UK Removes China From Official COVID-19 Statistics Over Wonky Death Toll
The UK has removed China from its official coronavirus statistics due to the CCP’s insistence that just 4,636 people have died of the disease despite clear evidence to the contrary.
According to the Daily Mail, the move is a snub due to Beijing’s early attempts to cover-up the outbreak in the wake of accusations that China and the World Health Organization (WHO) colluded to downplay the situation.
The people of Wuhan believe the death toll in their city that was the epicentre of the outbreak is 42,000 – not the 3,182 claimed by China.
In America, the Trump administration is ramping up its attacks on Beijing – blaming President Xi’s government for letting COVID-19 spread across the globe unchecked while the Communist regime saved face.
Trump is backed by large numbers of Republican politicians amid claims from the US intelligence community that the virus escaped from a lab near Wuhan in an accident involving an intern. –Daily Mail
In March, scientific advisers warned UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson that China’s official numbers could be ‘downplayed by a factor of 15 to 40 times.’
“There is a disgusting disinformation campaign going on and it is unacceptable,” an anonymous government source told The Mail.
“They [the Chinese government] know they have got this badly wrong and rather than owning it they are spreading lies.”
“It is going to be back to the diplomatic drawing board after this. Rethink is an understatement,” another government source said, with a further source adding that “There has to be a reckoning when this is over.” -Daily Mail
Meanwhile, Radio Free Asia (funded by the US State Department) reported in late March that “seven large funeral homes in Wuhan have been handing out the cremated remains of around 500 people to their families every day, suggesting that far more people died than ever made the official statistics.”
The Mail also points out that while China was lying about the disease’s transmissibility, Wuhan hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people – right before millions embarked on global travel to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
China has also come under fire for silencing and arresting doctors and journalists in Wuhan who tried to warn people about the seriousness of the emerging disease.
Even the mayor of Wuhan suggested in an interview with Chinese state television that Communist Party leadership prohibited him from warning the public until January 20.
By the time Xi issued the public warning, more than 3,000 people had been infected during almost a week of public silence, according to internal documents and expert estimates based on retrospective infection data. -Daily Mail
So, as of Friday, the UK will no longer show China on charts detailing international coronavirus cases and deaths.
Police in Tasmania, Australia, say they are using a rescue helicopter to patrol for people violating a stay-at-home order. If the helicopter spots someone on the road, the pilot will alert police to check and make sure that are out for an essential reason. And in remote areas that a police vehicle may not be able to reach, the helicopter might land and warn people to return home.
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“Is China Winning?” This was the cover headline that the British weekly The Economist unfurled earlier this month for a lengthy report on how the major powers might emerge out of the current coronavirus crisis.
This is not the first time that a section of Western media, often including The Economist, pronounce the Western democracies, especially the United States, as losers in comparison with rivals and/or enemies.
In the 1980s, the magazine beat the drums for “Japan As Number One”, echoing Ezra Vogel’s book-length rodomontade for the so-called “faultless economic model.”
In the 1990s, The Economist, with President Suharto on its cover, predicted the rise of Indonesia as one of the world’s top economic powers.
And in 2005, the magazine offered another sensational cover with the headline: “Has Iran Won?”
But to return to China “winning”, the issue at hand, one might question the very premise of the presumed game in which the People’s Republic is supposed to emerge ahead of the pack. As a global catastrophe, rather than a stage for international competition, Covid-19 is unlikely to produce any winners.
Even if “winning” is intended to refer to the extent of the human and economic damage caused by the pandemic, predicting China’s triumph may be open to question. At the time of writing, Beijing has admitted to 82,000 cases of Covid-19 and 4,632 deaths, remarkable for a population of over 1.5 billion.
If true, the figures are even more remarkable when compared with figures concerning Western Europe and the United States. However, the key here is the phrase “if true”. Should we take at face value the assertion that Covid-19 has claimed six times more victims in Spain than in China with a population 30 times higher?
The assumption that China is “winning” is also based on the clam that Beijing has been in the forefront of rushing aid to nations across the globe to face the Covid-19 challenge, thus enhancing the reputation of the People’s Republic as a true international player.
But even that claim is open to scrutiny. While the European Union, acting through the Paris Club, has decreed a moratorium on the repayment of debts by the world’s poorest nations, Beijing has refused to offer the slightest relief to more than 70 nations, mostly in Africa, that it has dragged into debt since the 1990s. During the crisis, the People’s Republic has also embarked on a number of shenanigans unworthy of a great power.
