A gay, multi-ethnic, farming family is part of Minnesota’s emerging polyamorous community

Bryan and Deron Demeritte and Joshua Rodriguez don’t exactly make up a stereotypical rural household.

It’s true that they hunt and fish and raise chickens, fruits and vegetables on their 10-acre farmstead in Waseca, surrounded by fertile rolling fields of soybean and corn.

But Bryan, a full-time farmer and a part-time Unitarian pastor and seminary professor, describes Deron and Joshua as his two husbands.

Think of it as Green Acres, nonmonogamy style. Or polyamory among the chickens.

Bryan, 52, is white, a former teacher who grew up Baptist in Missouri. Deron, 38, is Black and originally from the Bahamas. He works as an industrial and commercial HVAC foreman and has been legally married to Bryan for 11 years. Joshua (who plans to change his last name to Demeritte) is a 24-year-old restoration company project manager. He’s mostly Latino and grew up in Boston as the son of immigrant parents from the Dominican Republic and El Salvador.

Joshua has been in a committed relationship with Bryan for five years. He and Deron consider themselves as brother husbands.

In the language of the nonmonogamous community, they’re “nesting partners” in a polyamorous “V” relationship, with Bryan as the “hinge.” That means Bryan has a physical and romantic relationship with Deron and Joshua, but Deron and Joshua don’t have that sort of relationship with each other.

“I love Josh, but I’m not in love with Josh,” Deron said. ”We’re like brothers, almost.”

The three recently moved into their five-bedroom ranch house in the small southern Minnesota town as business and relationship partners in what they’ve called Loving More Farmstead.

Their spread includes three barns, a field of corn, four small vineyards, an apple orchard, a couple of geese and 72 juvenile Heritage chickens that will earn their keep laying eggs for market. They’ll be adding a market vegetable garden and begin raising sheep for lamb meat next.

There are other farmers of color. And other gay farmers. But Bryan said he doesn’t know of any other gay, nesting, polyamorous, multiracial farming households.

So far, the Loving More trio said they haven’t had any problems fitting into their rural community.

“We’re the happiest we’ve ever been,” Bryan said. “I think people in this Minnesota sense are very welcoming, but they also just leave you alone.”

“We’re all just people. We’re just trying to love,” Joshua said.

Their lifestyle isn’t quite as unconventional as it once was regarded.

Recently, mainstream publications such as the New York Times have been writing about nonmonogamy and polyamory in ways that make it seem fashionable.

In an article from last December titled “How Did Polyamory Become So Popular?” the New Yorker noted that references to nonmonogamous relationships have recently been appearing in books, movies, luxury perfume ads and television shows ranging from HBO’s “Succession” to HGTV’s “House Hunters.”

Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal declared “Open relationships are having a moment.”

Increasingly, you can express a preference for a nonmonogamous relationship on dating websites. There was even a sly depiction of a “ménage à trois” during the opening ceremony of the recently concluded Summer Olympics in Paris.

Closer to home, the local nonmonogamy group called MNPoly reports its membership has grown to more than 4,000 members, up from about 1,000 in early 2020. More than 100 people attended the nonprofit’s fifth annual convention, MNPolyCon, held this summer at a community center in St. Louis Park.

“It has become more accepted,” said Marie LePage, a 42-year-old Minneapolis nonmonogamy and personal growth life coach. LePage said, “I personally feel more comfortable telling a stranger” about her nonmonogamous relationships.

“We’re trying to normalize nonmonogamy,” said Maija Hitt, education committee co-chair for MNPoly. “Our mission is education.”

Hitt, a 43-year-old St. Paul resident, said increasing mainstream acceptance of nonmonogamy is being led by younger people.

“To them, it’s becoming no big deal,” she said. “They’re openly nonmonogamous. They don’t hide it.”

About a third of all American adults say open marriages — where both spouses agree that they can date or have sex with other people — are somewhat or completely acceptable, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey. And half of adults under 30 say open marriages are acceptable, according to the survey.

But older adults were also well-represented at the one-day MNPolyCon held July 20 at St. Louis Park’s Lenox Community Center.

Alan Wilson, a 73-year-old Brooklyn Park resident, said he’s been married for 41 years, but he’s also had dozens of additional “play partners” — friends with benefits, long-term partners and infrequent, occasional encounters that he calls “comet relationships.”

Nonmonogamy “makes my life more fulfilling,” he said. “I’ve never hidden it in my life. My children grew up knowing I had girlfriends.”

“I’m a very sexual person,” he said. But he said, “I’m not a playboy. It’s relationships I want. I prefer to find love over sex.”

Wilson said high housing costs may be making nonmonogamy more attractive. Multipartner relationships mean more people available to pay for household finances and help out with child-rearing.

“You just can’t afford a three- or four-bedroom place unless you have more incomes,” he said.

But nonmonogamy doesn’t just mean more sex with more people.

It takes work to make nonmonogamous relationships work, according to members of the MNPoly group, which describes itself as supporting “ethical and consensual” nonmonogamous relationships.

“The main thing for us is everything is consensual, it’s open, it’s honest,” said Randy Frehse, who lives near Pine City, Minn., and is a longtime member of the MNPoly group.

“It takes a lot of communication,” Hitt said. “It’s way more communication than sex.”

“It’s not just a free-for-all. You don’t use it as an excuse to be dishonest or deceptive to people,” said Ray Grant, a Minneapolis man in a “very open relationship” with his nesting partner, Richard Lyons.

Scheduling is also a challenge, Wilson said. “It’s the really hard part.”

“Thank god for Google Calendar,” said Lyons of the time management challenges of an open relationship.

Energy management is also a consideration for Lyons, 75, and Grant, 62.

“We take a lot of naps,” Lyons said.

At MNPolyCon, sessions on nonmonogamy and aging touched on memory issues and consent, changes in libido and sexual performance, colonoscopies, hip replacements, advanced directives and polyamory in senior living facilities.

“I find myself more and more horny as I get older, though maybe the hydraulics don’t work as well,” said Grant.

Bryan Demeritte led a session called “Non-Monogamy 101″ in which he said terms like “ethical nonmonogamy” and “consensual nonmonogamy” are giving way to a simpler, nonjudgmental umbrella term: nonmonogamy.

Polygamy and swinging would be forms of nonmonogamy. So would good old-fashioned cheating, though Hitt said, if you’re cheating, “you’re just not doing it right.”

Instead, many in Hitt’s group prefer polyamory, a subset of nonmonogamy that means “multiple concurrent romantic relationships with the knowledge and consent of all involved.”

Demeritte is writing a book to be published next year called “The More Love the Better,” which he said will describe nonmonogamy in the 21st century from the theological perspective.

“Someone you know is nonmonogamous,” Demeritte said. “It is becoming more and more mainstream. It’s time to let people be who they want to be and live the way they want to live.”