Dear Friend and Reader:

I’m here with one last report from Loving More East Coast. When most of us grew up, there was straight, gay and maybe bisexual. Bisexual has long been controversial, particularly among those who consider themselves firmly on the queer side or the straight side.

NYC-based sexual civil rights attorney Diana Adams, covered in two entries below. Photo by Eric Francis.

Today we have this thing called LGBTQ — an acronym you can’t pronounce that stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer. Of course if you’re heterosexual that doesn’t include you, but at least there is some growing recognition that there are a diversity of sexual orientations and that we need to work from common ground. If we did this acronym right, it would be LGBTQ-Y, since You have your own sexual orientation.

LGBTQ does not include numerous points of orientation: whether you go in the direction of having one partner or lover, or more than one; whether you prefer sex with people you know well, or whether you prefer it with those who are unfamiliar; whether you’re more oriented on others or on yourself. It does not include any of what you might call “shadow tendencies,” such as when someone tends toward monogamy but also tends to find partners who do not.

The word “polyamory” in theory means the option to have multiple relationships with the full knowledge of your partners (and vice versa), but in reality it’s an honoring of relational diversity. (The term “polyamory” means no one thing; it’s is an umbrella term that covers at least 10 different established forms of relationship.)

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Sometimes the question comes up as to why I cover astrology, politics, environment and sexuality themes on one website. The reason is because I think they are all the same thing, that is, aspects of the same thing. Of course, saying it doesn’t make it so, but one of our themes here is exploring how the personal is political; and as above, so below.

Today I’m at the Loving More conference, which is a community seminar sponsored by Loving More magazine. It’s designed to help people who are living what are often described as alternative relationship lifestyles. Let’s see if I can relate it to the other themes we cover on Planet Waves.

A few moments ago I was describing to a friend what we do at this conference: figure out how to get along better, and how to meet our relationship needs. These are things that we all have an interest in, no matter what our sexual or family orientation. The “normal,” “moral” nuclear family is becoming ever less popular no matter what decade anyone is trying to bring back to life. More and more people are accepting the idea and the reality that they have choices.

Workshops at this weekend’s conference include the one I’m currently sitting at the back of, typing away with the consent of the presenter Diana Adams, called “Know Your Rights Legal Training.” We don’t necessarily think of it as a right to relate to who we want to, as we want to, but it happens to be the most basic provision of the Bill of Rights, covered by the 1st Amendment.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

As I mentioned earlier, I’m at the Loving More East Coast Conference in upstate New York. Long-term readers know that I’ve been involved with something called the polyamory movement — responsible non-monogamy — since the mid-1990s, and long before I knew the word, since the mid-1980s. Loving More is actually a Colorado-based magazine for which I write, and for 22 years they’ve sponsored these retreats on the East and West Coasts.

Chuy Garcia works the registration desk at the Loving More east coast conference. Photo by Eric Francis.

For those who have never heard the word or who think it’s a kind of plastic, polyamory is a form of alternative sexuality to serial monogamy, “permanent” monogamy and one night stands. The difference between poly and cheating is that the discussions are had out in the open. Poly by definition potentially means multiple partners, but the core is no secrets among partners.

The difference between poly and swinging is that swinging is about sex and poly is about relationships that may or may not include sex.

Every year there are a few relatively small conferences where the a small part of the tribe gathers. Polyamory is mainstream. If you do a Google search on the word, you come up with 2,190,000 returns. There are not quite that many people at this retreat center near Saratoga; there are about 70 of us. The median age is about 40 or 50 — it’s an older crowd in general, though some interesting, high-energy young people are here.

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