488 - Out and Empowered: Protections and Visibility for non-monogamy with OPEN
Welcome, Brett!
Today we're excited to be joined by Brett Chamberlin from OPEN! Brett (he/him) is a social impact organizer with over a decade of leadership experience building a more just and joyous future. He is the founder and Executive Director of OPEN, the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy. Prior to launching OPEN, Brett worked in the environmental movement as the Director of Community Engagement at The Story of Stuff Project and the co-founder of the Post Landfill Action Network. He lives in the California Bay Area.
During this episode, we chat with Brett about progress for non-monogamous folks over the past few years, from securing rights to overall awareness of non-monogamy. Some of the questions/topics Brett covers today are:
OPEN has a powerful mission to advance cultural acceptance and political rights for non-monogamous individuals and chosen families. How do you see this mission reflecting a broader societal shift towards recognizing diverse family and relationship configurations?
What is your vision for a world where romantic and intimate relationships between consenting adults are accepted and protected, regardless of relationship structure, gender identity, or sexual orientation?
OPEN offers a variety of programs and services, such as the free, twice-monthly Peer Support Circles. Can you tell us more about these circles and how they provide safe and inclusive spaces for individuals to learn, share experiences, and grow?
Why is community building so crucial, and what kind of critical support do these programs provide to individuals navigating non-monogamous relationships?
OPEN has created a comprehensive fact sheet to educate journalists, content creators, advocates, and officials about non-monogamy. Why is this kind of educational outreach so important, and how does it contribute to demystifying non-monogamy and advocating for its legitimacy as a relationship choice?
OPEN has a strong presence on social media platforms like Facebook, engaging with a broader audience and building a supportive community. How do you see community engagement as crucial in mobilizing support and fostering a collective identity among non-monogamous individuals and advocates?
What are the most significant ways that you see visibility and representation of the non-monogamous community changing our political and social landscape?
How does OPEN work to ensure that its advocacy and support services are inclusive of the diverse identities within the non-monogamous community, particularly those who are marginalized or underrepresented?
For those who are new to non-monogamy or considering exploring it, what advice would you give them to help navigate the unique challenges and joys of these relationship structures?
What are some ways that monogamous allies can show support and solidarity with their non-monogamous friends, family members, and community?
How can non-monogamous individuals work to build bridges and foster understanding with monogamous people in their lives, especially those who may be skeptical or unsupportive of their relationship choices?
Many individuals in the polyamorous community also identify as queer. How do you see the intersections between polyamory and queer identities, and how does OPEN work to support and celebrate these connections?
Navigating non-monogamous relationships can be emotionally and mentally taxing at times. What strategies or resources would you recommend for practicing self-care and building resilience within the context of non-monogamy?
How can individuals in non-monogamous relationships work to maintain their own sense of identity and autonomy while nurturing their connections with multiple partners?
As someone who has been deeply involved in the non-monogamous community for many years, what are your hopes for the future of this movement?
What do you see as the most promising opportunities for growth, understanding, and acceptance of non-monogamous relationships in the coming years, and how can our listeners be a part of this positive change?
Visit OPEN’s website for resources and ways to get involved!
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we are talking about the last few years of progress in the world of securing rights and protections as well as awareness about the wide range of non-monogamous relationships that are being practiced all over the world, and especially in the US because we're talking to the director of OPEN, the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy, Brett Chamberlin. In addition to some of the amazing progress that OPEN has made in the past couple years, we're also going to look at what's currently in progress, how you can get involved, what's coming next, and how this could impact all of our lives.
Also, if you're interested to learn more about our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show, you can check out our book, Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships, which covers our most used communication tools for all types of relationships. You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book or wherever books are sold. Also, check out our first few episodes of the show where we cover some of our most commonly referenced episodes, so you can go check those out and then come right back here.
Our guest today, Brett Chamberlin, is a social impact organizer with over a decade of leadership experience building a more just and joyous future. He's the founder and executive director of OPEN, which is the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy. Prior to launching OPEN, Brett worked in the environmental movement as the director of Community Engagement at the Story of Stuff project, and the co-founder of the Post Landfill Action Network. He lives in the California Bay Area, and we are so excited for him to join us today. Brett, thank you for joining us.
Brett: Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure to speak with you all.
Dedeker: Over two years ago on our episode 381 was when we first invited on William Winters to introduce OPEN to our audience and to our community. I want to hear from you, Brett, in the last few years doing your work for OPEN, is there anything that has surprised you?
Brett: The last few years have been really exciting, not just for OPEN, but I think for the non-monogamy movement as a whole. I think that we're all seeing this really exciting critical mass moment with increasing attention to non-monogamy in the mainstream culture, a growing understanding of what non-monogamous relationships and families look like, as well as the values that underpin them, and a really exciting accelerating push for broader legal rights. In terms of what's surprised me, I think that we have not yet seen the pushback that we may soon see.
