Whole lotta love: 'Polyamorists' go beyond monogamy By REID J. EPSTEIN
Town of Newport - Sitting in the shadow of an oak tree, John Wise described how the gay rights movement is laying the groundwork for polyamorists to acquire legal status for their three-, four- and more-way relationships.
With the fight over gay marriage and civil unions at full tilt in Wisconsin and across the country, the 60 polyamorists who gathered this weekend at an Easter Seals campsite near Wisconsin Dells discussed how to strengthen their relationships while establishing a place in mainstream America.
"They're out doing the heavy lifting for us," Wise, an New Jersey attorney and father of two teenage children, said of the gay rights movement. "They're bringing us the equal protection that we're entitled to."
From eight states, they brought their husbands, wives, partners and other significant others - OSOs in polyamory parlance - to the third Midwest Alternative Polyamory Conference. It was equal parts mass relationship counseling, pep rally and singalong.
While a handful of small children played on swing sets and did arts and crafts, the adults listened to speakers who addressed the audiences as if it was a political campaign and the opposing candidate was monogamy.
"We're queerer than queer," said Wise's wife, Nan, a psychotherapist who is writing a book she hopes will normalize the idea of three or four adults living in a committed sexual relationship.
"We're the new gay," she said, referring less to the sexual orientation of polyamorists - most whom are neither gay nor bisexual - than to the way society perceives them.
The polyamorists described traditional - they call them "dyadic" - relationships as steeped in pain and jealousy. By contrast, they say, polyamory is about honesty and trust. Unlike the swingers community, polyamorists aren't in it for the sex, they say, they're in it for the love.
"The more love that you send out, the more you get back," said Darrell Casey, who travels the country preaching the polyamory gospel with Nancy Casey, his wife of 35 years.
Social conservatives have long pointed to polyamorists and other groups as a reason for prohibiting gay marriages and civil unions. If same-sex couples are legally recognized, the next step would be to provide legal standing for multiple-partner arrangements, according to Julaine Appling, the executive director of the Family Research Institute of Wisconsin.
"There is no logical stopping point," she said Sunday. "There are groups all around this country saying we should have acceptance of our lifestyle and legalization of what we believe should be an OK arrangement."
Appling said cultural acceptance of gay couples and polyamorists is likely to erode American society.
"Then we may as well open it up and let it be for anyone and everyone," she said. "When we do that, our society will begin even a greater rate of crumbling."
Groups in every state Spurred in part by the Internet, polyamory has spread across the country, according to Ken Haslam, the vice president of the Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness. There's a magazine called Loving More, there are polyamory groups in every state, and next month New York will host the fourth annual Poly Pride Day.
Wearing a black T-shirt with "Question Monogamy" printed in white and black letters, Haslam, a 70-year-old retired anesthesiologist, has three long-term female partners he sees at his Maryland home. Each of them, in turn, has a few other male partners.
"The nuclear family is all too often a nuclear disaster," he said. "One of the neat things about the poly community is you can fool around and people applaud you."
Richard Whitnable, 56, a retired computer programmer who lives alone in Madison, considers his "intimate friends circle" to include 15 people. He divorced his wife in 1982 and became polyamorous shortly thereafter. He recently launched the Madison Area Polyamory Society, an organization of about 60 people who do community service work and have a regular jogging group.
Like many of those at this conference, Whitnable said the polyamory movement is where gays and lesbians were in the 1950s and '60s - a community lacking mainstream cultural acceptance, let alone legal standing.
"Polys are following the same path," he said. "At the moment it's just about awareness."