"Louisville has growing polyamory community"

Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal

This local newspaper story about Kentucky polys has been in the works for at least a couple of months. Now that it's finally out it sounds kind of clunky and uninspired to me, but the people in it represent us well. Big thanks to the folks who volunteered to be interviewed — those who made it into the story and those who didn't.

Update August 10: Despite the story's overall mediocrity, USA Today has just picked it up: Polyamorous Relationships Become More Visible. The topic must be popular. (Both papers are owned by Gannett.)

Update August 16: Now it's being reprinted in local papers all over the country, despite being very tied to Louisville, Kentucky. Hey journalists — this topic is in demand.

"Jim Hanson, wife Jacque, and daughter Sammy, 5, enjoy a nice day in Lebanon, Ohio. Jacque and Jim are Polyamorous and her 'other better half' lives in Louisville." (Mark Bealer/ Courier-Journal)

Louisville has growing polyamory community

By Janica Kaneshiro

Her mother calls him “the man from Kentucky.”

But to Jacque Hanson of Lebanon, Ohio, Jason is more than the boyfriend her mom won’t accept.

He would be her second husband if she could get her way.

“I would marry him today if I could,” Hanson said, adding that she has no intention of leaving her husband, Jim.

Instead, she and Jim have agreed to an open relationship.

Hanson identifies as polyamorous, a brand of consensual non-monogamy — or ethical cheating [Groan. –Ed.] — in which partners are in more than one committed relationship at once with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved.

It is difficult to determine the actual number of people in such relationships because of a lack of research, but they are becoming more visible because of the Internet and social media, according to psychologist Meg Manthos, whose clientele is about 30 percent poly groups.

“Poly relationships have been around for as long as we’ve had documentation,” Manthos said.

And according to a national Avvo.com study from June 2015, about 4 percent of the U.S. population admits [groan] to being in an open relationship, which amounts to about 12.8 million people, or roughly three times the population of Kentucky.

In Louisville, Hanson’s boyfriend Jason and his wife lead a support group of polyamorous couples. The group started five years ago and has grown from four people to between 10 and 25 at each of the monthly meetings, they said. In addition, the Louisville Poly e-mail list which they also run has 420 people on it.

...He said he and his wife have only two rules: safe sex and “don’t be a jerk.” The latter has taken the place of a longer list they made when they first started exploring outside their marriage.

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...Hanson, who works as a nurse at a nursing home, talks openly about her lifestyle with anyone who asks, so people often pepper her with questions.

“Some people think I do this because I have low self-esteem, but I think I’m awesome,” she said. “I don’t need help with that.”

One of the most common questions she gets: “Which partner do you love more?”

Hanson said the question is like asking someone which of their children they love more.

She and her husband are perfectly compatible, Hanson said, but “no one can be 100 percent of the things you need, no matter how compatible. I want him to be happy and he wants me to be happy.”

She said it’s a poly principle called “compersion” in which a person gains something emotionally when their significant other finds happiness in another relationship.

She said her relationships are “pretty normal,” the only difference is that she has more than one at a time.

Psychologist Manthos said most of the poly couples she counsels have problems similar to monogamous couples she works with, except poly couples tend to have more issues with how they are perceived....

The Hansons go on to describe compersion, and the level of support and mutual aid among the local poly community. Here's the whole article (August 7, 2015).

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NBC: "One Big Happy (Poly) Family"

NBC News website

I'm just back from Atlanta Poly Weekend, a thriving hotel con that Billy Holder, Jeremy Mullins, and Melissa Holder-Mullins have run for four years now. More on that later. This morning the three of them are in a 6-minute video report at the NBC News website about their happy home life with their smart young daughter and additional partners:



Even though they've made the decision to be very, very out in conservative Georgia (remember their excellent long article on CNN.com last October?), it was tough having a camera crew follow them all around the house for two days. I'd say they can be very proud of the result.



Billy writes this morning,

They came and spent 36 hours with us. Cameras, mics, schedules, being followed to Starbucks and restaurants. It was truly an experience. One that made us all very sure we never wanted to be on reality TV. LOL This was enough.

The producers and cameraman we very professional, caring, and conscious of the people and the story that was to be told. To them I say Thank you. Anna and her team, I am truly grateful to have worked with such professional folks.

The story is on the NBC News homepage, right next to Eric Cantor getting voted out.

Apparently it won't be broadcast, it's just on the website. The site's tagline: "A polyamorous family from Georgia explains how life can work with multiple partners, without sacrificing the comforts of home."

The conservative site Newsbusters is upset: NBC Puffs ‘One Big, Happy (Poly) Family’ (June 11, 2011).

