To get to the home that April Divilbiss has shared with the two men she calls her husbands, you drive south on Interstate 55 from Memphis, Tenn., and cross the border into Mississippi. Then you double back along a little road that winds into a forlorn section of Memphis again. It's not just two states but several states of mind you end up traversing. That's because the family album under the TV in April's apartment contains snapshots not of a happy couple but of a devoted threesome. And baby makes four.
April and Shane Divilbiss, who work as a stay-at-home mom and a computer technician, are legally married, but until recently Chris Littrell, a male nurse, lived with them too. No, the two guys don't go for each other; the triad tried a menage a trois once but stopped because Chris thought it was icky. Instead, they lived as man and wife and man, with April taking turns. Together they were raising April's toddler (from a previous relationship), earning a living and wondering how Shane could learn to manage his jealousy when he heard Chris having sex with their wife. Despite the obvious difficulties, until about a year ago, they had formed an odd but functional family.
But now these three Southerners, all in their 20s, find themselves litigants in a legal mess and, consequently, martyrs of sorts for a fledgling movement. A year ago, a judge removed April's daughter Alana from the Divilbiss-Littrell home. The judge was acting on a petition from Alana's paternal grandmother arguing that the threesome's relationship revealed such "depravity" that it could "endanger the morals or health" of the little girl, a sunshiney four-year-old who prizes her Barbies. The grandmother took action after seeing the three discuss their lifestyle on an MTV program, Sex in the '90s: It's a Group Thing.
More Americans than you might think are practicing what is commonly known as polygamy but what adherents prefer to call "polyamory": loving more than one person simultaneously and--this is crucial--openly. No one has taken a survey on polyamory, but as with many fringe movements, it has grown on the Web. "Ten years ago, there were maybe three support groups for polies," says Brett Hill, who helps run a magazine (circ. 10,000), a website (1,000 hits a month) and two annual conferences for an organization called Loving More. Today there are perhaps 250 polyamory support groups, mostly on the Internet but some that meet for potluck suppers. Sure, most of them are in such expected precincts as Boston and Los Angeles, but there are also outposts like KanPoly, where polyamorous residents of Kansas can meet others like themselves and even download a "poly pride flag."