With poly, they think it's "just wrong" because they don't even get it. I believe they think you're manipulating people's feelings, while with swinging everybody knows what to expect.
Yes, that seems to be the general case.
Yah, a big city obviously has more potential for these new age type concepts I think. If even like 0.1% of people are swingers, then you're going to have a few thousand in New York vs say 1 or 2 in a small town. And when you have a few thousand people doing something, that kind of message can spread quickly through a populace.
When you consider much of the world is islamic or christian they will likely never accept poly values (with islam there are some poly aspects however) or swinger values. Always handy to remember that I think.
I couldn't imagine living in New York personally though.... seems so contrived.
I prefer to sort of collect people from around the world that think like me, internet makes it easy.
Contrived? Don't get how you mean that... have you ever been here? If you did and just stuck to all the touristy places, maybe I could see your view as contrived, but even despite all the gentrification and big chain stores that have settled her (used to be a city of mom-and-pop business not long ago), there's lots of history here, culture, etc. My first apartment here was in a building built in the late 1800s and had a claw-foot bathtub in the kitchen.
But the BEST thing I love about New York is the diversity. I don't need the internet for that! When I first came here I met people I'd never been exposed to before in my small, conservative hometown: lesbians, gays, interracial couples, people who squatted in abandoned buildings or slept in the subway, rich folks, offspring of big movie stars, etc. Heck, women who didn't shave their legs was a new one for me at that time! Since then, I have met and conversed with people from every continent. Many of these folks are right around the corner from me, running business in my neighborhood. They all come to NYC, from every place you can imagine.
Yet so many things about it are also "small town" - I moved here to be on my own when I was 23, with just a few bucks in my pocket. I didn't have a phone for a year and the guy who owned the candy store across the street from me would take messages for me on his payphone and slip them in my mailbox.
We have lots of churches, temples, and mosques and regularly religious folks, even though NYC is known to be quite liberal. There are over 8,100,000 people here. I would say the media has made swinging quite a familiar concept, and when I say most people here are accepting of it, I mean (as I stated previously) that they accept that it's out there and people are living that way, even though they would never even think of doing it themselves. If I talk to anyone about polyamory, and I come across a large cross-section of people in my daily life, as I don't just hang out with one sort of focused group, I usually see their eyes glaze over and I respond with, "It's not swinging," and then they know what I'm talking about and can ask questions.
Anyway, this debate has veered very far off the original topic regarding loving multiple people and whether that lessens the love in one's life or strengthens it.
I'd rather see more posts on that subject. Sorry, RitaFire, for participating in the hijack!