Updates June 13:

"The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News tore into them yesterday, including clips from the NBC site. Best Fox News line: "The worst part about it is that all the adults are unattractive." Actually, as people on TV go, they were pretty spiffy; the guys are handsome and trim and the gal is cute and expressive. I'm fascinated by conservatives' obsession that we're all ugly. I have two theories. The first is that it's simply projection: to cultural conservatives the subject is gross, so they see everyone in it through gross-colored glasses. But I lean to another theory: The only people who conservatives routinely see openly acknowledging their sexuality are strippers and porn stars. So strippers and porn stars are what people unashamed of their sexuality are supposed to look like. Normal people rarely do.

Conservative host Laura Ingraham decries the NBC report as where gay marriage slips the slope to (June 13).

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Poly news report on southern TV

WLOS-TV (Asheville, NC)
WYMA-TV (Greenville, SC)

This morning in the inland Carolinas, a local TV news show aired a superficial and "balanced" 4½-minute report on polyamory. They called it a trend, failed to define it clearly, showed open-marriage advocates and counselors Carl and Kenya Stevens (who recently moved to Asheville, NC), then two brief snips from an interview with poly researcher Antoinette Izzo at the University of Las Vegas, then a counselor who says this never works, and to close, an old married couple who say they can't imagine anything but monogamous love being real:



(If the javascript video link above fails, you can watch here.)

The correct way to view "news" reports like this, IMO, is that they accomplish one thing: they put the word in front of people. A few who have never heard of it will have a flash of revelation. The most important bit we see is someone looking it up on Wikipedia. A certain handful of viewers will do this, and their lives may change forever.

An expanded transcript is on both stations' websites, including parts that got cut from TV including more from Izzo. In the comments, go help out the valiant few who are representing our side well.

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Big excellent poly feature now on CNN.com

Atlanta Poly Weekend's instigator triad of Billy Holder (left), Jeremy Mullins (right), and Melissa Holder (front) with co-organizer Amy Munowitz (center).

During Atlanta Poly Weekend 2012 a year and a half ago, writer Emanuella Grinberg from CNN.com was roaming around the convention, attending sessions and interviewing people. Organizers of the con (above) had told the crowd of 150 about her in advance and set ground rules for her about wearing identification, respecting privacy, and so forth. They restricted photography to a room that CNN set up as a studio for people willing to be pictured. I talked with Grinberg for a long time over dinner. She struck me as perceptive and smart and had clearly done a lot of homework (including reading this site).

And then nothing happened. She interviewed more people elsewhere. Three weeks after APW was over, she and a photographer spent six hours at the home of conference organizers PB&J — Pocket (Melissa Holder), Billy Holder, and Jeremy Mullins. Billy said, "We tried to show our everyday (weekend) life —— relaxing, doing home-improvement projects, chores and interactions. Overall we had a very positive experience. They have one more local family to profile and are talking about keeping the story going with updates and new stories about our group."

Later she spoke with them further. And she was with them at the 2012 and 2013 Atlanta Pride parades, where Atlanta Polyamory had a float. And still no story appeared.

Now after a year and a half it's finally on CNN.com this morning.

It's every bit as good as everyone hoped. And it's long, a 4,200-word opus. It's featured prominently on CNN's homepage, with the blurb "Understanding the polyamorists next door. Polyamory 'ain't for sissies,' and it's not just for the kinky either, an advocate for open relationships says."

It gets my "The Best" and "Show Your Parents" tags.

Polyamory: When three isn't a crowd

By Emanuella Grinberg

(CNN) -- Revelers in the rainbow-washed crowd smiled and cheered this month as the little blond girl in the parade float pageant-waved to the B-52's "Love Shack."

Next to the float, the girl's father, Billy Holder, handed out fliers to the Atlanta Pride Parade crowd. His wife, Melissa, carried a banner along with Jeremy Mullins, the couple's partner.

"Polyamory: Having simultaneous close emotional relationships with two or more other individuals," read their purple-lettered banner, embellished with an infinity heart.

The "awws" and waves from the crowd gave way to some puzzled looks and snickers.

"What's poly?" a woman asked, looking toward a handwritten sign on the float that read "Atlanta Poly Paradise."

"Multiple partners?" the man next to her guessed.

Sort of. As the concept of open relationships rises in pop culture and political debates, some polyamorous families like the Holders and Mullins see an opportunity to go public and fight stereotypes that polyamory is just swinging, cheating or kinky sex.

It's not just a fling or a phase for them. It's an identity. They want to show that polyamory can be a viable alternative to monogamy, even for middle-class, suburban families with children, jobs and house notes.