I hate to have that surprise be a somewhat negatively framed thing, but unfortunately, the reality is that as we continue to gain mainstream acceptance, I think that sooner than later we'll find ourselves facing more significant opposition. I think the opportunity in this moment is to really get as much done in terms of movement building and the advancement of legal rights before we start butting up against organized, and unfortunately, well-funded opposition.
Dedeker: Yes. I think all of us individually have experienced pushback against non-monogamy. I think all of us individually are familiar with a lot of the most common arguments and tropes and concerns but it almost sounds like what you're saying is there's not enough systemic threat happening quite yet, so that's why we're not yet seeing a systemic level of pushback. Is that accurate?
Brett: I think so. We're still at the very early stages of actually passing laws, whether those are legal protections or the repeal of things like anti-adultery laws that remain on the books in 13 US states. I think that as we continue to demonstrate our capacity to really make concrete changes and materially transform some of these systems that continue to marginalize and exclude non-monogamous relationships, we'll start to see the opposition taking notice, but tell you what? Let me give you a slightly more positive answer to that.
Jase: Okay, great.
Brett: That is, it's been really highly energizing to see how ready folks across the non-monogamous movement are to come together and take action. How's that? That's a little nicer. I think that's--
Dedeker: That's more helpful. That's great.
Emily: For sure.
Brett: I think that after many decades of the development of the non-monogamous project, the formation of a corpus of knowledge and of communities bringing people together in person, there's this real hunger and appetite for us to step into our power for us to claim our seat at the table, for us to have a voice in the conversation. Folks are just really excited to be building connections between local communities, between various organizations and advocates, both within the non-monogamy sector.
Thinking about bridging some of those communities, from the lifestyle swinger community to the polyamorous communities, as well as within the broader movement for sexual freedom and human liberation. Reaching out and linking arms with aligned and intersecting movements from the kink and sexual freedom spaces to the LGBTQ+ space. I think this really is the moment. This really is the moment to make it happen, to claim our seat at the table.
Jase: You're mentioning a lot of these other movements and other communities right now, but you've also spoken in the past about the growing prevalence of non-normative relationships of various types in terms of how that fits in with a bigger historical context of liberation movements like laws against interracial marriage or the gay rights movement, or these various things that seem like of course, that would be absurd to have ever been a law against this in the past. I'm just curious to hear more about that, how you see this point where we are in history in terms of that larger context.
Brett: I think that this work fits into a really generational project of the liberation of human relationships and human sexual freedom that, I won't say begins, but I think one of the earlier chapters of that certainly in the modern American context, is the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws, which prohibited mixed race relationships. You then saw the sexual freedom movement and the introduction of contraception that gave people more autonomy over their bodies and access to pleasure.
You saw what was originally called the Gay Liberation Movement, now know as the LGBTQ+ movement that worked to normalize same sex relationships and, greater freedom and acceptance around gender identity and sexual orientations. I think that non-monogamy is a another step in that broader project. Now, here it is, I think really important to name that I think the experience of marginalization of non-monogamous people is certainly fundamentally different than that of people living under Jim Crow, people that were oppressed for their sexual orientation, but I think that it is still contiguous.
What we're seeing now, I want to borrow the words of my colleague Heath Schechinger, a phenomenal non-monogamous advocate, I think a previous guest of your podcast, and a board member for OPEN who puts it this way, that the last few decades, something within last 100 years, really have seen an expansion in who can participate in a relationship with regard to their race, their gender identity, and so on. What we are now seeing is the emergence of a conversation around how we allow people to structure their relationships and their families. I think it's a really important next step in this broader project.
Emily: I'm curious as well, because, of course, you were talking about a consensual non-monogamy, but there are families that don't have romantic relationships as a part of them. It may be two best friends who are coming together and want to parent a child together, for instance. I feel like these same laws that potentially are going to be passed will help people like that as well, or even those people who don't ever want to be in romantic relationships who are single by choice, for instance.
There's a wealth of different things that are afforded to married couples that aren't afforded to people who are single, for instance, so will things like this, will laws being passed also potentially help them?
Brett: That's exactly right. Let me answer that at two levels. First, more concretely that policy language that is part of the recent non-discrimination protections that passed just in April of 2024 here in Oakland, California, and then in May in Berkeley, California, following the adoption of these protections in Somerville in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2023. The policy language there uses the phrase family or relationship structure. The relationship structure piece obviously encompasses non-monogamous folks as well as asexual and aromantic folks and others that may fall through the cracks of existing non-discrimination protections.
