Winding up the policy consultations

• By Zoe
• Posted in Announcement, Blog
• On August 26, 2010
• No Comments.

It’s time to start getting the rest of the policy statements adopted.

They’ve been up for discussion for several months, with minimal feedback, most of it positive or neutral. In all probability, we’re going to end up adopting policies very similar to the suggestions unless somebody clearly objects soon.

Just to be clear, we want to hear from all interested community members. You do not have to be a CPAA member, you do not have to be a CPAA volunteer, and you don’t even have to be poly. In fact, we will listen to comments from people who don’t even approve of polyamory, provided that they are civil, offer something constructive, and don’t pretend to be speaking for poly people.

We can’t guarantee to actually act on every comment, no matter who it comes from. We want to represent the consensus of the polyamorous community, but there will always be a few genuine community members who disagree with anything we say. Nonetheless, we will at least consider every comment. We’re doing our level best to address all significant concerns, and to reflect the views and values broadly accepted among those identified with the label “polyamory”.

In order to adopt the statements, we need final text. The procedure is to issue a “last call” for each proposal, and allow a comment period during which the text is “frozen” so people can give up or down opinions. If we make any changes to the text, we need to start another comment period.

Anybody who even suspect he or she might possibly want to suggest any changes to any of the statements, or to object to any of them outright, should therefore do so now.

Here are the statements:

• Patriarchal polygyny, isolated communities, religious excesses, etc.

  This is the longest one, the trickiest one, the one most likely to need changes, and one of the two we probably need first after the fundamental statement. I think it’s the top priority.

  I may suggest that we modify this one before last call to make a slightly bigger distinction between the “autocratic” aspect of groups like the FLDS and their “patriarchal” aspect. There are some other comments that may need to be addressed, including one with detailed text suggested. It’d be great to get other opinions on those comments. I’ll also review the text in the light of what I know about patriarchal polygyny that I didn’t know when the suggestion was drafted.

• Child brides in Canada

  Probably less controversial than the patriarchal polygyny statement, but definitely an issue where want to be clearly in the right. There’s some optional/additional text that was posted at the same time as the basic statement, and there hasn’t been much feedback on whether or not to include it.

• Definition of polyamory

  This one is the least complete and least fleshed out. And I’m quite surprised by the related poll results. Anybody who’s not satisfied with the definition we’re using now should really try to get the debate moving on this one… and it looks like that’s a lot of people.

• Official poly marriage

  This one will probably take a huge amount of discussion, but I don’t think it’s critical that we have it right away. However, if the discussion doesn’t actually *happen*, then we will *never* have a statement, even when the time comes for us to need one. So let’s not ignore this one.

• Fundamental policy

  Already in last call, although there’s a chance it may come out again.