"We're not trying to say that monogamy is bad," said Billy Holder, a 36-year-old carpenter who works at a university in Atlanta. "We're trying to promote the fact that everyone has a right to develop a relationship structure that works for them."

For the Holder-Mullins triad, polyamory is three adults living in the same home about 20 miles south of Atlanta. They share bills, housework and childcare for their 9-year-old daughter. They work at the same place, sharing carpooling duties so someone can see their daughter off to school each day....

-----------------------


'Polyamory ain't for sissies'

...For each of the 12 people walking with the Holders-Mullins triad in the Atlanta Pride Parade, polyamory works differently. For example, Mark, a tall, bespectacled computer programmer, has been happily married to his wife, an electrical engineer, for more than a decade. They live alone and have no children, but they've been involved with two other couples with children for the past six years. Mark and his wife spend time with the adults and their children doing family-friendly activities but the adults also go out on dates, cuddle and more.

It's not cheating or swinging, he said, because everyone knows about other partners, whom Mark calls his girlfriends. There is a level of intimacy and emotional attachment that makes them more than friends with benefits or one-night stands, he said.

"I'm more involved in their lives and more aware of their inner thoughts or aspirations; I'm more involved in their long-term happiness," said Mark, who asked not to use his last name out of concern that he and his wife might face backlash from employers.
"It's like having a regular, monogamous relationship but having more than one of them."

It's unclear how many people identify as polyamorous because, like Mark and his wife, the majority aren't open about their relationships. Because of the varied forms these non-monogamous relationships take, it's difficult even to know who to include in such a count, demographer Gary Gates said.

...Many poly people stay closeted out of fear of discrimination, social alienation or because they simply prefer privacy, sociologist Elisabeth Sheff writes in her forthcoming book "The Polyamorists Next Door."

Sheff based her findings on 15 years of research that began with a partner's request to explore alternatives to monogamy. She continued her research even after her relationship ended, and does not consider herself a polyamorist. But her research led her to believe that polyamory is a "legitimate relationship style that can be tremendously rewarding for adults and provide excellent nurturing for children."

Making it work, she acknowledges, is "time-consuming, and potentially fraught with emotional booby traps," she writes. It can be rewarding for some "and a complete disaster for others."

...Indeed, while many associate polyamory with swingers or kinksters, "there are much easier ways to get laid," said Anita Wagner Illig, founder of online polyamory resource, Practical Polyamory.

Wagner Illig, a self-appointed "poly educator" who gives talks at adult conventions about polyamory, began to identify as poly after her second divorce in the late 1990s. She decided there must be a better way than cheating to have multiple relationships.
Much has changed since then, she said....

"Polyamory," Wagner Illig warns, "ain't for sissies."

-----------------------------

...Last year, in a Holiday Inn Select just off the interstate, the Holders led the second Atlanta Poly Weekend, a retreat dedicated exclusively to poly-related issues. It drew people from across the Southeast and as far north as Baltimore.

Some attendees were single or relatively new to polyamory. A couple in their 20s described how they'd been together since their freshman year at Georgia Tech, had married a couple of years earlier, and had opened up their relationship after discussing how they still loved each other, but felt attractions to other people.

"He dates and I flirt but I haven't actively sought out dates. All that matters is that he's coming home to me," said the wife, Michelle, who asked to not use their last name because they haven't told their families.

A few attendees, like the Holder-Mullins triad, were married and dating and had at least one child. While parents attended panels, their children could stay at the "kid con" room in the care of a pair of women in a "closed quad" with their husbands.

Ashley Tipton, middle, and husband, David,
live with another couple in Marietta, Georgia.

"I've always thought it was better to live in a commune-type large family where you get to choose your loved ones," said Ashley Tipton, one of the moms in the quad from Marietta, Georgia. "I came from a broken home where I had to take care of my sisters and alcoholic mother and I wanted something better than that for me and my kids."

In panels with names like "Defining Our Relationships" and "The 5 Love Languages" -- based on Gary Chapman's bestselling book and relationship philosophy -- the discussions revolved around topics that often come up for monogamous couples: Communication, jealousy, time.

Some panels, though, were uniquely poly....

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[Billy, Jeremy and Melissa] have learned the need for discretion. They said a family member reported them to Georgia's Division of Family and Children Services, alleging child abuse and prompting a weeks-long investigation. The Holders said it ended with no charges being laid and their daughter remaining in the home. Georgia's Division of Family and Children Services did not return multiple phone calls seeking comment.

But the experience also informed some of their desire to change public perceptions of polyamory.

So they march, and organize and raise their daughter the best they can. Their meetup groups continue to grow and they're looking forward bringing in new speakers to 2014's Atlanta Poly Weekend.