The family structure piece reinforces those protections from multi-partner families but it also picks up a whole range of other non-nuclear family structures, including folks living in multi-generational households, blended families with stepparents and stepchildren, single parents by choice. Finally, that also closes a bit of a loophole for the children of same-sex parents who aren't able to claim protections under existing non-discrimination protections for LGBTQ folks, because it's not their own identity around which they're asserting those protections, but it's their family structure.
That's the first concrete layer. The deeper layer that I think you're touching on, Emily, is that I think the non-monogamy movement is really not just about allowing people to have relationships with multiple people. It is about liberating human connection from the social scripts that usually play out through mononormativity, but that there's a range of other relationship structures and relational structures, not just in terms of romantic relationships that are prioritized. It's about moving away from the society where we elevate the monogamous romantic relationship to the very top of the stack.
It's about giving people more freedom across the board to pursue the types of family and relationship structures that are rewarding to them, whether that involve romance intimacy or just committed connection with a platonic life partner, and allowing all of those relationships to have equity.
Dedeker: It's striking me, and a question that I've had for a long time is how do we enroll people in this movement? I hope this question doesn't sound flippant, but the way that it plays out in my brain is how do we enroll people in this movement who haven't already drunk the Kool-Aid on non-monogamy? It's like if we look at things like the civil rights movement and the queer rights movement, that part, not all, but part of the momentum is when you start getting people on board who care about this and see this as important, even if they are not at the epicenter of this particular intersection of identity.
People who are allies or people who are maybe more tangentially related to this particular issue. I wonder about that as an obstacle. I do think that like your language around that, this isn't just about letting the polyamorous weirdos be able to date whoever they want to date, that it's broader. It is about opening up family structure. It's about opening up legal protections to such a wide variety of families. What's your thoughts on that? Because I feel like that's still an obstacle.
Brett: I think that to an extent it is about positioning this issue as about more than just non-monogamous relationships, and certainly about more than polyamorous relationships, specifically, of course, because polyamory is just one relationship structure within the broader big tent of non-monogamy. As we just discussed, it is about also bringing in more expansive family structures. Only 18% of US households look like the "conventional" nuclear family of married parents.
Jase: Sorry, did you say 18%?
Brett: 18%.
Emily: That's amazing. Wow.
Jase: Wow. I would not have guessed.
Brett: Yes.
Jase: Wow.
Brett: Most families don't look like that "conventional" perhaps better stated as mythical nuclear family of two married parents living with their own biological children. More families look like roommates, multi-partner relationships, single people, and so on. That's part of it. Second is, as you name it's about allies. Similar to, again, the LGBTQ+ movement, most people are still not gay or lesbian or bisexual or trans, but with increasing visibility, they realize that they know somebody and care about somebody who is, whether that's a coworker or a close friend or a member of their family.
Once people know somebody that holds a marginalized identity, they're far more likely not just to be accepting, but to actively be an ally and take part in the work for that person's liberation. I think that's a huge part of the work that the non-monogamy movement has to do. It's starting to open up about what for a long time, has been a really private identity for folks because of the concern of the marginalization and stigma that can come with being open about your identity.
It's starting to invite people if it's safe for them to do so and if they wish to, to start having those conversations with their friends, with their community members, with their coworkers, even, so that we can educate people and help them understand that, "Hey, we are people too. We love the people in our lives maybe just a little bit more expansively and openly, but we're having these experiences of marginalization and we really need you to stand up with us."
Jase: After our conversation with Dr. Lily Lamboy who also works along with OPEN and helps out with some of these things where we were talking about HR departments and workplaces and doing more of the private sector workplace version of what you're talking about here that's more legislative. A point she made was that a lot of HR departments, a lot of people who work in HR are probably a lot more open to this than you think because they probably got into that line of work because they do actually care about people and they do actually want to help people be happy.
That was exactly my experience after that episode when I went to my HR department and asked if I could talk to someone and we had a chat, and when I explained some of the lack of nondiscrimination protections, her reaction was, "Oh my gosh, I had no idea that that would not have-- I would've assumed that was a protected class already. That's surprising to me. Yes, of course. Let me see what I can do to help you." I think that might be a piece of that education is a lot of people might just assume, "Oh, yes, that falls into the same umbrella as everything else. Why do we need to be worried about this?"
Brett: I think that experience is consistent not only across HR and people departments but within any number of decision-makers or elected officials. People don't really know, and they can be forgiven for not knowing, frankly. When you have that conversation with them and when you share some of the numbers, one in five American adults will be in a non-monogamous relationship at some point in their life. When you share some of the data around how common these experiences of stigma and discrimination are, I think people are really surprised to learn it and they're really eager to do what they can to ensure that these experiences are addressed.
