Is polyamory required?

The publication of this article in Sunday’s Denver Post lit up the biggest Colorado Pagan e-mail list.

Of course, we recognized a pentagram ring–and the reference to reading Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land rings a big Pagan-history bell, about the founding of the Church of All Worlds in the 1960s.

But now people are asking, “Is monogamy subtly put down in the Pagan community? Is there pressure to be polyamorous?”

One poster, a divorced mother with a steady boyfriend, notes, “When I was married, I found it hard to find support for monogamous relationships in the community. The implication seemed to be that if you were monogamous, you were really just repressed and needed to get with the program.”

The high priestess of a Boulder coven, married 25 years, talks of people assuming that she must be polyamorous. “When potential initiate/students come to me on a first information-gathering chat, they often ask if it is required to sleep with the [high priestess] or [high priest].” The answer for her is no, absolutely not.

It’s an aspect of Pagan life that isn’t discussed too often outside the arena of plain old gossiping. When your religion–many forms of Wicca, at least–is heavily erotic in its symbolism, does that symbolism cross over into personal behavior? Like Carrie Bradshaw, I will leave the question hanging.