Last January, no doubt underestimating the threat to France itself, President Emmanuel Macron made a gift of five million surgical masks to the People’s Republic. When it became clear, just three weeks later, that France itself might urgently need the masks, Beijing came out with a barrage of excuses to avoid restitution. And when the French agreed to buy masks at three times the price, China signed the contract but sold a good part of the masks at five times the price to last-minute private buyers from the United States. Beijing has played the same trick on a number of other countries, notably Chile, which last week lodged formal protest.
The People’s Republic’s insidious claims that the pandemic may have been concocted by foreign enemies has done much damage to China’s reputation. In several Chinese cities, African students and migrant works were assaulted by mobs or driven out of their jobs and apartments after being fingered out as “virus carriers.” The result has been a deterioration of relations with a number of African states, among them Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda.
The Chinese ambassadors to Paris and Tehran did even better by running to intervene in the domestic debate about how to deal with the pandemic. In Paris, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian summoned Beijing’s envoy to Quai d’Orsay and read him the riot act. In Tehran, the Islamic Republic officials lacked the courage to do the same with the Chinese ambassador because Tehran thinks it may one day need Beijing’s veto at the United Nations. However, the media, including social media, did what was needed to remind Beijing of its man’s diplomatic faux-pas.
The suspicion that Covid-19 may have leaked by mistake through a laboratory in China has affected the People’s Republic image in many countries, notably the United States, Italy, France, Germany, South Korea and Japan. We cannot express any definite opinion on the claim because we lack the needed evidence. But one thing is certain: public opinion in many countries is today more hostile to doing business with China. And that could adversely affect both normal trade and “sweetheart” deals like the one Britain planned to conclude with Huawei.
Campaigns to boycott Chinese goods have already started in more than 40 countries on all continents. These may fizzle out as the world returns to normal; but the damage done to China’s image should not been underestimated.
Claims that China may have been manipulating some international bodies, including the World Health Organization (WHO), can’t be substantiated but open a whole new chapter in probing Beijing’s behavior.
What about the economic aspect of the crisis? Could China do better than other major economies? Predictions for most major economies, including the US and the EU, indicate a fall in the gross domestic product of 8 to 10 percent for 2020 with mass unemployment hitting the 30 percent mark. Figures projected for China by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are less dramatic. But the trouble as always with statistics concerning the Peoples’ Republic, is whether the official data on which they are based could be trusted.
However, guessing the economic impact of the pandemic depends on how one sees the current crisis. Ben Bernanke, former boss of the US Federal Reserve, sees the crisis as “much closer to a major snowstorm or a natural disaster than a 1930-style depression.” In contrast, Bernard Cohen, former economic adviser to the French prime minister, foresees a depression deeper than the one triggered by the classical Wall Street crash.
Well, we don’t know what will happen.
But, in this opinion, even if we assume the classical “crash” as a model, democracies from Japan, Taiwan and South Korea to EU and the US and Canada are in a better position to absorb the shock than could be what in 1932 Chesterton called China’s “coolie capitalism.”
“I Want My Life Back” – German Anti-Lockdown Protests Worsen
More than a thousand anti-quarantine protesters turned out for a rally in the German capital, Berlin, on Saturday, resulting in dozens of arrests. This is a continuation from last weekend as social decay worsens.
Saturday’s protest saw mainly leftist activist but also a mix of right-wing folks. Police were armed with riot gear and weapons, posted up around Rosa Luxemburg square.
Protesters yelled, “I want my life back” and displayed signs that said, “Protect constitutional rights,” “Freedom isn’t everything, but without freedom, everything is nothing,” and “Daddy, what is a kiss?” reported Reuters.
Protesters handed out flyers entitled “Democratic Resistance,” which stated the COVID-19 pandemic is ushering in the surveillance state as the government seizes power by spreading fear.
Police spokesman Thilo Cablitz said the city approved an event where people were to hand out flyers and follow social distancing rules — but it eventually transformed into a protest that got out of hand.
“During coronavirus times and according to containment regulations, we are obliged to prevent a gathering,” Cablitz said.
Some protesters abided by social distancing rules while others blatantly ignored, and were visibly upset, calling for an end of the government lockdown. Here are some of the scenes that unfolded in Berlin on Saturday:
🇩🇪 GERMANY – The police in Berlin give a speech against the protest of citizens against the lockdown measures.