Dedeker: I think I've had the experience on the opposite side from someone assuming, "Oh, these things must be protected already." More people assuming, "Oh, the stakes here can't be that high. Why do we care so much?" I think that that often goes into the same bucket of thinking that puts any type of non-monogamy practice as something that, like you said, is very private, it's very personal. Maybe even relegating it to that's the weird stuff you get up to in your bedroom. Why do we need to be talking about that? Or we're being worried about protecting that?
I feel like the other side of this is there's a little bit of almost educating about stigma as well because I think that is non-obvious to people.
Brett: Without a doubt. I think that the two biggest myths or stereotypes that the non-monogamy movement needs to push back against is, one, that it's a sex thing as you just referenced. People need to understand that this is about relationships and all that they involve. Two, that it's not really that big of a deal, that these experiences aren't quite so common. As part of that, that non-monogamy is something that privileged people do. This is privileged people wanting to have their weird sex thing and not experience consequences for it.
I think that folks can be forgiven for the impression that non-monogamy is more of a phenomena among wealthy, white, coastal liberal elites. We know from the demographic data that it's really not. Race is not predictive of your preference for non-monogamy, neither is geographic region or religion or education or income or political affiliation.
Jase: I was reading something that actually, there was a study that indicated that there was a little bit more of a preference toward non-monogamy in lower-income households than higher, which goes exactly against that stereotype that it's only these upper-middle-class people doing this. Just that there have even been studies that seem to come down on the opposite side where it's like, this is not that stereotype that we have.
Brett: Right. Exactly. Again, I think people can be forgiven for that misconception, because, of course, if you are a wealthy white, coastal liberal elite that has a degree of class privilege and economic security, you have more access to media representation and you can afford to be open about your identity because you're insulated from the possible consequences of that. If you are a poor working-class person who holds other marginalized identities, you can't be open. It's a bit of a mirage. I think that it's really just a matter of education.
It's just about sharing some of what I just shared. Non-monogamy is something that everyone does and people are experiencing real consequences from it.
Emily: Brett, I did want to get a little bit more personal with you because I wanted to go back and just ask, how does somebody who is the co-founder of the Post-Landfill Action Network become the director of OPEN? How did your experience in the environmental movement really shape your approach to advocating for non-monogamous communities?
Brett: I've been doing advocacy and activism for my whole life. I'll dim myself here a little bit, but my parents brought me to a rally against the invasion of Iraq in my home state of New Hampshire, when I was probably still in middle school. From that moment on, I was really just captivated by, I think the energy, vibrancy, and diversity of movements for justice, but also the deep need to build a more just world. After graduating from college with a degree in politics and journalism, I settled into a career in the environmental sector.
The first nonprofit that you just referenced, Post-Landfill Action Network, supported student-led sustainability initiatives on college campuses. That was a project that we started to help scale up and spread a campus sustainability initiative that a close friend and collaborator had launched in our hometown, which is a college town in New Hampshire. I moved out to the Bay Area in 2016 to take a job with another environmental nonprofit called the Story of Stuff Project, which also works in issues of waste and consumerism.
When I moved to the Bay Area, I found myself, unsurprisingly, becoming very immersed in Bay Area polyamorous and sex-positive cultures which here are fairly overlapping, although certainly not everyone at play parties is non-monogamous. Not every non-monogamous person goes to play parties. Here, a pretty convergent Venn diagram. It was in those spaces that, first of all, I experienced this really joyous access to community, to connection, as well as just huge self-growth through the practices of building intentional and thoughtful relationships.
Of course, the self-work that that so often involve. I was also really surprised to see how common these experiences of stigma were even in really progressive areas like the Bay Area. This really started me thinking about the opportunity to jump into the advocacy sector in this space. The reason that it really resonates with me is because much of my environmental organizing work was not just about building a more sustainable world in terms of our material extraction and disposal and so on.
It's also about building a more just world where we can be in right relationship with ourselves and with the planet and with one another. Through the non-monogamy lens, I really saw what I think of as a set of social technologies that can really support that broader transformation. I see this as really part of that same project of moving us from a highly atomized competitive consumption-oriented world towards societies that focus more on connection, on cooperation, on community, on communication, on consent.
I think that these are the types of transformations that we really need to be investing much more in because I think that for all the work that is critically important work going into transforming our materials economy, we're still largely playing out social technologies that haven't changed very much at all in terms of their essential forms since the 18th century. I think that this is really part of that broader project of building a more just and joyous world but it's approaching it from a slightly different angle.
Dedeker: The question that I want to ask is how is it that doing environmental activism work didn't completely wring every last bit of energy and soul out of you and still leave you with energy just to be doing this work but really that's just surface level. The deeper question is more about how do we keep this work going and sustainable, especially as you're previewing the fact that the pushback's definitely going to be there, that if anything this work is probably going to get harder as ironically it gets more successful and gains more traction.
It's like how do we keep going in the face of that? How do you keep going in the face of that?
