I ran into this today:
I saw it on a blog called Youth Media for Building Healthy Commnities, which I just discovered today.
It’s a fairly good, and short introduction to polyamory intended for young people, specifically in the Long Beach, CA area. I’m glad to see that resources for young people are inclusive enough, and aware enough, to include polyamory into it’s programming. The video is pretty low tech, and I don’t know what kind of reach it has, but seeing it’s existence is at least encouraging to me.
I noticed that the video made the claim that polyamory fits under the umbrella of “Queer,” and thus LGBTQ generally, which is an idea which is not universally accepted by all poly people or by all LGBTQ members and allies. That the struggles which poly people endure are comparable to those of the traditional LGBTQ community is a tough sale, even if in some philosophical sense there is an affinity between the two groups. There is a sense that poly people are queer, and perhaps the relationship is more obvious to younger people than it is to me. I’d be interested to hear from younger people about how they think about that relationship.
I believe that the LGBTQ community should be generally informed about polyamory, especially because there is a natural affinity between minority groups who are struggling for understanding, rights, and community. We have things to teach one-another, and projects like this video, and the blog with which it is associated, are good positive steps in the right direction. Also, I would very much like to see a future when comprehensive sex education includes the basic concepts of polyamory as a possibility for people to explore, especially since it will be preferable and more healthy for many people (at least). We need young people, for the sake of our future world to be a more sex-positive place, to have understanding about their sexuality, possibilities for relationships, and all things related to those two.
I also noticed that they said, near the end, that “monogamy is an equally valid lifestyle choice, just as polyamory is a great fit for others.” Putting polyamory on equal footing with monogamy is an improvement over the usual view that polyamory might merely be right for some people, which seems to imply it’s a weird thing that weird people do (well, it is that often too). I might be willing to go further, and say that polyamory is superior (with the appropriate caveats, of course), but i appreciate the equal footing here.
More of this, please!
Skepticism, Properly Applied 
This is neat! Just FYI, I’m going to be doing a workshop about queer polyamory with a newly-forming group called QUEER UP! here in Atlanta sometime in the next few months. In our case we’re not lumping in polyamory under the queer umbrella, but exploring it as it applies to queer people 🙂
Dave,
Cool! You will have to let me know how that goes. I’d love to hear what people have to say about that.
I do a review of all non-monogamies in my on line college human sexuality class. Don’t get much response or discussion. They do not seem to think it is a big issue.
Yeah, I’ve been getting that for the generation in school now is sort of generally ok with not only non-monogamous relationships, but atheism as well, more than my generation (and even the one after mine). It’s, hopefully, a good sign for the future.
I definitely will! The new generation is remarkably progressive on a number of fronts. I’m the head of Secular Panthers, the SSA affiliate at Georgia State, and a few months back I was asked to come to a meeting of our Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity for a meeting about queer perspectives on faith to give perspective as a queer atheist. I was expecting a bit of resistance, but during introductions, fully half of the group identified as atheist or agnostic, and there were probably a good fifth of the group who identified as polyamorous. The times are definitely changing 🙂