After all, the Holders and Mullins say it's not a choice -- polyamory is an inherent part of their sexuality.

"Life would probably be easier if I didn't feel the need to open myself up to loving more than one person," Jeremy said. "But it's part of who I am, and I feel that my life is enriched by it.

"It's up to us to figure out how to make it work."

Read the whole article, not just these excerpts (Oct. 26, 2013). And join the comments. They're piling in by the hundreds, and some are holding up our side.

Billy writes, "Please support the community by sharing and commenting your support. We took a huge risk doing this story."

Jeremy sent in a comment: "We were likewise ecstatic over the quality of the article. It exceeded our expectations. We would very much encourage anyone who is approached by Ms. Grinberg in the future to work with her, as the entire experience was positive from beginning to end. She resisted numerous attempts by her editors to sexualize the story and went out of her way to make sure the proper story was told, and that commitment was reflected in the final article."

I give deep respect to Billy, Jeremy and Pocket and the other people featured for putting themselves out so publicly, in a region where that's not an easy thing to do, in order to tell the world that this way of life is for real.

Update: If you're wondering about the high rate of offensive comments on the CNN site, it may be due not just to the usual trollers but the attention that the article, and the recent ones on Slate, are getting on conservative sites — where the attitudes are a mix of "I told you so" and despair. For instance by columnist Mona Charen (in many outlets), Gay Marriage Makes Just ANY Relationship OK (on Wizbang), and "Loving, committed multiple partner families" (Mirror of Justice).

A vastly better set of comments appeared where Metafilter linked to the article.

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"We started off with baby steps, and a contract."

Nashville Scene

An unusually good, first-person Poly 101 article appears in Nashville's news-and-entertainment weekly. Worth saving and passing on.

Can you love more than one person at a time?

Poly Primer

By Molly Bordo

"I'd like to see you with another woman."

My husband and I had just spent an exhilarating and sweaty hour tangled in the bedsheets when I first brought up the idea.

I'll never forget the look on his face: His eyes widened, his lips opened a little. The smile that crept across his face could have just as easily been fear as excitement. He's a shy guy, a gentleman....

-------------------

...But what if that story were a big, fat lie? What if there is no One True Love in the world for you? What if there were many loves, each as distinct from one another as the shoes in your closet? What if you could love them all differently and to various depths, the way parents love their children all differently but equally?

A growing number of polyamorists claim just that. They argue that tending to more than one loving relationship actually improves every facet of their lives. And not just in the bedroom, though they clearly benefit there as well.

For over a year now, my husband and I have been practicing what is known as ethical non-monogamy. The stress is on the ethics. We only have relationships with people who understand this brand of love, and we're completely open with each other when it comes to our affairs. Everyone involved is as open as we are; we meet each other's lovers and their partners. We are truly a group of friends. With benefits.

We've learned that our particular brand of open marriage is as individualized as our monogamous relationship of 15 years had been before. In fact, there's an entire spectrum of polyamorous people out there in the world. This spectrum has more to do with emotional trust than sexual freedom.

While all couples in non-monogamous relationships champion sexual freedom, the differences lie in how much of their own hearts they trust with others outside their marriage, or their primary partnership....

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We started off with baby steps, and a contract. (I'm not kidding.)... We made a list of no-nos: No sex in our bed with others, no overnights, no oral sex. And absolutely no falling in love. The list was long, and in making it, we learned what made our relationship tick. The rules were like training wheels, and when we faced a situation where our rules limited us, we took them off, one by one.

I, for one, lost my shit over Spotify.... Sure, they'd been having a sexual relationship for months, but I drew the line at musical intimacy.

He lost his mind over a fancy restaurant. When my boyfriend treated me to a dinner with a price tag over $400, my husband hit the roof. We'd struggled most of our lives to be able to afford little luxuries like nice soap and organic bananas, and he couldn't stomach another man treating me to expensive cabernet and ceviche.

How would we have ever known about these tender spots in our hearts if not by stepping on them? I didn't even realize I had such a strong attachment to those sweaty afternoons spent in abject poverty listening to "Honky Cat" with him. He certainly didn't expect to balk at someone else picking up a hefty tab.

But a year into our experiment, we've come to a profound realization: We still choose each other. Every single day. Even when we don't have to.

He has a serious girlfriend who is 10 years younger than me, one who is 10 years older, and a host of casual buddies with awesome benefits. I'm not jealous of the time they spend with him at all. In fact, I have them to thank for his incredible moves in the bedroom, the swagger in his walk, and his unstoppable confidence at work....