Brett: I'll admit some days I ask myself the same question that occurs and this could be a whole episode. How do we resource activists and keep showing up for the work? It's been challenging. I suppose I'll just share vulnerably because I want to validate the experiences of other people that may be engaged in change-making work that it can be really hard. There have been some dark phases of this but I think that it's important that we resource ourselves. One of the ways that we really can resource ourselves that's particularly relevant is community, is connection.
Pleasure, connection, and joy are powerful sources of fuel, not only to fill our cups back up but also to remind us of this fundamental right to pleasure, connection, justice, joy, and play that everyone should have. Dr. Ayesha Khan, who's a really fabulous writer, I encourage folks to check out their Substack put it this way, that relationship building is the work of liberation. There's a degree of what Adrienne Maree Brown calls emergent strategy or what other writers call prefigurative politics.
Where through connecting and building community, we are not only resourcing ourselves to be able to continue to show up and do this work but that itself is an expression of the work. It's about demonstrating in the ways that we build relationships, build families, build communities, the values that we are working to extend to the rest of the world.
Jase: Before we go on, I want to give a quick shout-out to our amazing community members in our Discord and our Facebook group. These are all people who are part of our private discussion group tier on Patreon. These communities are such cool places where people are actually there to support each other and listen and have constructive conversations, which feels like it's a rarer and rarer thing to find on the internet these days. It's just been an incredibly inspiring community to be able to be part of.
Our Discord server is really cool because there are channels for all sorts of different topics. Everything from work talk to crafts, to parenting, to being polyamorous when you're over 40, all sorts of different topics, as well as some channels where you can talk about games and just have fun with fellow Multiamory listeners. Most importantly, it helps us support this show and keep this going, and make it available for free for everybody out there every week in the world. This is also made possible by our sponsors on this show.
If you take a moment, check them out, if they seem interesting to you, use our promo codes or use our links, those are in our episode description as well. That will directly help support this show and keep it going as well. Thank you so much. We've been talking a lot about the philosophical stuff going on here and a lot of the reasons why this is important but I actually want to take a moment to first just take a little trip through memory lane of OPEN and what has happened so far in the, has it been three years now since this was formed?
Brett: Two.
Jase: Two years.
Brett: Feels like 10 sometimes.
Jase: What has happened, I know we've talked about some of this on different episodes but could you summarize what are some of the programs that have been started? What are the successes that have happened so far?
Brett: We've got three big buckets of work. The first is providing resources and support to the non-monogamous community. The theory behind this, the theory of change, as we call it in activist speak, is that folks aren't going to be able to show up to engage in advocacy if they themselves are not feeling resourced and supported. Just as I was describing from a more personal perspective. Programs in this area include things like free twice-monthly peer support circles that we provide to create a safe space for folks to come together to share their experiences, to support one another, as well as resources to help people navigate a world that is really not designed with our relationships in mind.
As an example of that, we published an end-of-life planning and death care guide for non-monogamous families and loved ones. That's obviously an incredibly important and also very challenging conversation or set of conversations to have particularly when you're butting up against systems, as I say, designed with just one type of relationship in mind. Those are some of the resources that we put out. The second area of work is about visibility and acceptance. The major flagship initiative in this program area is the week of visibility for non-monogamy, which will be July 15th through 21st of 2024.
That's something that OPEN helped coordinate as an inaugural day of visibility in 2023, and that this year is expanding to a full week. That's an opportunity for folks to come together in community, to connect with one another, to celebrate our identities and values and how far we've come as a movement. Also to bring those conversations to our neighbors, to our community members as we were discussing earlier to help people see who we really are. Our visibility work also includes things like media outreach just to try and help bring this conversation to more folks to push back against some of those myths that we were discussing earlier.
The final bucket is power building and impact. This is really the meat of the work. Although as a vegetarian, I need to find a better return of phrase than the meat of the work.
Emily: I always have to do the same thing. I understand as a vegan for sure.
Brett: Yes. Do you have a good one, Emily?
Emily: Oh gosh. The meat of the work, I don't know sometimes I'm just like the tofu or the seitan of the work or something like that. I said yesterday, you gently pet two birds or feed two birds with one scone instead of kill two birds with one stone.
Brett: I love that one. Our power and impact work that the two major programs here are the OPEN Workplaces Initiative, which as you just mentioned my colleague, Dr. Lily Lamboy recently appeared on the show to speak about. In short, this is about advancing acceptance and inclusion for non-monogamous professionals in the workplace through workplace advocacy and corporate policy. In parallel with that is our legislative advocacy. As I mentioned earlier, this is about passing municipal-level non-discrimination protections on the basis of family or relationship structure. So far there have been four US cities that have passed these protections. Again, those are Somerville, and Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2023, Somerville being the first. Then this spring of 2024, Oakland and Berkeley, California, and so we're really excited to continue that work in more municipalities. Looking ahead to what's next in this area, there is a lot more work to do, particularly with those systemic changes. For example, the Berkeley and Oakland bills do not include employment non-discrimination, because that is legislated at the state level.