In the middle of Berlin another Saturday protest is underway against the lockdown measures introduced – and slowly being lifted – by the Germany government. #COVID19
Social unrest has not only been limited to Germany. We noted last week that Paris experienced riots as people are losing their minds in quarantine.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, Germany has reported 157,177 confirmed cases and 5,913 deaths on Sunday. The country is the fourth hardest-hit area in Europe, behind France, Italy, and Spain.
Unrest in Germany comes at a time when Italy has started to lift lockdown restrictions, now allowing certain shops to reopen. Small and medium-sized businesses have been coming back online in recent days.
Italian Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte has called on the European Union to issue it “corona-bonds” to help it restart its economy after plunging into chaos amid one of the worst outbreaks in the bloc.
Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, has had some push back on the Italian corona-bond idea. And just maybe, Italy is prematurely opening its economy to secretly force a second virus wave that would send its economy into a double-dip depression that would force Germany and the European Union to issue it corona-bonds.
Things are getting messy in Europe as social unrest appears be the evolution of the virus crisis.
Police in Tasmania, Australia, say they are using a rescue helicopter to patrol for people violating a stay-at-home order. If the helicopter spots someone on the road, the pilot will alert police to check and make sure that are out for an essential reason. And in remote areas that a police vehicle may not be able to reach, the helicopter might land and warn people to return home.
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Nurses at a hospital in Paris took a break from dealing with coronavirus patients to re-create Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper painting with themselves playing the part of Jesus and his apostles.
The image was posted on the Instagram page of the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière.
“HUGE THANKS TO OUR DAILY HEROES!” said the message accompanying the post.
“And big up to the care team of the Cardiac Surgery unit of the CHU de la Pitié-Salpetrière for this masterpiece.”
To say that this image suggestively deifies health workers would be somewhat of an understatement.
Although health care workers across the western world have been widely celebrated for their front line role in fighting COVID-19, some are beginning to view their social media antics as narcissistic and insensitive.
As we highlighted yesterday, families of cancer victims, who are unable to access treatment because hospitals are devoted to COVID-19, also expressed their displeasure at health workers for spending time dancing for Tik Tok videos.
In addition, a woman in the United Kingdom who failed to participate in the weekly activity of applauding the NHS because she fell asleep was subsequently publicly named and shamed on Facebook.
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Norges Bank Considers Revoking Offer To Incoming Wealth Fund CEO After Left Wing Outrage Campaign
The scandal unfolding at Norway’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund, one of the largest piles of oil capital in the world, is beginning to look less like an unseemly glimpse into the incestuous world of Norway’s elite, and more like a textbook case of a cynical tabloid press emboldening critics on the far left.
On Friday, outgoing fund CEO Yngve Slyngstad’s delivered an apology that surprised even the financial press with its seeming sincerity. In it, Slyngstad mused about how one bone-headed decision had destroyed the public trust he had carefully built over two decades.
Julie Brodtkorb, chair of the supervisory council of Norges Bank, has said the central bank will decide by Tuesday whether to hold an extraordinary meeting to look into whether the executive board of the central bank followed the proper protocols in appointing Tangen. But we suspect they will find that the proper procedures were, in fact, followed, since Tangen’s explanation of how he ended up with the job has been widely corroborated, and clearly rules out a quid-pro-quo, an idea that was, as we said, pretty tenuous to begin with.
The fact is, Tangen is making an enormous financial sacrifice to accept the position to lead the sovereign wealth fund. He will take a huge pay cut, and will also be forced to pay Norway’s onermous wealth tax, something his annual salary won’t even cover. He’s essentially paying to hold the job, something Tangen – a native Norwegian – once called “a dream.”
However, the press and Norway’s political establishment are all furious at Tangen for organizing an extravagant seminar at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, where Slyngstad and several other Norwegian power players (including the country’s attorney general) attended. Slyngstad attended the seminar shortly after announcing his decision to step down from the leadership of the sovereign wealth fund, a decision that triggered a scramble by the central bank to find a successor who was as well-qualified as Slyngstad.
Details about the seminar (which included performances by Sting and Gregory Porter) were published by a Norwegian tabloid, which kicked off the scandal. Many on the left raised an eyebrow when the central bank announced that it had appointed Tangen to take over the fund. The staid Norwegian culture leaves little room for Tangen’s flashy hedge funder lifestyle. Bloomberg reported that many Norwegians might “struggle to regard Tangen as a public servant” because of the coverage.
