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Hey everybody, it's Meredith.
I come to you from my basement where I'm recording season 10.
It's on its way, I swear.
But in the meantime, I hosted a Boston Globe panel the other day called State of the Unions.
It was part of an event called Globe Summit.
My panel specifically was about open relationships polyamory, the changing perception of commitment and how we define family.
And it was fascinating.
One of the reasons I requested to host this panel was because I do love letters, only about 20 minutes from Somerville Massachusetts which, in 2020, became the first place in the country to create an ordinance that said you can have more than one domestic partner.
Meaning in Somerville, you can be polyamorous on the record.
We've talked about Somerville and polyamory here, so I thought you might want to be in on this discussion.
The panel actually featured an expert on law and polyamory who appeared on a previous Love Letters episode, the one about the Boston area woman who has two domestic partners, one of the first people in the country to be on the record as being in a three-person poly unit.
The conversation with this group is about a lot of things, not just polyamory.
It's about how gay marriage influenced other unions.
It's about chosen family and how the person we live with isn't always a romantic partner.
It's about health insurance and whether that kind of practical need is why people do or do not get married.
You can listen to the discussion now and we'll be back soon, I swear, with a full season that will change you. there I'm Meredith Goldstein with the Boston Globe specifically it's love letters advice column and podcast and I'm so excited to bring you a panel today talking about the state of the unions that's with an s the future of relationships I just want you to know this is our last panel of the day it is a relaxed panel I'm so excited to talk about this issue welcome panelists uh What I would love to do to start is to have everyone introduce themselves and talk about how you come to this conversation about relationships as an expert.
Kimberly?
Sure.
I can start.
Hi, my name is Kimberly Roten.
I use they, them, theirs pronouns.
I am a co-founder of the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition, which was founded four and a half years ago, in 2020.
And in addition to that, outside of that work and in a different hat, I am the Director of Policy and Strategic Initiatives for the Mayor's Office of LGBTQ Advancement for the City of Boston.
And what brings me to this work?
Well, I've been consensually non-monogamous for 18 years of my life.
And I'm just so thrilled to see legislative movement in this area and I'm really thrilled to be a part of it.
Great.
So lovely to be here with everybody.
My name is Alex Chen.
I use he him pronouns, and I am the founding director of the LGBTQ plus advocacy clinic at Harvard Law School, where I also teach gender identity, sexual orientation law.
I am also alongside Kimberly, one of the co-founders of the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition.
How I come to this work.
I think there's so many ways to answer that question, but probably the way I tend to think about it the most is.
My background, really before I came back into academia, was primarily in civil rights work, impact litigation, federal litigation, and it was primarily in the LGBTQ plus context, focusing on big national issues with regard to LGBTQ plus rights.
I think from that background, I really think about this work as being about not just one community and our rights, no matter how important those are to us and to society but really what are lessons learned about how we have advanced our rights and what rights we have sought, and how that has transformed the rest of our society that we could take towards the things that affect all of us?
And one of the biggest things that affects all of us is how does our law and society regulate and govern personal relationships and how does that contribute to how we relate to each other?
What kinds of families and relationships we form?
This loneliness epidemic that so many people talk about feeling these days, about the sense of disconnection we have from each other.
And what does law have to say about that?
Hey, everybody.
My name is Willie Burnley, Jr.
I am a Somerville city councilor at large, meaning I represent the entire city of Somerville, which is relevant today because I was one of the sponsors of Somerville's non-discrimination ordinances based around family structure.
That helped basically create a layer of protection around non-monogamous and non-traditional families in Somerville, which was incredibly heartening for me, not only because I am polyamorous and have been for almost a decade just nine years.
Next year it'll be 10 but also because I have so many constituents who've talked to me about how they feel like they have to hide their relationships from the government, from people in their lives, because of stigma, because of fear of retaliation at work or in other spaces, and who feel heartened and protected in Somerville in a way that they do not feel that they have protections throughout most of the United States.
And it's one of the greatest pleasures and honors of my life that I've been able to make people feel as though we can actually use government to push to expand freedom and expand people's rights and have more inclusive society at a time when, for so many, that dream is under attack.
I want to get into what Somerville has done and started for so many other communities.
But before we get there, I have to tell you that I've been doing this column now for 15 years.
And in the last three or four years I'm going to say, when I'm at a party or at a dinner and people hear that I write about relationships, the most common question I get is wait, what's polyamory?
What's an open relationship?
And I think some of this is that the media has covered different types of relationships that have always existed but perhaps were not spoken about.
So no one feels left out of the conversation.
When someone says to you, explain the word polyamory, the concept of open relationships, what might be the difference?
Some of the language we use to talk about relationships.
Who would like to give us some nice glossary?
I can start.
So polyamory is a kind of consensual non-monogamy, in which an individual engages in multiple relationships with other folks.
And those relationships can be romantic, they can be sexual and or intimate.