We've got to build the capacity to get to Sacramento, but passing an ordinance at the municipal level versus at the state level, particularly in a large state like California, not to mention the 49 other states across the country, is a much bigger project. There's definitely some movement building and capacity building to do before we get there, but I think that we're pointed in the right direction, and that's very much visible on the horizon.
Emily: Clearly, all of the places that legislation has been passed have been in progressive states. I am curious, is it even possible to go to places that aren't progressive and get legislation like this passed? I'm sure that that's like a hope for people, but to me, it seems like it will be a very challenging reality to actually come to fruition.
Brett: In general, I think that there's really two different sets of strategies that we need to move together. There's the visibility, awareness, and acceptance, but for folks to open up about their identities and really step into that, they need to be sure that they're protected from discrimination. We need to pass the non-discrimination protections, but for folks to understand why those are important, there needs to be visibility. It's about ratcheting both of those strategies up at the same time.
I think that the more conservative cities and in more conservative states certainly becomes more viable as the national awareness of this issue grows and percolates down. At a more nuts and bolts level, it's really just about resourcing the community to do advocacy. OPEN is collaborating with a couple of other organizations, including the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition who drafted the ordinances that I just described passed.
We're working together with them as well as with their constituent members, including Diana Adams from the Chosen Family Law Center, Alexander Chen from the Harvard Law School LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic, Dr. Heath Schechinger from OPEN's board of directors, and PLAC, and the newly founded Modern Family Institute. We're putting together a toolkit to really just make it easier for folks that may not have experience doing advocacy to understand how to go about reaching out to their city council members.
Materials that they can provide in the context of those conversations to really help educate them out of the issue, and then when to tap in OPEN and PLAC and other partners to provide some of the model legislation, help adapt it to the existing local ordinances, and work on passing it. The more cities that pass it, the more clear it becomes to other cities, even the more conservative ones, that if you want to be a place that can attract young talent, that can feel safe for your existing residents, this is something that really will need to be adopted.
Jase: That's something that I think is so interesting about OPEN in general. The reason why I find it so cool that it exists now is that there's this different way of thinking about things and this different set of skills and knowledge that goes into this. As well as things like the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition, that's obviously people who need to understand the law very well, and for you, understanding policymaking and how to do these kinds of changes. Both in terms of just what to do, but also like you were mentioning, that we should start here to get some momentum to then help us do this other thing later.
I think for most of us, the average people who don't have experience in that like myself, it can either feel like this is impossible, it's too overwhelming, we don't know where to start, or it's not enough. If we're not changing the federal laws, then it's not enough. We're not doing enough. I think the thing that really struck the three of us when you first started OPEN a couple years ago was taking this very different approach that's coming from a place of putting people together who have experience with related things.
How we can move forward with that in this longer-term marathon, not a sprint, kind of approach that I think for a lot of us who might be motivated more by an emotional reaction from either just having discovered this or just facing some discrimination ourselves or seeing a loved one go through that. There's like this, "Oh, I'm all fired up. I want to do something about it right now." While that can be helpful, it seems like this slow and steady wins the race is what's made the difference in all these other historical movements that we've talked about as well.
That maintaining that going on has been so important. I guess where I'm going with this is to help people like me who don't really understand policymaking and don't have as much of this historical context for social change from a legal point of view and a big cultural point of view. What are some things that you would say-- like if you had to give a crash course right now in five minutes on here's how to be able to come into OPEN or another organization like it and make a difference mindset-wise.
Brett: Before I answer that question, the easy question that you've teed me up there for, Jase, so how to change the world in five minutes, I want to reference back to something that you name, which is that this is not change making. Generally, advocacy is not a sprint, it's a marathon. In fact, it's not a marathon, it's a relay race. It's about people moving the baton forward and then handing off to another generation of advocates. While I think that there is this real critical mass moment, this moment of emergence in the non-monogamy space, certainly advocacy around non-monogamy is nothing new.
OPEN stands on the shoulders of giants, so people that have really paved the way, not only for the development as referenced earlier, the corpus of knowledge, like what is non-monogamy but really have helped chart the course for the political identities, both within and outside of the movement. That's the first piece that I do just want to acknowledge and give myself a little more time to think of how to easily answer that question about five minutes. With that in mind, then allow me to be used for just a moment longer.
That is that I think that in American society, we really have been stripped of our identities as change-makers, as political agents. I think that so much of the way that we are given permission frankly, or really encouraged to express our agency and our political voice is going to the ballot box once every other year plus your local elections or primaries or whatnot. I think that's part of why we have this moment where there are these enormous crises facing us and people feel very disempowered and don't know what to do about these hyperobjects.
