WilmerHale Earns HRC Foundation Corporate Equality Index Perfect Score

Many of my friends have heard me rave about WilmerHale, the law firm where I am employed. In addition to it's preeminent pro bono program, one of the reasons I love it is it's commitment to workplace equality.  It also manages to combine both those focuses by devoting the time and energy of some of the best legal talent in the country to helping advance marriage equality and repeal the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy that discriminates against LGBTs who are serving our country in the military.
 

Today it was announced that for the second year in a row the firm has received a perfect score of 100 in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's annual Corporate Equality Index (CEI) survey for 2010 and labeled it amongst it's "Best Places to work."  "Legal work in this country is deeply rooted in our nation's core values of equality and justice for all, and law firms continue to set the gold standard for treating their LGBT employees fairly" said HRC Foundation President Joe Solmonese in a  recent press release.

It seems that law firms in general are strong leaders in creating environments that are welcoming to LGBT employees. As an out bisexual woman, in the ten years I've been employed at WilmerHale I have never had the slightest concern about my job security due to my sexual orientation.  I'm also out at work as polyamorous, and likewise, I've come under no pressure or scrutiny for being so.   

So if you're LGBT and seeking work in a law firm where you'll feel welcome, check us out, and if you apply, please let them know that I proudly referred you.  For even a lifelong employer you can't go wrong.  Openly gay WilmerHale paralegal Brian Boyer, who passed away a week ago from cancer, worked for the firm for 36 years.

Abercrombie & Fitch Pitches New Silly T-Shirts To America's Youth Angering Religious Right

UPDATE:  After a variety of comments on this post both here and over on my facebook profile where it was cross-posted,  I'm now convinced that this is a far from ideal set of circumstances to choose for a buycott on behalf of sex positivity.  Many thanks to all those who have offered sound and important observations. 

Woodhull's work is generally very good and worth supporting.  On rare occasions we activists can and do miss the mark, usually, or at least in my own case, due to haste to get a story out and move on to other pressing matters.   - Anita

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Thanks to the Woodhull Freedom Foundation for the heads-up on this one.

Join the BuyCott! Call Abercrombie & Fitch at 614-283-6500 (press "0" for a live person) and let them know you support their right to sell and their customers' right to buy their "sex can be fun" tee shirts.

Abercrombie & Fitch  is being attacked by the religious right for selling these three tee shirts as part of its "New College" line of T-shirts.

Abercrombie & Fitch does not merely sell a popular line of clothing - they sell a lifestyle. And because A&F clothing is popular among teens and college kids, the influence of their sex-as-recreation lifestyle is widespread. If you feel like encouraging this lighter side of sex and showing the religious right that this is a free country help the BuyCott--buy one or more of these shirts.

FACTS!

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The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention reports that Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) remain a major public health challenge in the United States. CDC estimates that approximately 19 million new infections occur each year- almost half of them among young people 15 to 24 years of age.

In the past decade more than one billion dollars in federal funding has been doled out for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. In contrast, there has been no federal funding at all for comprehensive sex education. Thus the raging STDs?

Whether you buy a tee shirt or not drop a note to your local school board, state legislators, and your Congress member and Senators, encourage them to fund comprehensive sex education!

Camilla of The Daily Loaf on Jealousy and Polyamory

As many people know, I am a frequent presenter at poly and alternative sexuality conferences on managing jealousy in polyamorous relationships. I'm always interested in hearing others' perspectives on the subject, and today the online publication Creative Loafing has published a very good column on the subject. (I am also flattered to be mentioned as a resource.)

I also love the graphic they've added. No, it doesn't always look like this - but we do have our blissful moments!

From the article, here's a great example of a wise strategy for sorting out one's own feelings when jealousy is making itself felt. Kudos to Camilla (and thanks for the props!)

Now, I sometimes hold off on talking to the lover in question until I can answer two questions:

a) What am I actually pissy about?

b) Why am I pissy about this?

