A few years later, Heinlein published The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, a story set on a penal colony on the moon.  The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress provides a detailed picture of life in a ‘line marriage’ with multiple wives and husbands (Sarti 124). In a line marriage, new younger members to the group marriage are added in as the median age of the group grows older. Everyone can sleep with anyone else in the group, and all are responsible for raising the children and bringing income to the family (Murstein 522).  The book also depicted other group relationship styles as necessitated by the vast gender population differences, since there were few females living on the moon and an over abundance of males.

While there have been no documented references regarding whether Heinlein actually lived an open marriage with his wife, Virginia, Heinlein’s views on sex were far from the mainstream, as he considered restrictions on sex to be based on religious superstition (Allyn 78). In Grumbles from the Grave, published post-mortem, a copy of Heinlein’s letter to his editor defends alternative styles in response to his editor’s request to remove the nest concept from Stranger in a Strange Land:

Monogamy is merely a social pattern useful to certain structures of society – but it is strictly a pragmatic matter, unconnected with sin … and a myriad other patterns are possible and some of them can be, under appropriate circumstances, both more efficient and more happy-making. (229)

Heinlein was not alone in inspiring the cultural and sexual revolutions of the 1960s, as writers such as Robert Rimmer, author of the influential The Harrad Experiment written in 1966, are also cited as stimulating alternative thoughts on relationships and sexuality.

By 1960 a successful revolution of the human spirit against the stifling bureaucracy had begun in the utopian literature. The main thrust was not against governments as villains that oppress man, but against insincerity, materialism and such artificial institution as exclusive monogamy. (Murstein 522)

Heinlein’s writings were no exception during this time period. However, unlike other author’s, Heinlein’s writings had a particularly strong impact on a young man by the name of Tim (now Oberon) Zell (Allyn 790). Zell, a student at Westminster College in Missouri, lead a community of science fiction enthusiasts in the early 1960s, and Heinlein’s works were highly admired. Beginning as early as 1962, Zell and followers formed a “water-brotherhood” called “Atl” that was similar to themes presented in Stranger in a Strange Land (Lewis 317).  In 1968, Zell and his followers incorporated The Church of All Worlds, the same name used by Valentine Michael Smith in Stranger in a Strange Land for his religious group, and centered around the same theological concepts. The entire social experiment was based around a science-fictional theology that hovered on the edge of existence (Lewis 317).  In 1973, Zell met and married Morning Glory, another long time fan of Heinlein. They began forming group marriages based on their own relationship and they called their family the “Ravenhearts.”

 Needing a new term to describe the type of relationship style the Ravenhearts were leading, Morning Glory used her linguistic skills and came up with the term “polyamorous” in the late 1980s (McCullough and Hall). The term comes from the Greek root ‘poly’ for ‘many’ and the Latin ‘amor’ for ‘love’ – resulting in a term that means “Many Loves.” She did not like the other words being tossed about to describe the relationship style, such as “omnigamy” and “polyfidelity.”  The term  “polygamy” was too limiting, as it only defined marriage to multiple people.  So polyamory set out to be an umbrella term to describe openly and honestly loving more than one person at a time. Morning Glory published her article “A Bouquet of Lovers,” in the Church of All World’s magazine, Green Egg, in 1990, which set forth the rules and concepts behind polyamory.

Now with a term defined to bring like minded people together, and the advent of the internet, polyamory as a movement was ready to be born. incidently, totally  independently of the Church of All Worlds, Jennifer Wesp came up with the term 'polyamory' to describe non-monogmous relationships in an online newsgroup debate. On May 29, 1992, she started the alt.polyamory newsgroup, setting the stage for people of like minds to come together (Matthesen). In 1994, Loving More was formed to publish the first magazine dedicated to the subject of polyamory, called simply, Loving More (Anapol 173).   Loving More is published quarterly, and was previously run by Ryam Nearing, but has recently been taken over by Robyn Trask.  Loving More and their website has served as a media contact point for the national level polyamory movement, and hosts two conferences a year to bring together people from all over the country to facilitate and attend workshops related to polyamory.