The crux of the scandal at the central bank is that Tangen’s decision to invite Slyngstad, and then fly him back to Oslo on a private jet, a decision that he said was made to save Slyngstad the trouble of taking a train back to New York from Pennsylvania to catch a flight back to Norway, was read as a possible quid pro quo. However, that’s a pretty tenuous connection to begin with: the gift, while seemingly excessive to the common man, is merely a rounding error for Tangen.
Plus, the timeline of events, as well as the explanations supplied by Tangen and Slyngstad, appear to support their claims that there was no quid pro quo, and that Slyngstad didn’t have much, if any, role in selecting Tangen as his replacement.
Tangen said he didn’t apply for the position of leading the sovereign wealth fund; instead, he was contacted by head hunters from executive recruitment firm Russel Reynolds. That story has been corroborated by everybody involved.
In an effort to “make things right,” the Norges Bank has insisted on reimbursing Tangen for the cost of Slyngstad’s flight and seminar attendance. What we want to know is: How is sticking the Norwegian taxpayer with the tab for these extravagances supposed to quell their anger? Then again, we aren’t Norwegian, and don’t have any first-hand experience with the culture.
Still, the affair has dominated Norwegian media, thanks largely to left-wing politicians and union leaders who are now insisting that the central bank reconsider Tangen’s appointment, arguing that the ‘jetsetter’ isn’t the right candidate for Norway. Norges Bank’s Supervisory Council, the wealth fund’s watchdog, has given the central bank until April 29 to answer a list of questions surrounding the recruitment process.
These criticisms, however, fail to take several important factors into account: As we mentioned above, Tangen is making personal sacrifices in terms of his wealth just to accept the decision, which undermines the quid-pro-quo argument, since Tangen has nothing to gain – reputationally or financially – from taking the job. He says it’s a personal dream of his to run the fund. There’s no reason to doubt this.
In reality, these outraged left-wingers are hurting Norway: Knut Kjaer, the founding CEO of the wealth fund, told the FT that hiring Tangen was “a stroke of luck” for the fund. As we mentioned above, many feared that someone as qualified as Tangen wouldn’t emerge, despite the fund’s largess.
EU lead negotiator for the free trade agreement with the United Kingdom is complaining in the press again.
“The United Kingdom cannot refuse to extend the transition and at the same time slow down progress in important areas,” Barnier said, expressing concern that Britain has not presented concrete proposals for certain contentious issues, but did not name the areas, according to DPA news agency.
Except the problem here is there’s no manager to talk to because Prime Minister Boris Johnson isn’t listening.
The typical EU negotiations looks like this, according to former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis.
You walk in with a well thought out proposal, present it in detail thinking it’s the beginning of a negotiation only to find they aren’t listening at all and look at you like you’ve just sung the Swedish National Anthem.
Well it looks like Boris Johnson and the Brits are treating Barnier and the EU with the same vague contempt that he and the EU treat everyone else and guess what?
Karen doesn’t like it.
Remember, the Brits have ask for an extension by June 30th to extend this transition period they are in for another two years or negotiations end on December 31st.
If no trade deal is agreed to by the two sides by then, trade between them on WTO terms commences. Given the current state of EU politics and its sinking economic conditions the likelihood of the U.K. giving Barnier even the time of day at this point is pretty low.
He’s behaved appallingly at every stage of these discussions, going back three years, treating the Brits like a bunch of wayward children and the EU the assuming the role of the abusive, distant father.
If, at this late date, Barnier is accusing the Brits of stalling and complaining about it publicly then there is no deal and Johnson is dead set on a hard Brexit.
Because while Boris may look like a buffoon, he’s as shrewd a political operator as there is.
Because we all know what the real story is here, the EU wants to soak the U.K. for the next two and a half years while making them liable for hundreds of billions of pounds to bail out the European banking system.
That’s why they are pushing for an extension. That’s why they are putting non-starter proposals on the table, if any at all.
And there’s zero political will in the U.K. to give the EU another shilling.
And that provides the dynamic to ensure there will be no tariffs put in place in the event of a hard Brexit. Because if they do it will gut what’s left of German exports to the U.K. and its now-suffocating automobile industry.
It means the Germans will set a ruthless agenda in the second half of this year in budget talks while it has the Presidency of the European Commission.
However, it also means that Italy will have a lot of leverage since the Germans don’t want to go back to the Deutschemark anymore than Italy wants to stay in the euro under the current arrangement. A new mark would be far stronger than the euro would be without Germany in it.
