This week we’re celebrating Brian’s new book, “Love Beyond Monogamy,” which comes out this month! In this book, he explores the themes of polyamory, spirituality, and the importance of love in various forms. Brian shares insights on how the book addresses both monogamous and non-monogamous audiences, emphasizing the sacredness of ALL relationships. The conversation also touches on the societal stigmas surrounding queerness and non-monogamy, and Brian reads an excerpt from the book that illustrates his perspective on spirituality and connection. This book is not just for poly folks or queer folks, it has so much for everyone. 

Takeaways

• The book is about polyamory and spirituality.


• It addresses love in all its forms, not just romantic.


• Spirituality is a key theme in understanding relationships.


• The book aims to celebrate connections beyond monogamy.


• Brian emphasizes the importance of pre-orders for authors.


• Polyamory is often misunderstood as solely about sex.


• The book is for both monogamous and non-monogamous readers.


• Brian shares personal experiences with queerness and spirituality.


• The book includes a reading about finding God in community.


• Brian hopes the book will serve as a healing balm for readers.

Chapters

(01:17 ) Exploring the Essence of the Book

(04:57 ) The Role of Spirituality in Relationships

(08:24 ) Reading Excerpt: The Polyamorous God

(13:11 ) Dreams and Aspirations for the Book

(15:43 ) The Gifts of Polyamory

(21:15 ) Addressing Skepticism Towards Polyamory

(24:26 ) Logistics and Upcoming Events

Resources:

• Get Brian’s book, Love Beyond Monogamy: How Polyamory Can Enrich Your Spirituality, Faith, and Relationships


• Join our online community at  Sanctuary Collective Community 

If you want to support the Patreon and help keep the podcast up and running, you can learn more and pledge your support at patreon.com/queertheology

This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions.

(9s):

Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G Murphy. And I’m father Shannon, T l Kearns. We’re the co-founders of Queer Theology dot com and your hosts from Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how Tuning each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. Hello. Hello. Welcome back to The Queer Theology Podcast. This is a conversation I have been very much looking forward to because today we are gonna talk all about Brian’s new book, Love Beyond Monogamy, which comes out on September 18th. So as you are listening to this, if you’re listening to it the day it comes out or around the day it comes out, there is still time to pre-order.

(55s):

And I, I just wanna say, I, I know we’ve said this a million times, we’re gonna keep saying pre-orders are so, so, so, so important, especially for books from marginalized authors. So if you even feel like you might have the most passing of interest In this book, go and pre-order it, it would also be great if you could recommend that your local library picks up a copy. And also that your local bookstore stocks it. We love supporting indie bookstores, so order it from there. And today we’re gonna, we’re gonna kind of dive into to talking about this book. So Brian, I wanna start with probably every author’s worst nightmare of a question, which is like, if you had to describe this book in just a couple of sentences for folks that maybe this is the first time they’re hearing about it, they don’t really know what it’s about.

(1m 47s):

Like what is this book and who do you think it’s for? Yeah, when I stood out to write the book, I set out to write a book about polyamory in spirituality, And I called it Love Beyond Monogamy. And then when I finished the book, so then in my mind I was, I was sort of like focusing on like the beyond monogamy part of it. And then when I finished the book, I realized that it was like, yes, about like filter through the lens of polyamory, non monogamy, but it was really a book about love and all of the different ways in which love can be present in our lives. And so this is a book not just for non monogamous audiences folks, but for monogamous audiences folks as well. And it’s a book not just for spiritual or religious folks, but for non-religious folks as well.

(2m 32s):

It’s really a way, sort of like pulling upon the wisdom of both polyamory and spirituality to look at the ways in which like all of our various relationships and connections in our lives past, present, and future can be deeply meaningful. The word that I would use for that as like sacred, but you can use whatever word sort of resonates for you. And so honoring, you know, long-term commitments, but also honoring one night stands and casual encounters and not feeling like we have to cut off ourselves from our exes or, or draw divisions between friend and family. And sort of like booking, just like letting love be bigger than you imagined. Hmm.

(3m 13s):

And you know, there have been a lot of books, it seems coming out right around now, polyamory and non-monogamy, and I’m, I’m curious, you know, what, what you think sets your book apart. Like why is your book different from what is has already been published? And you know, we’ve seen some glimpses at at stuff that is coming out and I’m, I’m curious how, how you think your book is set apart. Yeah, I think there’s two ways. One of the big ways is, it’s sort of a cliche in polyamory nom monogamy circles to say, you know, you might be thinking when you hear polyamory nom monogamy, you might be thinking all about sex parties and throuple like, and it, it’s like, it’s really not about sex.

(3m 55s):

It’s about shared calendars and processing lots of feelings and, and all of that. And like, yeah, that can be part of it, but like, it also is for many people a lot of the time also about sex. And so this book like does not shy away from the reality that like sex is for many people a part of the nonmonogamous experience, but not in a like salacious way. It says that also the sex is also special, the sex is also sacred and all the different ways that folks form family and friendship and community and Relationships to partnerships, like they can all be special. And so it’s sort of looking at, it’s a very sort of like sex positive, king conclusive version of non monogamy.

(4m 43s):

And then of course, like, it just like touches upon spirituality. Er Winston, one of the hosts of the multi podcast and in author like in her own right in her sort of like review of the book, she, she pointed out that most books sort of like dance around the topic of like religion or spirituality. And this sort of obviously deals with it head on. And I really try to make it such that if you’re like a devoutly religious person, you’re like a devout Christian, like this book is gonna resonate with you. And if you’re like, no, no, I’m spiritual but not religious, I think this I’ve, you know, it’ll also be applicable to you. And even if you’re like decidedly like a secular humanist or an atheist, the way that I talk about religion and spirituality is such that I think you’ll find resonances there as well.

(5m 24s):

And so it’s, it’s really about not just, it’s like not a practical how to do polyamory, but the sort of a celebration of all the different ways that all of our different types of connections can be like deeply meaningful. And so it’s a celebration of, of love and connection in all its various forms. Why, why was it important for you to, to pull on this thread of, of spirituality in the book? I mean, for me as a queer man, I know that my queerness was like so stigmatized growing up. It felt like such a point of shame and a place where I didn’t fit in. And I at some point sort of intellectually knew that that wasn’t true, but sort of knowing something in your head and feeling it in your body or two different experiences and it took me a long time to get to a place where I like knew in my body that queerne