Likewise, my own lovers have expanded my horizons. One is an author and my link to the best new books on the shelves, another strategizes business mergers with me, and a third, an E.R. doctor, talks politics, religion and world affairs in the fertile darkness of his room between shifts. I've learned to be different shades of my same self with each of them, to try on those parts of myself like kid gloves and admire them.

I love feeling the freedom to explore these parts of my personality.

I have my husband to thank for this, of course.... I love him more now, I can say with surety, than I ever did before I started sleeping around.

Molly Bordo is a pseudonym.

Here's the whole article (Sept. 19, 2013).

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When triad life comes easy

Huffington Post: Gay Voices

Poly discussion sites can make this life look damn hard. There's jealousy to analyze and master, insecurities to dredge up and dissect on a brightly lit table, agreements to negotiate, NRE craziness to manage, Non-Violent Communication to learn, Google Calendar to install.... It can sound like pursuing a PhD in self-improvement. For many people it is.

Showing up less often on poly-community sites are the naturals: people who just take to group relationships like fish to water. They seem born to it, and/or have lucked into the right partners. They don't seek much community support, often barely know a poly community exists, or perhaps even (until recently) know the word.

John Shore, a prolific gay religious book author ("America's preeminent non-douchey Christian" says Dan Savage), today interviews such a woman on his popular Huffington Post site. She is living in a polyfi triad home with a passel of their combined kids, where they hide out pretty comfortably in a deeply conservative Christian backwater of the South.

Sometimes It Takes Three to Tango

Could you give us a quick definition of what "polyamorous" is/means?

...Honestly, the term "polyamorous" wasn't on our radar when we fell in love. It was later that we discovered there was a term for what we were. If we need a term, we consider ourselves "polyfidelitous," which is what polys call those who love more than one person in a long-term, faithful kind of way.

Some people consider themselves polyamorous because they believe they need and/or want to be in multiple relationships at any given time. This is not a good description of us. We all feel we could be satisfied with just one person. It's just that we fell in love with two, pretty much all at the same time... and we discovered (through lots of open and honest communication!) that we were all not just OK with it, but that it was something we wanted.

Truthfully, we don't think of ourselves as polyamorous. We just think of ourselves as us.

...How long have you guys been together?

We have been dear friends for a very long time, with children who grew up as babies together.... I was a (divorced) single mother, and they were a happily married couple.... She had been my best friend for years, and we've always been closer than sisters. People used to always comment on how close we were, but we never realized that could be sexual, too. Both of us were raised to not even be aware that was a possibility.

Long story short, the three of us began doing more and more things together and it just... worked really well. We got along incredibly, the three of us, and at some point, my best friend realized she had feelings for me. She was the one who began the conversation about, "What if?"...

We all felt very excited when we realized that we were in love and that we all wanted the same thing (a long-term, committed relationship as a three). And then there was a lot of open and honest communication, of course. There has to be with any successful couple, and so with three people, even more so....

Every step forward just felt so right on so many different levels, and doors kept opening up right and left. There were numerous points where we would look at each other and say, "It's so weird, but if I was still a fundamentalist Christian, I would say that God is blessing us..."

We took very small and careful steps forward, hesitantly, every inch of the way being shocked at how nice, how perfect, how healthy, how "just right" it always felt. Our fears about each next step were always replaced by fearfully taking it and then finding it delightful....

Do you all live together?

Yep. Wouldn't have it any other way.... Two years this spring.

What's the sexual deal? Are each of you bisexual? Do you all sleep in the same bed?

He is not bisexual. I suppose that both of the women are. Well, honestly, I don't even know if we are. I just know that I love her. And she loves me. And being intimate feels like it makes sense, given the depth of our feelings for each other. We had been incredibly close friends for years, prior, and it never seemed close enough. Now, it feels just right.

We all sleep together every night. The person in the middle gets seriously snuggled on. It's fun.

Sexually, we have learned a lot about how three people can have an amazingly wonderful experience that feels like making love for everyone. We occasionally joke about the bestselling book we will write about how to have amazing threesomes one day. It was delightful to learn that you can have that feeling of being "one" with three. You totally can. That was one of the things we worried about at first -- what would we do about sex? Now, my mind automatically assumes that making love takes three.... We are sexual as couples, too, just not as often....

...I love my two partners. I love our life together. I love our big, happy home. But I do not love the fact that I live in a community that would rather me live as a struggling single mom to four children than to have the support of two adults who love me dearly as a life partner. The fact that my community would believe wholeheartedly that my sexual relationship with my abusive ex-husband was righteous but that my sexual relationship with two committed life partners (if they knew about it) is unrighteous, just seems so hypocritical....

Do you know any other polyamorous, or polyfidelitous, relationship units? (I guess "couples" isn't the right word, is it?) But do you know any others like yourselves?