Like what can I do about climate change beyond the individual actions when I know that the majority of the CO2 is coming from major polluters and multi-billionaires? I think that a lot of the work to be done is really just helping people understand what advocacy actually can look like and giving them pathways to take action. I think that the non-monogamy space is one way to pull the lever as I referenced earlier, to help contribute to the types of positive change in the world that we need and the types of solutions to those broader problems, which I do think emerge as we build a more cooperative and communicative society.
I do think that it has a real material impact on problems like climate change, in addition to ending the immediate experience of stigma and discrimination that individual folks experience. Now with that activist lefty musing out of the way, Jase, to your question, in five minutes, so folks can start the conversation about non-discrimination protections in their city. As I mentioned, we'll be rolling out this more expansive toolkit later this year. You can make sure that you get that by joining our email list @open-love.org/join.
In the meantime, really what's needed there is just to identify a city council member in your city that is willing to say, "Yes, I see the importance of that and I'm ready to sponsor legislation." Take a look at who's under a city council, see if there are folks that have supported issues previously that may give you some sense that they're supportive of this issue. Whether they hold identities or have supported other folks with other marginalized identities, reach out to them and reach out to OPEN. We'd love to help you, support you in those conversations.
Then there are plenty of little things that you can do too. First, if it is safe for you to do so, and if you want to, opening up about your identity is one of the most impactful things that you can do. This is definitely not an encouragement for folks to do that if it's going to get them fired or get them ostracized for their community, but if you think that your family and your community and your coworkers might be receptive, starting to have that conversation is one of the best ways that we can really bring non-monogamy into the light.
Then little other things that you can do like write a letter to the editor talking to your community about non-monogamy. Check with your local library and see what non-monogamy books they have. Do they stock the multiamory book, for example, and reach out. Most libraries have a forum where you can request new titles to be added.
Jase: We did that for our library. We requested the multiamory book be added, and it was.
Emily: It worked.
Brett: That's great. Exactly. Librarians are heroes and tend to be responsive to these things. Creating space for community to gather can be really important too. I get e-mails all the time from folks that say, "Hey, I'm non-monogamous, but I live in the middle of America and I don't know how to access non-monogamous folks near me. Can you support a recurring quarterly or monthly meetup, a picnic, a discussion group, happy hour?" OPEN has a resource that can help you with that.
If you visit the resources tab of our website, we have a guide for hosting a non-monogamy mixer that provides real concrete, actionable tips, and template policy language or invite language to help you start, grow, and sustain a non-monogamy meetup in your community. Those are just a couple of the types of things that I think people can really step up and take on to really start making a difference locally.
Jase: Before we go on, we're going to take a quick break to talk about supporting this show. You know what, if you're someone who doesn't like hearing ads on your episodes, there is a way that you can get that by becoming a member of our ad-free episode and early release tier on Patreon. If you go to patreon.com/multiamory and you join that tier, you not only get access to a special private RSS feed just for you, but you'll get episodes a day early and they won't have ads in them. If that's interesting to you, go check that out and help support us in doing this show every week and making it available worldwide for free.
Or of course, take a moment, check out our sponsors, if any do seem interesting to you, use our promo codes and our links in the description for discounts on those. By visiting those and using our codes, you're also directly helping to support this show and keep this going, so thank you so much for that.
Dedeker: Have you now encountered any concerns or pushback against OPEN to work from within the non-monogamous community? My experience of the non-monogamous community having been with this group of chuckleheads for about 10 years now or so, is there can be, from one perspective, we might call it an anarchist bent to this group from another perspective, some people might call it a libertarian bent. I probably pissed off both of those groups now by saying that, but really I think the through line is that a lot of non-monogamous people are people who are comfortable questioning systemic structures and questioning existing organizations and power structures and things like that.
Sometimes I've seen non-monogamous people feel really suspicious or unsure of anyone who's actually trying to organize or create any kind of political action or political movement and momentum behind this. Has that been something that you've experienced and had to move past?
Brett: No. Smooth sailing.
Dedeker: Great.
Brett: No feedback. Easy peasy.
Dedeker: Oh, that's great. Good job everybody.
Emily: Really?
Brett: As you named, Dedeker, the non-monogamy community, it's a big tent. It encompasses a lot of different identities and encompasses people from across the political spectrum and folks have a lot of opinions. That's, again, as you named, part of why people are non-monogamous. It's folks that are perhaps suspicious of default ideologies and ways of organizing. While we certainly do need to listen to that feedback and really aim to be responsive to the needs of the community, I believe that OPEN is here not to lead the non-monogamy movement, but to serve the non-monogamy movement.