Once I can answer those two questions, I’m more likely to communicate my feelings better. That’s not to say that answering those two questions results in smooth sailing. Mr. Chaotic is still jealous/envious of the amount of time The Puppy gets to see me. The Puppy and I are still prone to mistranslating the other’s concerns as jealousy. We’re just better at dealing with it now than we were years before.

The Polyamorous Misanthrope - "I Thought We Were POLY"

To all of you out there who are still learning about boundary setting, what expectations are appropriate and what are not, check out The Polyamorous Misanthrope/Goddess of Java's latest blog post, very good advice.  She has a gift for sorting out the subtleties of such situations.

Monogamy Men to Fight Dominant Culture

Monogamy Men to Fight Dominant Culture

Former Reagan-era appointee Patrick Fagan said in Amsterdam that two competing cultures of sexual morality are contending for the surrounding society. It is time for monogamy men to fight for what is right.

From Spero News by Austin Ruse dated today, August 20, 2009

Patrick Fagan, family scholar at the Family Research Council, told the
World Congress of Families last week in Amsterdam that there are two competing cultures of sexual morality and that both have a profound effect on culture and public policy. Fagan called one culture “monogamous” and the other “polymorphous” and he warned that one is “snatching” children from the other.

Fagan told the audience that “the culture of the traditional family is now in intense competition with a very different culture. The defining difference between the two is the sexual ideal embraced [by each].” He described an “elegance in the simplicity of the ideals behind the two cultures: monogamy and polymorphous serial polygamy, or ‘polyamory' for short.“

You can read the rest of the article at the link above. I am aghast at the lengths to which we are being demonized, and by a highly-visible, ostensibly intelligent, well-educated man who evenso obviously knows nothing about polyamory. He credits (or discredits) us with infinitely more power than we as a community or movement desire or will likely ever actually have. And the very idea that we are somehow "snatching" children from the monogamous overculture is simply absurd.  That said, I do believe it is possible that as future, more open-minded generations come along, more and more people will recognize the wisdom of having an alternative to monogamy, because that's what works better for some - not all - people. This is not information that can feasibly be withheld from children. Still, nobody's snatching anyone's innocence. Shedding light that badly needs to be shed is more like it.

There's a very good analysis of this statement here written by Austin Open Relationships Examiner Sadie Smythe.

Oh the Irony! Parenting Video Parallels Polyamory

Update: Twice now the video below has disappeared from YouTube. I've just discovered it on another diaper company website. Should the video below disappear yet again, you can (hopefully) also see it here.
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My daughter, who is the mother of two small children and to whom I am out as poly, just sent me this video. I am amazed and delighted, though also a bit bemused. Many a poly person has under analogous circumstances had a very similar conversation with a significant other. Of course, not adding a new partner until existing partners give their consent is a much better and more ethical strategy, but that would ruin the gag here.

The video originally appeared on a diaper company's website in the UK (not anymore) and also appears on a second diaper company's site. Surely only a poly or poly-aware person would choose this approach for an educational video for parents who are working out how to introduce a child to a new sibling. It would seem that someone at the diaper companies (or their ad agencies) sees it as a cool way of attracting today's generation of parents with young children.

Could it be that polyamory really is beginning to infiltrate western mainstream culture to such an extent as this???

Tristan and Colten Got Married!

Tristan Taormino and her partner, Colten, were married the first weekend in August in the Catskills. They are two of my most favorite people, and I'm so happy for them, especially since Tristian is lesbian and Colten is transgendered. It's good to see people I've known a long time finally have the right to make their union legal.

Amongst many, many other things, Tristan is the author of the polyamory guide book Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships, in which I had the privilege of playing a minor role and which I reviewed when it was published in 2008. I still highly recommend it to anyone who wants to figure out what poyamory is all about and how it might work for them and their partner/spouse.

Colten is Tristan's tireless partner in business as well as love and juggles an amazing amount of work that supports Tristan's various endeavors and their joint endeavors.

Congratulations and much love to Tristan and Colten!