Whether it’s cute young gentleman claiming to be from HRC begging for our credit card number outside a grocery store or a gal standing outside Starbucks hoping we’ll sign her petition to legalize marijuana, there’s a reason we don’t sign our names to documents thrust in front of our faces: Because we never know what, exactly, we’re putting our names on. Just like Chai Feldblum, the lesbian Obama wants to become one of five chairs of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, who now very much regrets attaching her name to a petition that supports polygamy.
Already the subject of the Family Research Council’s attack plan, Feldblum faced Senate confirmation hearings this week, where Iowa Democrat Sen. Tom Harkin (chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) quizzed her on a petition that supported “committed loving households in which there are more than one conjugal partner,” which to Harkin sounded an awful lot like advocating polygamy. Us too!
But Feldblum was quick to revoke her support: “‘I do not support polygamy,” she told Harkin. “‘I am sorry I signed that document and I have asked that my name be removed.” (It has yet to be.)
Not that Harkin was really attacking Feldblum. Quite the contrary. He appeared he was setting up an obvious out for Feldblum to rescind her support for the petition, and thus wave off any attacks from conservatives. Metro Weekly:
How about we take this to the next level?
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Harkin suggested that he and Feldblum, like many people in public life, often have petitions put in front of them with requests – from friends and colleagues — to sign on. Feldblum said that was the case with this statement. She said while she agreed with the ”general thrust” of the overall statement ”about support for the range of caregiving relationships,” the full statement ”goes beyond what I would have said and it was mistake to sign it.”
So remember, even if you never think you’ll one day hold public office, don’t sign your name to any random petition. Blank checks addressed to Queerty? Those are fine.
Travis King
It was a mistake? She’s sorry she signed it? So much for marriage equality, eh?If I weren’t a member of the LGBT community myself, I’d say I was sorry for supporting her right to marry whom she loves. Marriage = 1 person + 1 person is just as discriminatory as Marriage = 1 man + 1 woman.
Attmay
@1 Travis King:
“Marriage = 1 person + 1 person is just as discriminatory as Marriage = 1 man + 1 woman.”
Polygamy is not a sexual orientation. Sexual orientation is not a choice. The number of spouses and/or sexual partners is.
Travis King
Sexual orientation is not a choice, that’s right. Biologically, monogamy seems not really to be a choice either, but a social construct. Multiple-partnering–at the very least a serial form of monogamy–seems to be the norm, and if you delve into ongoing studies of monogamy vs. polygamy there is evidence for genetic conditions that make a person more likely to be able to accept the social conditioning.
I certainly don’t support misogynistic, unequal marriages in which one man dominates a number of women, but I am polyamorous and believe–nay, know–that it’s possible to love more than one person equally at a time, something that causes problems in a mononormative society. It is my opinion–note opinion–and that of many others of the polyamorous community that full marriage equality should include the possibility of marriage between more than two consenting adults in a stable, loving relationship.
Love is love, as I said before, and that’s what matters. It’s often said that you can’t help who you fall in love with–which would mean, in essence, that it’s not a choice either.
Farbo
People should be allowed to organize there families as they see fit. As long as there is no abuse or explotation.