No. I'm sure they are out there, but we don't know of any personally. That's OK. Honestly, I don't think this would work for very many people. The reason it does for us is that we are just the right three people for each other. It's hard enough to find just the right one person for yourself, much less two! When I think about my relationship as a three, I mostly just feel incredibly lucky, like God is smiling at us. I get to be loved by two best friends and lovers. I get to love two amazing people back (and they really are amazing). I get to love a whole house-full of children. It just feels like so much goodness. When I come home from work and pull into our drive, I smile. I love us!...

What do you want people to know about people like you, and relationships like yours?

That we are normal, solid citizens. That we are professionals that you work with at the office. That we are the teacher in your child's classroom, the person who delivers your mail, the doctor who looks at your injury. That we are the mom at the soccer games. That we are the dad at the geography bee. That we are the people with the really huge cart of groceries ahead of you in the supermarket line. That we grew up in conservative Christian America and certainly never imagined that we would do something like this. That we certainly weren't looking for something outside of the norm, but that love found us, and we were willing to step outside of the norm to meet it....

Read the whole interview (Feb. 25, 2012).

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Atlanta Poly Weekend: my report (and others')

So I just got back from Atlanta Poly Weekend, the first-ever polyamory conference held in the Deep South (if you don't count Florida). APW turns out to be a seriously up-and-coming new source of polyactive energy. Here's my report.

The weekend was bravely organized from scratch by Billy Holder, his wife Pocket, and their triad partner Jeremy (PB&J they call themselves), along with other friends and family and Atlanta Poly Meetup volunteers. A friendly, animated bunch of 113 people (attendees, presenters, staff, and kids) crowded into a small, out-of-the-way conference area of the Crowne Plaza Hotel a mile from the Atlanta airport. We had 30 hours of presentations and self-generated discussion groups and constant lively chatter. Financially it came fairly close to breaking even, which PB&J consider good for a first-time con. (And the weekend would have come out in the black except for a costly mistake in interpreting the hotel contract.) So clearly the Southland can support a poly conference all its own.

We had an open common area, three small meeting rooms, and a large meeting room divisible in half. These were renamed the Den, Bedrooms 1-3, the Living Room and Dining Room, for a homey feel. Speakers included Cunning Minx of the Polyamory Weekly podcast on “poly and single” and “personal branding for the sex-positive activist.” Joreth spoke on a panel on poly & skepticism and about the Polyamory Media Association. She also appeared in her full Victorian outfit as Miss Poly Manners to answer etiquette questions, one of her roles on Polyamory Weekly. I talked about media treatment of poly and about our recognition in the wider culture. MayMay presented on anti-censorship strategies and tactics for sex-positive and political websites; Billy and others spoke on Poly 101 and coming out; Jessica Karels gave a workshop on surviving as a community organizer. Elisabeth Sheff of Georgia State University, who is conducting long-term research on poly families with children, was on a panel titled “What Will We Tell the Kids?” For more see the preliminary session list.

The two evenings featured a local steampunk band and a burlesque show. The crowds for these were rather thin; a number of people had gone off to private room parties.

What a friendly, lively, excited bunch! Most of the people seemed to come from Georgia and neighboring states. Overall the event had the look and feel of a small, intimate science fiction/fantasy con, including a bit of costuming. PB&J have helped organize things at SF cons and know people involved in them; the paid sponsors they recruited for the program booklet included Dragon*Con, OutlantaCon, and Frolicon. The weekend's scheduling occasionally got frayed around the edges, and some events didn’t happen, but there was always enough going on that this didn’t matter.

The weekend was cheap: $50 to register, and the hotel was $82 per night (group rate). That did not include any food, however, and the hotel didn't allow outside food into the conference area. So, finding and paying for meals was an added expense and inconvenience. Remember to pack your own provisions; you can eat in your room (or in a room party).

PB&J were hugely thrilled at the size and community spirit of the crowd and have already announced next year’s Atlanta Poly Weekend. It will be March 9-11, 2012, possibly at a different hotel.

They are setting up as a 501(c)7 corporation, a “social and recreational group” under IRS rules (contributions will not be tax deductible). And, “to make this truly community owned,” said Billy, they may sell stock to raise funds, while keeping a majority ownership themselves. They had a volunteer lawyer (who was also a presenter) handle the 501(c)7 paperwork.

Here's the Atlanta Poly Weekend Facebook page.

More observations from my friend Ken Haslam, longtime poly activist and conference presenter:

My sense of the meeting was that there was a lot of native energy there, whatever that means. I think this group is going to be a formidable force in the future.... There seemed to be a subtle BDSM energy around but this is hard to define exactly. All in all very positive.