And that would also crush German exports.
I have to wonder at this point whether Merkel will reverse course on all of the terrible things she’s done to the German economy in the next six months. She has to realize, with her now commanding lead in the polls, she no longer needs the Greens to govern and doesn’t need to encourage them anymore.
Because their agenda is toxic in the post-COVID-19 world economy. German industry is now severely disadvantaged in a world of $15-20 per barrel oil and $1.50 mcf Natural gas.
Today the Green energy agenda makes zero sense.
No amount of stimulus or green spending as championed by ECB President Christine Lagarde will save the European economy and political system. Moreover, the harder ball the Brits play with Barnier over a trade deal, the more they play the Swedish National Anthem game the more countries like Italy will see Brussels for the inept, dysfunctional paper tiger it is.
And everyone may just get all those funny ideas the Brits had in 2016.
A Navy Destroyer Is Heading To Port, Crippled By Another COVID-19 Outbreak At Sea
Will yet another major US Navy warship be disabled by the coronavirus pandemic like the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier fiasco?
The Navy now reports its Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, the USS Kidd has at least 33 confirmed COVID-19 cases among the crew, nearly doubling in the last few days from an initial 18 cases reported last Thursday.
Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Kidd transits the Pacific Ocean last July, via AFP/DoD.
The destroyer has a total crew of 350 and is currently off the Pacific coast of South America. Its mission is reportedly related to US counter-narcotics operations off coastal waters of South America.
At least two sailors have been medically evacuated from the ship to military hospitals in San Antonio, and the destroyer has since begun returning to port for deep a disinfecting cleaning and further testing of crew.
“The first patient transported is already improving and will self-isolate. We are taking every precaution to ensure we identify, isolate, and prevent any further spread onboard the ship,” commander US Naval Forces Southern Command and 4th Fleet, Rear Admiral Don Gabrielson, said.
The Navy also indicated all crew have donned N95 masks and other personal protective equipment in efforts to contain the spread.
Furthermore an amphibious assault ship identified as the USS Makin Island has been sent to aid the USS Kidd at sea. The Makin Island reportedly has a team of naval doctors aboard, including intensive care capacity and ventilators.
The USS Kidd plans to ramp up testing of all its crew as fears mount of another possible USS Roosevelt catastrophe. In that ongoing crisis the nuclear carrier starting late last month into April was stricken with over 850 coronavirus cases, among a crew of almost 5,000 – forcing it to dock at Guam and cut short its mission in the West Pacific.
It was only a few months ago that someone last treated Cassie Johns like a freak.
During a doctor’s office visit in February, she was asked to list her emergency contacts. Johns, a preschool teacher in Seattle, wrote down two people — Chris and Joan — and identified both as her “partners.” They are two of the four romantic interests Johns has been involved with for many years.
“‘Oh, that’s so dirty,’” Johns recalled the receptionist saying.
“And the receptionist literally stepped back from me, in a doctor’s office.”
Johns, 58, is a polyamorist. She follows a non-monogamous lifestyle in which multiple partners give each other consent to date and have sex with others. Johns’s longest polyamorous relationship has lasted 36 years, twice as long as her former marriage to a polyamorous man. She talks openly about her partners to her preschool students and others.
Scene from a recent TV episode of “House Hunters” featuring three adults searching for a home to build their polyamorous nest. Freepik/Wikimedia. Top Credit: YouTube/People TV/ HGTV
But her forthrightness has a price.
“I have lost jobs, I’ve lost an apartment, I’ve lost a car loan,” because of her lifestyle, Johns said.
“I’ve lost friendly relations with neighbors.”
Despite the acceptance of campus hook-up culture and Tinder-arranged trysts, more intentional forms of consensual non-monogamy – which can include polygamy, polyamory, open marriages, group marriages, swinging and “relationship anarchy” – are highly stigmatized. Such behavior is widely considered to be abusive, immoral, or emotionally stunted. People in such relationships not only face rudeness and public shaming, they also lack legal protections against discrimination in employment, housing and child custody disputes.
Polyamorists distinguish their lifestyle from cheating and adultery because, they say, it hinges on the consent of all parties, and can involve unmarried people. Activists say such behavior is more common than many people presume. Some studies suggest that as many as a fifth of Americans have engaged in consensual non-monogamy at some point in their lives. The studies show that at any given time, an estimated 4% to 5% of the population is in a consensually non-monogamous relationship.
