HGTV’s popular series House Hunters broke new ground this week by featuring a polyamorous family – a man and two women in a romantic relationship – searching for a new home.
The show, titled “Three’s Not a Crowd in Colorado Springs,” followed Brian, Lori and Geli as they toured three potential homes and then chose one before the credits rolled. The show treated the relationship as normal.
“Good things may come in threes,” the narrator says, “but it’s making their Colorado house hunt three times as difficult.”
The couple then describes their relationship for viewers.
“Lori and I got married in 2012,” Brian says, adding they have two children, ages 10 and 12. Lori, he says, is bisexual.
“We evolved to a point where we were comfortable having another woman in our lives,” Brian says.
Brian and Lori met Geli in a bar.
“It just happened very naturally, organically,” Geli says.
The three had a “commitment ceremony” in Aruba celebrating their relationship, which they call a “throuple.”
“We’re all equals in this relationship,” Brian says.
The children, the narrator says, are staying with grandparents during the house hunt.
The remainder of the show follows them as they travel around Colorado Springs, searching for the perfect large home. The show is rated TV-G.
A story about the episode on People’s website ran under the headline, “HGTV Features Its First-Ever Throuple on House Hunters: ‘Representation Matters,’” with tweets from fans applauding the episode as “progressive” and “great.” It did not include any voices criticizing the concept.
But Rhyne Putman, associate professor of theology and culture at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, said the celebration of polyamorous relationships was inevitable once marriage was redefined.
“Years ago, when we were in the early stages of debate over same-sex marriage, we said any arbitrary redefinition of marriage would lead to further redefinition,” Putman told Christian Headlines. “We warned that changing the definition of marriage to a consensual relationship between two people of the same sex would eventually open the door for more than two people in a marriage.
“At the time, we were told bringing this subject up was slippery-slope logic – an absurd extreme,” added Putman, who also serves as pastor of First Baptist Church in Kenner, La. “Yet today, nearly five years after the [Supreme Court’s] Obergefell decision, major media outlets tell us that polyamorous ‘representation matters.’ The dominoes were eventually going to fall this way once the sexual revolution gave them a push.”
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Motortion
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, The Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
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