The lack of organization was not a problem for me and I suspect this will improve next year. I was especially pleased to see the well-organized "post mortem" [at the public closing session] where people discussed in detail what went wrong, how to improve it, and what topics might be good for next year, as the organizers wrote all this down.

A leader from the swing community was at the post mortem trying to get them to include a sponsored swing party. I had a chat with him and his girlfriend and explained that, IMHO, a lot of polys would just as soon curl up with a good encyclopedia as go to a sex party. I think a sex party (optional) off-premises and not sponsored might be OK if it is NOT affiliated with APW....

I wonder if this is the beginning of [a model of] really good local meetings that are cheap and eliminate the long-distance travel.

After the conference Billy posted his story of how APW came about, and his amazement and gratitude at how it worked:

How did we get here?!

...Atlanta Poly Weekend, like our [triad] relationship, started on “The Hill” [Dragon Hills Resort]. It was a warm October afternoon in 2009. We were lying in the sun talking. One of us said “You know, it’s a shame there’s not an organized Poly group or event for families in our area.” And so we took it upon ourselves to become active members in the community.... On March 21, 2010, we founded the Atlanta Polyamory Meetup.com website. One month later we held our first Meetup. There were 2 people there. But we kept at it. Now a year later we have 179 members.
Wow!

During the growth of the Meetup event we realized that the community needed an event to network the South to the rest of the country. So Atlanta Poly Weekend was formed....

We had many bumps in the road and quite a few hills to climb. After a year of promoting and gathering presenters, we were looking at having to cancel. That’s when the ModernPoly team came up with some ideas to jumpstart interest in the conference....

I could never have imagined the wonderful feeling the moment we opened registration and the first people walked in. It was REAL. And we had done it....

Read his whole post (requires Facebook login).

And this is from Pocket:

There is a certain fear and joy with being first. You've got to build it yourself, with your own hands and hope it will be strong enough to stand on its own merits. On the flip side, there's joy in creating something from scratch without any rules and to be able to look at it and say, "I did this."

...Our staff was like a cross section of poly culture: our triad, a quad, a poly-friendly single and a husband with a poly wife. However, we quickly became family and would fill in the gaps where needed. If one fell, someone was there to pick them up. We functioned as a team.

...It didn't hit me until the Thursday before. I was at work and happened to look out a window, realizing that at that time the next day I would be setting up registration. I practically bounced all day and was almost unbearable I'm sure when Billy picked me up. Thank heavens for Chinese take-out that evening with the staff, and our families grounding me and reminding me that we are here on a mission!

For me, the event started when Jeremy and I picked up MayMay. Here was a presenter made form, no longer an idea but a solid, huggable reality.... As opening ceremonies were going on, Aims the Programming Goddess had stuck her head in the door and came out glowing. "It's real!" she told me, pride on her face. "We did this!"...

Read her whole post.

(Both quoted with permission.)

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But you don't have to wait a year for more poly conference goodness!

● Loving More is holding one of its one-day Loving Choices seminars in Denver, Colorado, on April 23rd. These are more structured Poly 101 introductions intended particularly for newcomers to poly; individuals, couples and groups considering the possibilities and/or dealing with poly issues; and therapy professionals interested in learning about what more of their clients are thinking and doing. Schedule.

● Polycamp Northwest happens August 26–29 at Millersylvania State Park south of Seattle. Now in its 8th year (I think), Polycamp is a rustic, kid-friendly gathering that drew well over 100 people last year. See local alternative-newspaper article.

● Loving More's annual Summer Conference Retreat happens the weekend of September 9–11 at Easton Mountain Retreat in the rural hills north of Albany, New York. These events feature fine workshops, presenters, and poly community in a relaxed, clothing-optional setting. Here's last year's program, and my writeup of what the retreat is like that I sent around last year (requires Yahoo login).

● Loving More's annual Poly Living Conference happens in Philadelphia each February. The workshops and seminars are similar to those at Easton but held amid the amenities of a fine hotel; not clothing-optional. Here's the program from the February 2011 Poly Living, and here's my writeup of the first one I attended.

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Atlanta Poly Weekend organizers in the news

Georgia Voice

Next month, polyfolks in Atlanta will convene the first-ever weekend polyamory convention in the heart of the Deep South (as far as I know). Atlanta Poly Weekend takes place March 25–27 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel – Atlanta Airport. Its key organizer is Billy Holder of the triad Pocket, Billy and Jeremy, "PB&J". On Friday he got their triad, and the event, into the biweekly Georgia Voice, "the news outlet of record for the state’s LGBT communities and their allies".

Writes Billy, "This is the first ever interview I have done."