While the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing are expected to put a temporary damper on polyamory, those numbers could rise if the social disincentives were removed – in part because some adulterers and cheaters could become consensual non-monogamists.
Activists are moving to dismantle the legal and social barriers, and say their goals are beginning to take shape.
They are laying the groundwork to have their cause become the next domino to fall in a long line of civil rights victories secured by trans people, gays, lesbians, women and blacks. Not too long ago, those marginalized groups were also viewed as unnatural, depraved or inferior, until negative judgments became socially unacceptable and often illegal.
The aspirations of non-monogamists don’t sound like such a moonshot in an increasingly tolerant society where a transgender man can menstruate and experience childbirth, and Pete Buttigieg, a gay man married to another man, can make a serious run for U.S. president.
“I’ve heard from a number of people advocating for relationship structure diversity over the past 20 years who are elated about this issue finally gaining traction.”
Activists are already working with elected officials in more than a dozen local governments, especially in California, to expand local anti-discrimination ordinances to include a new protected class, “relationship structure,” said Berkeley psychologist and poly activist Dave Doleshal.
Most efforts are at the informal stage but the city of Berkeley did consider a formal proposal to extend protections in housing, employment, business practices, city facilities or education to swingers, polyamorists and other non-monogamists. The proposal stalled last year amid concerns that it would have required employers to provide health insurance to numerous sexual and romantic partners outside of marriage.
Pro-polyamory marchers in San Francisco in 2004. Especially in California, there are moves afoot to expand local anti-discrimination ordinances to include a new protected class: “relationship structure.” Pretzelpaws/Wikimedia
Undaunted by that setback, advocates continue to generate a body of ideas and theories that normalize non-monogamy as a form of positive sexuality — and possibly an identity — following a script followed by other marginalized groups. Their efforts have led to reassessments of non-monogamy in the psychological and legal fields, contending the relationships are emotionally healthy and ethical, and thus forging a social movement with a shared identity, shared vocabulary, shared history and a shared desire for full recognition.
Over the past two decades, nearly 600 academic papers have been written on the subject of non-monogamy, according to one count, including an assessment of the benefits to children in polyamorous families. Such research creates a body of scholarship to counteract ingrained social attitudes that poly advocates call prejudices and misconceptions. At the same time, the field has spawned more than 50 books, mostly written by women, said Kenneth Haslam, 85, a retired anesthesiologist and polyamorist in Durham, N.C., who helped create the polyamory history archive at the Kinsey Institute in Bloomington, Ind.
Brian Watson, author of “Annals of Pornographie: How Porn Became ‘Bad’” (2016), is co-authoring a book on non-monogamy throughout history. He said it will feature 50 to 100 prominent figures, such as Victor Hugo and Virginia Woolf, and is deliberately modeled on earlier works about famous gay people.
Just as women’s rights grew from feminist legal theory and LGBTQ rights from queer theory, non-monogamy is also developing its own historiography, scholarship and theoretical frameworks.
Still, it’s not easy to pinpoint a polyamorist profile. They are less likely to identify as heterosexual or to conform to gender norms, but academic studies and anecdotal evidence don’t tell a single story. While some non-monogamists consider themselves neo-pagans, anarchists or socialists, others are libertarians or outwardly conventional suburbanites. Some studies say the lifestyle attracts more men, others say more women; some say it appeals to affluent whites, others say a polyamorist’s average annual income is under $40,000.
In the legal arena, sympathetic scholars are arguing for the extension of legal reforms adopted in family law in recent decades in response to the continued erosion of the nuclear family, which is no longer America’s dominant family structure.
At least a dozen states now recognize or allow for the possibility of a child having more than two parents, an accommodation for surrogate parents, grandparents, stepparents and other nontraditional families, according to a February legal article by Edward Stein, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York.
These expansions of the legal concept of family are potential pathways for non-monogamous families to win legal rights of their own, Stein said. Another potential legal opening could be the existing precedents in domestic partnerships and civil unions that were set up locally for gays and lesbians before same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide in 2015. In both cases, legal victories for one group could be extended to another group, a common way that legal developments happen, he said.
The first steps would likely have to be decriminalizing of adultery in the 38 states that don’t distinguish between consensual and non-consensual non-monogamy. The prohibition of adultery is comparable to anti-sodomy laws whose repeal by the Supreme Court in 2003 cleared an obstacle for recognizing gay marriage, Stein said.
