We know, of course, that there is some uncounted number of unreconstructed Mormons living on the back roads of Utah, and an uncountable number of Muslims and others all over the world who practice some form of religiously sanctioned polygamy. In my experience, however, most of the conscious religious polyamorists in America today are not Mormons or Muslims but Humanists or Pagansor, in the case of people like myself, both at once. Christianity tells us that sex is sin. For many Pagans, sex is the great cosmic creative power of the Universe working itself out on the human level. For us, the joining of a man and a woman in sexual passion is a symbolic reenactment of the joining of the God and the Goddess in a continuous cosmic copulation out of which flows the creation of all things.
Pagans have a spiritual equivalent of marriage called handfasting.
Since it is not a legal contract, handfasting does not involve some of the arbitrary restrictions of licensed marriage. Handfasting can occur between members of the same sex, members of the opposite sex, or amongst groups of people in polyamorous arrangements. The details of the handfasting agreement, such as its duration and its degree of exclusivity, are open to negotiation based on the individual needs and desires of the people involved. One of the largest and oldest incorporated Pagan organizations in America is called the Church of All Worlds . It was founded in the late 1960's and is still led by the aforementioned Otter G'Zell, the coiner of the term polyamory.