This month we'll be talking about Poly families with kids. Do you have kids? Planning on having them? A child of poly parents? Come discuss your experiences.

July 21st, 8pm, The Tool Shed in Milwaukee, WI

The Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association sent out a notice that they are looking for some poly folks to take their survey on conjugal living. Please take a moment to take the survey to help them out.

As you are supporters of the CPAA's work, we are sending you a direct
notice (see below) about the survey we are conducting in support of
our court advocacy work. We greatly appreciate your interest in our
work and expect we will be seeking further information, advice and
thoughts from the polyamory community as we go along.

Even if you don't fit the criteria for the survey, we are also asking
polyamorous folks to help us craft our legal strategy by dropping us
an email note at support@polyadvocacy.ca to tell us as to what you see
as the benefits of polyamorous Conjugal Unions, both personally and
societally.

Thank you again for your support.

Sincerely,
Carol
CPAA member
Vanpoly moderator

The Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association (CPAA) is doing a short
survey on polyamorous households in Canada where 3 OR MORE ADULTS ARE
LIVING OR HAVE LIVED TOGETHER in a form of "conjugal union".

The CPAA intends to use this information to give Canadian courts and
governments information about the number and type of polyamorous
Canadian households. For more information on current litigation and
the CPAA, please read our website at http://polyadvocacy.ca
.
---------------------------------------
The survey is located at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XT8PM82

5 required questions. Approximately 4 minutes.
(Total: 15 questions. Approximately 10 minutes.)
Ending date of survey: May 7, 2010
PLEASE TELL PEOPLE ABOUT THIS SURVEY!! (even if they don't call
themselves "polyamorous")
----------------------------------------------------
DEFINITION
In the survey, a "CONJUGAL UNION" means a marriage, common law
marriage, intimate partnership, handfasting, or any other
marriage-like relationship.
Example: In a three person situation, people living in such a Conjugal
Union could be in a GROUP (persons A, B, and C are in a Conjugal Union
with each other) or in an "OTHER" arrangement (persons A and B are in
a Conjugal Union and persons B and C are in a separate Conjugal Union
in the same household and sometimes in separate households).

Date: March 17, 2009, 8-9pm
Location: Tool Shed, 2427 N Murray Ave Milwaukee, WI 53211

We'll be talking about what shapes as into the poly people we are: how did our backgrounds, values, and personalities shape the way we live our lives as polys. We'll also be discussing future social gatherings, the PLN conference, and receiving copies of Ravenscroft's book Polyamory (if you requested one be ordered for you. If you want one but haven't told us before now, let me know. The books are $21.95 plus tax from the Tool Shed).

Thanks to everyone who donated, the whole Modern Poly crew was able to attend the PLN conference!

It was a really great experience for me. I met a wide variety of poly people living all sort of lifestyles from all over the world.

I went to all of the sessions that I was able to, here are a few things I took away from some of the ones I went to:

Partners in Progeny by Valerie White
This was a really great session about being poly and having children. She talked about the dangers of being out as poly when you have children and how you can protect yourself. One of the things that I found the most interesting was that she said polys have this romantic idea of "we're going to have a baby and we don't need to know who the father is because we'll all raise it and love each other" - she said you should test when the baby is born because you never know if those partners will stay around and that makes it difficult if you need that information for medical, legal, or if the child just wants to know who their biological father is.

Polyamory & Diversity by Robin Trask and Jesus Garcia
This session focused on how to create more diversity ethnically, generationally, and sexuality in the poly community. We talked about the differences in all of the groups and how we can make people from those groups feel more comfortable. Diann suggested that we should be the ones to go out and make them feel welcome - approach them and ask what you can do to make things easier on them.

Polyamory & Identity by Dr Leanna Wolfe
This was a really interesting session for me. Leanna took a look at groups in Papua New Guinea and Western Africa and studied them anthropologically. She spoke about how each group practiced polygyny differently.

Young Mainstream & Poly by Jessica Karels
Jessica talked about the differences that shape the way we view relationships generationally and culturally. We did an exercise at the beginning of the session wherein we had to select traits from a list that were most important to them and then explain to everyone else why. It was interesting to see where the overlap was and how what they selected matched up with what we knew of that person's life and personality.

One the Loving More website you can find out more about both the presenters and their sessions.

The folks at Modern Poly and myself are doing a fundraiser to go to the Breaking Boundaries Conference in Philadelphia. This is a great opportunity for us to represent the younger-end of the spectrum of polyamory.

You can learn about some of the awesome Modern Poly crew:

Mai Li

Randy

Ashe

Donate to help us make it out there! Any little bit helps and we really appreciate all of your help - to show you that we do, win some free stuff for donating!