“I think what we will see is a lot of chipping away at the edges of some of the restrictions we put on what a family is and what a family does,” said Janet W. Hardy, who has written on polyamory for more than 20 years.
“When the legal challenge comes – and it will – I don’t think it will be from people who identify themselves as poly. I think it will come from blended families and some of the other ways that we are reforming around the idea of family that are legally challenging.”
The combined family was not polyamorous, said their lawyer, Peter Goselin, but shared financial, domestic and child-rearing responsibilities. In 2014 the city alleged a violation of its zoning rules for single-family homes, but after two years of litigation, the city dropped its case.
The joint owners and residents of the home claimed a constitutional right to define a family. The octet’s lawsuit against the city includes a brief history of communal family living, from Iroquois longhouses, which housed up to 20 family units, to the communes, cooperatives and collective households of the 19th and 20th centuries.
“They saw the implications of it,” Goselin said. “Privately they said to me we know this would be encouraging to a lot of people who are in polyamorous relationships.”
Advocates say that the warnings against the perils of non-monogamy echo the now-debunked concerns about same-sex marriage.
“All of the well-known objections made against multi-person intimate relationships can be made against same- or opposite-sex monogamy as well, resulting in an indefensible double standard,” Ronald C. Den Otter, a political science professor at California Polytechnic Institute wrote in a 2015 article in the Emory Law Review.
“Sadly, many two-person intimate relationships are dysfunctional, and a closer, more brutally honest look at them should not inspire confidence in their superiority.”
Once changes get under way, things can move quickly. The rise of the modern gay rights movement in the mid-20th century led to a decision by the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders (gender dysphoria was de-pathologized in 2012). Those medical reversals are seen as analogous to the American Psychological Association’s creation last year of its Consensual Non-Monogamy Task Force, formed to destigmatize such relationships and explore changes in public policy.
Schechinger, the task force co-chair, said it’s much easier to stereotype and hate a marginalized group when people in the normative majority operate by stereotypes and misinformation.
“That’s part of what the task force is seeking to accomplish – to gather empirical data, promote accurate information about CNM relationships, and ask if these relationships are causing harm or are not,” he said. “And what are the implications on society for promoting a one-size-fits-all model versus promoting people being in touch with what’s the good fit for them.”
As with the debates over human nature during the gay rights struggle, non-monogamy advocates are also raising the possibility that desiring multiple sexual partners is less a lifestyle choice and more of a sexual orientation. But there can be little doubt that non-monogamy, the norm in the animal kingdom, is natural, and that monogamy is a cultural ideal that developed in humans.
But the yen for sexual variety and adventure competes with an equally insistent bugbear: jealousy. And some believe that “green-eyed monster of jealousy” is the more powerful force, making it unlikely that most people could tolerate consensual non-monogamy for their partners and accept it is a social norm.
“In the long run there’s going to be some resistance because it’s threatening to everybody else, because they recognize the desire for multiple partners is something they have, too,” said David Barash, a zoologist and a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle, and author of “The Myth of Monogamy: Fidelity and Infidelity in Animals and People” (2001).
“They recognize it touches something within themselves that they’d rather keep hidden. And something in their partner that they don’t want to acknowledge, either.”
Kay Hymowitz, a scholar at the conservative Manhattan Institute, is also skeptical. Her concern is the unintended harmful consequences of disrupting long-established social norms developed to ensure that men commit to rearing their own children, and that powerful, wealthy men don’t hoard women and create a deficit of available options for other males. “Normalizing consensual non-monogamy will become yet another way to ‘privilege’ male desire,” she said. “I know, I know: There are women who believe strongly in consensual non-monogamy [and who] may truly be happier in those relationships than they would be in vanilla relationships. Good for them. But they are a small minority.”
Hymowitz said that the individual rights of polyamorists, swingers and commune members have to be weighed against the greater social interest, and that case has yet to be made.
“You’re creating one more arrangement that will be less stable for children and less permanent,” she said. We have enough problems as it is keeping couples together.”
Nonetheless, longer life expectancies, greater personal freedoms for women, dating apps and the internet are transforming sexual expectations and sexual opportunities, said Elisabeth “Eli” Sheff, CEO of Sheff Consulting in Chattanooga, Tenn., which specializes in sex and gender minorities, and provides expert witness services and relationship coaching. She’s also the author of the 2014 book, “The Polyamorists Next Door: Inside Multiple-Partner Relationships and Families,” based on a longitudinal study of more than 500 polyamorists.
