Sexual Insurrection

Polyamorists Vie for Mainstream Acceptance

Background:

Bryan and Sheila DeBlonk opened a political consulting firm in their home state of California after they got married, and for many years they specialized in strategic messaging and political lobbying around education.¹ Brett Chamberlain, too, specializes in strategic messaging. As a political activist, he advocated for sustainable waste management until 2021, when he hooked up with Sheila and Bryan and took up education.²

Several years ago, Bryan and Sheila co-founded the Orgy Dome, a “theme camp” attraction at Burning Man.³ (Burning Man is a week-long hedonism-fest that draws some 70,000 people to the Nevada desert every summer.) The Orgy Dome is billed as a “safe space for social sexuality [for] couples and moresomes,” and as part of the Orgy Dome experience, Brett now provides “robust consent education.”⁴

In 2022, the three cofounded the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-Monogamy (OPEN), a San Francisco Bay area nonprofit founded to normalize “ethical non-monogamy,” which they also refer to as “consensual non-monogamy.”⁵

Reason for Surveillance:

So it turns out that the “education” interest around which this threesome has coalesced is “consent education.” “Consent” is rapidly becoming the last-standing moral line delineating permissible sex (or any sex-related act) from the impermissible.

According to the website, OPEN envisions “a future where romantic and intimate relationships between consenting adults are accepted and protected regardless of relationship structure, gender identity, or sexual orientation” (emphasis in original). Their work also involves “fighting censorship, eliminating discrimination based on gender or sexual identity or family form, and protecting the right to engage in consensual sexual activity and expression.”

But in the U.S., consenting adults are already free to engage in as much group sex as they want. (Polyamorists call these groups “polycules.”) So, it’s unclear exactly what “right” or protections OPEN intends to fight for. What is clear is that they are out to make group sex more visible and to change other people’s opinions about it. Consent education is a way of “seeding a new understanding of enthusiastic consent into the global culture.”⁶ As they stated on Facebook, “OPEN aims to bring awareness of non-monogamy to everyday people, communities, and legislators so that it can begin to be normalized.”

Most Recent Campaign:

One of OPEN’s first moves was to lead an effort to petition Facebook to expand options for relationship status so users could list multiple intimate partners on their profiles. In an open letter signed by eleven individuals, some of whom represented organizations, Brett said that failure to do so was exclusionary and thus potentially harmful to non-monogamous users.

This request would be comical, were it not such a devastating comment on the state of America’s outlook regarding sex and marriage. Sex can be wonderful and intimate and romantic, and in healthy contexts, very positive. But sex can also be exploitative and degrading and controlling and violently abusive.

The best sex-positive arrangement ever devised for maximizing the former and minimizing the latter is monogamy. Monogamy requires the physically stronger and more aggressive male to orient his sexuality around the more vulnerable partner in the relationship (and their offspring). It’s also the safest setting for sex and the one that delivers the most long-term benefits for all. De-normalizing it would be an all-out loss for human love, dignity, and flourishing.

Notes
1. civicwell.org/people; open-love.org/team
2. brettchamberl.in/about
3. open-love.org/team
4. orgydome.com/index.php/about-us
5. drive.google.com/file/d/1-Z3YDKyAqpTqvgsCvkW9uNTTNlSHaLnU/view
6. orgydome.com/index.php/about-us