Is Atlanta a hotbed for polyamory?

By Dyana Bagby

Atlanta polyamorous scene growing.

[Billy] Holder was looking through a kitchen drawer searching for his barbecue tools. He was about to cook dinner for his wife, Melissa, and their boyfriend, Jeremy, following an afternoon at the park.

Holder and Melissa have been married 14 years and have two teens and a six-year old child. They live a polyamorous lifestyle — not to be confused with polygamy, which means marrying more than one person, or even “swinging,” because, they explain, polyamory is about love first, not sex. Generally, polyamory can be defined as open, honest non-monogamous relationships.

After watching [his] brother go through a horrible divorce, Holder said [he and Melissa] sat down to discuss ways to not ever let that happen to them. The answer was to form a new way of loving — to be open and honest about other lovers.

...While living in Georgia before his primary family moved here, Holder met Jeremy...at a camping festival.

“We clicked and I figured he would click with my wife,” Holder says. ‘No sneaking around, no lying, no cheating.’

Holder, who identifies as bisexual, introduced his wife to Jeremy two years ago. He has private — including sexual — time with Jeremy as well as with his wife. Melissa also has a sexual relationship with Jeremy. But all three are quick to point out that polyamory is not about being promiscuous.

“The biggest misconception is that love equals sex. You can completely love someone without having intercourse,” Holder says.

Jeremy lives in Alabama and visits Holder on the weekends and holidays. Jeremy also has a girlfriend in Alabama.

“We’re a lot more open. There is no sneaking around, no lying, no cheating, because having that level of communication is huge. Even for monogamous couples, having a strong level of open communication is important,” Holder says. “There’s nothing too big we can’t talk about.”

...Wanting to connect with more “poly” people in Georgia and Atlanta, especially with poly people with children, Holder founded [Atlanta Polyamory Meetup]. The group currently has 150 members and continues to grow, he said.

There is enough interest for the group to host the first annual Atlanta Poly Weekend March 25–27. The event includes speakers, workshops, [a steampunk band], and time to socialize.

One of those speakers is Dr. Elizabeth Sheff, an assistant professor at Georgia State University. Sheff focuses her research on sexuality, gender, family, deviance and communities. One area she specializes in is the poly (short for polyamorous) community, specifically a long-range study on polyamorous families with children.

While Atlanta may be a hotbed for polyamorous people, there is not a well-organized community as can be seen in cities like San Francisco or Seattle.

“For the life of me I can’t figure out why, especially because Atlanta is such a magnet for other sexual minorities. The kink scene, for example, is well developed. There is a well-established gay and lesbian community and a burgeoning transgender community,” she said.

Gay men do have non-monogamous relationships, she said, but they don’t consider it polyamorous.

“Gay men invented non-monogamy,” she said. [Elizabeth was surely joking, but the writer didn't get this across.]

Sheff remembers asking a gay friend who was in a long-term relationship with his boyfriend but who also had outside lovers why he didn’t consider himself poly. He told her, “We don’t need another label for something we’re already doing.”...

For another side of the coin, the article goes on to profile a monogamous black gay couple. "...Gates acknowledged he is the jealous type — something that has to be dealt with carefully in polyamorous relationships — and can’t imagine Aaron with someone else. He also wants to prove to the world that two black gay men can be in a loving relationship, something he says is not visible in society."...

Read the whole article (Feb. 4, 2010) [The excerpt above includes minor corrections/additions.] See also Atlanta Poly Weekend's Facebook page and Polyamory Southeast, which includes a list of other southeastern poly groups.

The organizers have taken a gamble by setting the conference price ambitiously low. Registration is $50, and rooms are $82 a night. To break even at that rate, Atlanta Poly Weekend will have to sell a large block of rooms that it has promised the hotel. I wouldn't want to be on the losing end of that bet. If you're coming, be sure to book a room in the "Atlanta Poly Weekend block," which gets you the special rate.

I'll be there. Hope to see you!

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Poly Living East. Coincidentally, I'm writing this on the train home from the Poly Living Conference that was just put on by Loving More at a fine new hotel in Philadelphia. The weekend was a great success — excellent workshops and presentations, lots of the best-hearted people I know, old friends to reconnect with, new friends to discover, loving new-culture community, a nonsexual Cuddle Party, a decidedly sexual room party that people put together in a suite privately, lots of exchanging of life stories, advice, and email addresses. About 100 people registered, enough that Loving More broke even and then some. Loving More still faces cash-flow problems for the office, phones, and services it maintains year-round; it needs your membership.

I've already booked a spot at Loving More's next event in the East: its weekend conference/retreat at Easton Mountain north of Albany, New York, September 9th to 11th.

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