“We don’t live in a monogamous society. We live in a society in which people pretend monogamy is the norm,” said Johns, the Seattle polyamorist who offered the poly mantra that it’s possible to romantically love more than one friend just as it’s possible to love more than one child.
Non-monogamy has a long history, more ancient than King David’s multiple wives and concubines in the Old Testament. Today’s non-monogamists often cite as their inspiration novelist Robert Heinlein’s treatment of the subject in his 1961 sci-fi classic “Stranger in a Strange Land.” Gay men are sometimes hailed as trend setters because they are accustomed to flexible “monogamish” marital arrangements that allow for outside dalliances.
One of the primary texts associated with the contemporary movement is Janet W. Hardy and Dossie Easton’s 1997 “The Ethical Slut” which lays out the best practices for what advocates hold up as consensual, ethical and responsible non-monogamy.
“I don’t think it has ever had the groundswell that it has now,” said Hardy, who now is running into polyamorous adults brought up by polyamorous parents. “A lot of us are second-generation now.”
Poly activists point to many parallels between earlier movements that were born underground and operated under the radar: secret clubs, insider argot, referral networks for poly-friendly therapists, doctors and lawyers. The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom‘s Kink and Poly Aware Professionals referral list includes about 300 lawyers, said Susan Wright, the Baltimore-based organization’s executive director.
The world of polyamory overlaps with the subculture of kink and BDSM, which refers to the erotic practices of bondage, domination, submission and sadomasochism. As a sign of the movement’s maturation, some now embrace the kind of middle-class respectability that made gay marriage palatable to mainstream society.
“We’re a very boring and respectable couple!” polyamorist Carrie Ichikawa Jenkins beamed to The Chronicle of Higher Education in 2017. Jenkins, a University of British Columbia philosophy professor, has a husband and a boyfriend, both of whom teach at UBC. The Chronicle article paints a portrait of the polyamorous triad in domestic hues befitting Norman Rockwell: “On the wall hang sepia-toned photographs of someone’s relatives. On the front porch are a swing and a coffee table with an ashtray on it.”
The civil rights concerns of the non-monogamous and other minorities are dissimilar in some ways. Unlike earlier civil rights movements, non-monogamy has the potential of affecting a majority of the population, since membership in the group is theoretically open to everyone.
“In a way, poly is a deeper threat to the dominant culture than gay culture,” said Geoffrey Miller, a polyamorist in an open marriage and a psychology professor at the University of New Mexico.
Miller, a member of the APA task force, compares the state of non-monogamy movement to gay rights in 1966, in the calm before the storm of the Stonewall Riots, the 1969 protests that launched the modern gay rights movement. The closeted movement had about 50 organizations in the late 1960s but exploded to 1,000 by the mid-1970s, said John D’Emilio, a retired professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who taught on the history of sexuality and the LGBTQ movement, and is co-author of “Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America” (1988).
Conservatives had long warned that redefining marriage to allow same-sex unions would throw open the door to allowing any kind of marriage, from polygamy to incest. Those arguments reached a crescendo when gay marriage was winding its way through the legal system, en route to the 2015 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage. In that 5-4 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a dissenting opinion warning of what was to come.
“It is striking how much of the majority’s reasoning would apply with equal force to the claim of a fundamental right to plural marriage,” Roberts wrote.
“Why would there be any less dignity in the bond between three people who, in exercising their autonomy, seek to make the profound choice to marry?”
Princeton professor of jurisprudence Robert George was among those who warned of the slippery slope. In a 2015 article, he predicted that the civil rights challenges were inevitable, but initially judges would “swat away on procedural grounds the first few constitutional challenges to marriage laws.” Gradually the legal objections will give way to the force of logical consistency.
He told RealClearInvestigations in an email that this process is often characterized by indignant dismissal of the logical implications, followed by total capitulation.
“Of course, advocates of revising the law denounced us not only as ‘bigots’ but as ‘scare-mongers,’” George said.
“There was, they insisted, no ‘slippery slope’ from same-sex marriage to polyamory. The two concepts had nothing to do with each other.
“I could see that this was nonsense — often disingenuous nonsense,” George said. “So I am not in the least surprised to see what is happening now. We have quickly gone from, ‘It will never happen,’ to ‘You’re a bigot for thinking there is anything wrong with it.’”
