiction.

WATCH:  Fake marriage > Polyamory > Incest > MAPS [pedos].

THERE'S A FLAG FOR THAT.

BAKE THE CAKE, YOU BIGOTED HOMOPHOBE !!



 Print

Here's 'polyamory': Multi-partner sexual-rights crusade on the horizon

Activists insist their obstacles will fall, like barriers for transgenders, gays, lesbians

Print
New York's Empire State Building lit up in the rainbow to celebrate the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage in June 2015
[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Investigations.]
By John Murawski
Real Clear Investigations.
It was only a few months ago that someone last treated Cassie Johns like a freak.
During a doctor’s office visit in February, she was asked to list her emergency contacts. Johns, a preschool teacher in Seattle, wrote down two people -- Chris and Joan -- and identified both as her “partners.” They are two of the four romantic interests Johns has been involved with for many years.
TRENDING: White House press secretary fact-checks CNN's Acosta: 'This is false, Jim'
“‘Oh, that’s so dirty,’” Johns recalled the receptionist saying. “And the receptionist literally stepped back from me, in a doctor’s office.”
Johns, 58, is a polyamorist. She follows a non-monogamous lifestyle in which multiple partners give each other consent to date and have sex with others. Johns’s longest polyamorous relationship has lasted 36 years, twice as long as her former marriage to a polyamorous man. She talks openly about her partners to her preschool students and others.
But her forthrightness has a price.
“I have lost jobs, I’ve lost an apartment, I’ve lost a car loan,” because of her lifestyle, Johns said. “I’ve lost friendly relations with neighbors.”
Despite the acceptance of campus hook-up culture and Tinder-arranged trysts, more intentional forms of consensual non-monogamy – which can include polygamy, polyamory, open marriages, group marriages, swinging and “relationship anarchy” – are highly stigmatized. Such behavior is widely considered to be abusive, immoral, or emotionally stunted. People in such relationships not only face rudeness and public shaming, they also lack legal protections against discrimination in employment, housing and child custody disputes.
Polyamorists distinguish their lifestyle from cheating and adultery because, they say, it hinges on the consent of all parties, and can involve unmarried people. Activists say such behavior is more common than many people presume. Some studies suggest that as many as a fifth of Americans have engaged in consensual non-monogamy at some point in their lives. The studies show that at any given time, an estimated 4% to 5% of the population is in a consensually non-monogamous relationship.
While the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing are expected to put a temporary damper on polyamory, those numbers could rise if the social disincentives were removed – in part because some adulterers and cheaters could become consensual non-monogamists.
Activists are moving to dismantle the legal and social barriers, and say their goals are beginning to take shape.
They are laying the groundwork to have their cause become the next domino to fall in a long line of civil rights victories secured by trans people, gays, lesbians, women and blacks. Not too long ago, those marginalized groups were also viewed as unnatural, depraved or inferior, until negative judgments became socially unacceptable and often illegal.
The aspirations of non-monogamists don’t sound like such a moonshot in an increasingly tolerant society where a transgender man can menstruate and experience childbirth, and Pete Buttigieg, a gay man married to another man, can make a serious run for U.S. president.
As the topic breaks into the mainstream, some churches are beginning to grapple with the issue, and polyamorous students are forming university clubs and organizing events. Last fall polyamory got attention, some of it sympathetic, when California Rep. Katie Hill, was forced to resign over allegations she was having an affair with a campaign staffer in a “throuple” with her then-husband. A recent TV episode of “House Hunters" featured three adults searching for a home to build their polyamorous nest, and Hollywood celebrities are opening up about their polyamorous lifestyles as well.
“There is plenty of evidence that consensual non-monogamy is an emerging civil rights movement,” said Heath Schechinger, a counseling psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-chair of the Consensual Non-Monogamy Task Force, recently created within the American Psychological Association. “I've heard from a number of people advocating for relationship structure diversity over the past 20 years who are elated about this issue finally gaining traction.”
Activists are already working with elected officials in more than a dozen local governments, especially in California, to expand local anti-discrimination ordinances to include a new protected class, “relationship structure,” said Berkeley psychologist and poly activist Dave Doleshal.
Most efforts are at the informal stage but the city of Berkeley did consider a formal proposal to extend protections in housing, employment, business practices, city facilities or education to swingers, polyamorists and other non-monogamists. The proposal stalled last year amid concerns that it would have required employers to provide health insurance to numerous sexual and romantic partners outside of marriage.
Undaunted by that setback, advocates continue to generate a body of ideas and theories that normalize non-monogamy as a form of positive sexuality -- and possibly an identity -- following a script followed by other marginalized groups. Their efforts have led to reassessments of non-monogamy in the psychological and legal fields, contending the relationships are emotionally healthy and ethical, and thus forging a social movement with a shared identity, shared vocabulary, shared history and a shared desire for full recognition.
And, yes, there is already a polyamory pride flag.