It really is incumbent on us to be receptive to that fight type of feedback. At the same time, you just will not please everyone. I think two of the pieces of feedback or general responses that we've gotten, one is why should we need to be open? I'm cool being secret about my identity. Maybe it's easier, maybe it's sexier and that's totally great. That's why I say if you don't want to open up about your identity, don't. However, I would hope that those people would recognize that not everyone feels that way and some people are stressed out about needing to be secret, not be seen out on a date with their partner or risk losing their job.
I think that that one is fairly easy to respond to. If you don't don't open up, great, don't, but people should be free too. Two is I think there is, and in some of our messaging and data gathering necessarily has been a focus on stigma and discrimination. Somewhat as we discussed earlier, I think that there can be an impression that this is trying to create or exaggerate this experience of marginalization. I do think that we need to focus on it, first of all, just to gather data and understand it, and to acknowledge that the reality of this experience.
Necessarily that is something that is centered, although we really do strive to ensure that we're focusing just as much on affirmatively resourcing the movement and celebrating all of the positive expressions of our experience, our communities, and our values. Then actually, one final piece I'd tack on is that appropriately, I think that there is a weariness around the formation of hierarchical overly corporatized organizations. Again, this is a whole other non-profit leadership theory conversation. I would refer folks to the book, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded if you want a primer on this.
As OPEN develops, I'm certainly committed to ensuring that we do maintain a really responsive approach, that we not try and become like some other organizations and some other social justice movements that guzzle up all the resources and pay salaries and don't actually particularly serve the community or compromise the deeper level very progressive values or compromise the safety and experiences of marginalized members of their communities in order to pursue respectability politics and corporate subsidies and foundation support.
My hope is that as OPEN develops, we can take great care to really adhere to our organizational values, which folks can find on the website, which include intersectionality and liberation, and build more horizontally and in a really inclusive and responsive way.
Emily: I just want to go back real quick before we start wrapping up to what you were saying about this being a relay race. I don't want to presume your age, but the three of us at least are in the millennial and beyond camp here. It really does feel though, as though the kids are going to save us all to a degree. What I mean by that is colleagues that I have at work, for example, who are younger than I am, so many of them are really interested in so much of what non-monogamy has to offer and really questioning societal norms in terms of the ways that relationships have just been prescribed for a really long time.
I do think that what you said about this being a relay race is true because even though we are at this really amazing moment, it is going to hopefully continue on because people are so much more interested in non-monogamy and non-traditional relationships now than I feel like they even were when we were all in our teens and 20s. I just wanted to acknowledge that and acknowledge what you said because I was like, "Yes. That's absolutely true," or at least I hope it is.
Brett: I think so. If you look at the survey data, there's actually a really interesting 2023 poll survey by a polling firm called YouGov. Folks can Google it or drop it in the show notes maybe. Really, I encourage people to take a look because it's very, very interesting data set. One of the things you'll see is the massively increasing interest in non-monogamy among younger generations. I think that as we have seen this expanded acceptance of gender identity and sexual orientation, non-monogamy is part of this broader bucking off of the prescriptive nature of normative society. I'm really excited to see where that leads.
Jase: Thank you so much, Brett, for your insights for sharing some of your knowledge from all your years of experience with us and for helping to really lead the important work that OPEN is doing to advance these rights and protections and acceptance for non-monogamous people. To our listeners, we want to encourage all of you to engage with OPEN. They have all these amazing resources as Brett mentioned, to make it easy for you to get involved at the local level and also to get involved with the organization.
That hopefully together, we can all work towards a more inclusive society that recognizes and respects diverse relationship structures. Brett, is there any last pieces you would like to share with our audience in terms of, maybe reiterate where they can go for some of these resources, how they can get involved, and what would be some easy things for them to start doing?
Brett: Yes. Thanks so much, Jase. We'd encourage folks to, first of all, mark your calendars for the week of visibility for non-monogamy. Again, that will be July 15th through 21st. That's Monday through Sunday, the 20th and the 21st are the weekend. You can learn more at weekofvisibility.com, and there's going to be all sorts of great in-person events and online activities hosting. We're really encouraging folks to organize event in your community. This is a global celebration with a lot of ways to participate and would really love to invite you to check it out and participate.
You can also learn more about OPEN's work overall and check out some of our programs and resources at open-love.org. If you visit open-love.org/hello, you can find links to all of our social media, to our community Discord where you can chat with other advocates and community members, and where you can make a contribution to support our work and help us keep doing what we're doing.
Jase: Awesome. Thank you so much, Brett. For anyone who does join that Discord, you'll see me in there sometimes as well. I think Emily and Dedeker, if you're not in there, you should be.
Dedeker: I'm in the Discord.
Jase: You are. Great.
Dedeker: We're around.
Emily: I will get in there as well. Amazing.