They don't have to be all three with the full consent and knowledge of their other partners.
So this is maybe not the monogamous norm, but it definitely is not cheating.
And it is with, again, the full informed consent of everyone involved.
Yeah, and I think the thing I'd add is that there's a distinction between people who engage in consensually non-monogamous practices, which can be lots of different terms and labels, right.
That people use in different places, and polyamory specifically, which is sort of identifying as somebody, where that's like part of how you organize your life right.
And there's statistics that indicate that actually up to 20 of Americans have engaged in what people call like consensually non-monogamous practices.
It's just that they might call it swinging, right? instead of polyamory, for example.
And that actually the statistics don't skew based on geography religion race, political party, age or any of those things.
There's an equal prevalence of these types of CNM practices across all those different divides in American society.
But polyamory is a smaller group of people, maybe around 4 to 5 of the population, that actually identify kind of with that particular label as part of how they live.
All right, I want to talk about Somerville.
So take me back to 2020.
What happens?
It's a big question.
Well, in 2020, Somerville became the first city in the country to create a domestic partnership ordinance, which we did not have prior to 2020.
But in 2020, we created one where more than two people could be part of a domestic partnership.
And that was, for many people, a novel idea, but something that advocates such as some of the folks who are on this couch with me right now had been pushing for for a long time.
And this was a really important time too.
For those who maybe have forgotten, COVID was happening right.
And we were still in a lockdown era.
And when I interviewed people about this idea, people were saying I want to be able to my loved one in the hospital.
I want access to the things I need access to.
How did that play into the decision to really push this or the acceptance that this was the time?
Well, it's funny because this actually came out of, specifically people's desire to be able to share their health insurance with their partners.
There was a realization that, because we did not have a domestic partnership ordinance at all, that in order to share their insurance, couples or groups of people would have had to get married in a traditional fashion.
And when we were working through that, there was a question from one of my colleagues, Counselor JT.
Scott, about why only two people?
And that question wasn't rhetorical and it was reflective of the fact that Somerville is a community filled with many different kinds of family structures and people who love each other and deserve to have additional protections that make them equitable to all other relationships.
We were really.
I'm so grateful.
One person who is in a polyamorous relationship with two people and were I don't know if they were the first, but among the first to register with Somerville as having more than one domestic partner.
They agreed to be on the podcast.
And I believe that episode is called Polyamory City, and we talk about the history of Somerville.
But what I tell people when they ask about that episode is how absolutely boring their story was.
And I say that lovingly to them.
But I think when this concept is unfamiliar to you, you don't know how to imagine the situation, right?
And this was...
TV watching family caring for a cat.
From my memory that there was this misunderstanding that families look like families,
Loved ones look like loved ones.
I wondered if one of you might speak to the perception as opposed to the reality.
I would just say that I think a lot of people, when they're approached with the concept of polyamory or non-monogamy in general, there's a immediate reaction that it's all going to be threesomes and rainbows.
And sometimes it is threesomes and rainbows, but a lot of the times it's more like board game nights and a lot of Google Calendar work to find time to meet up with everyone.
It is just as mundane as any other relationship structure, except that it brings in more people.
And with that comes logistical challenges at times, but in some cases a lot more support and love.
I want to make note that the person who spoke about their relationship did not want to use their real name.
And there's a reason for that, right?
And, you know, how's my employer going to take this?
How are my loved ones going to?
For as much as this was now something that could be on the books in an exciting way at that moment, there were potential scary things that could come with putting your name down as having more than one domestic partner.
Can anyone speak to the immediate actions that were taken after and also how that's changed?
Sure, I can speak on behalf of the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition.
We helped drive forward legislation that would protect people from discrimination on the basis of their relationship and family structure in Somerville, in Cambridge, in Oakland and in Berkeley, California.
So the all of those spaces, that legislation moved forward unanimously.
This was incredibly exciting to these cities, and we were really taken aback.
I think, going into this, especially coming from politics myself you often do not get a unanimous vote on something even remotely controversial.
And thanks to that legislation, people are protected from discrimination in employment. in housing and public accommodations with the police.
And often in these cities, their human rights council or commission, if they have one, has to investigate allegations of discrimination on the basis of relationship or family structure, inclusive of polyamory relationships and families, but also, and to Professor Chen's point, inclusive of discrimination for a wide variety of other familial types.
So like multi-generational households, asexual and aromantic relationships, platonic partnerships in which someone just wants to live out their days with their close, close friend and maybe even raise a child together, step families,
So many other non-nuclear family types are protected underneath this legislation.
And so I just really want to draw together, like, this isn't just about us.
Like.
This is about all families in the United States that don't look like this normative.
White heterosexual married dyadic couple.
And that's kind of what we're here to focus on.
I have 1,000 questions.
But to the point that you just spoke to, so often conversations about ordinances and just non-traditional ways of living, at least by certain standards, are grouped together with a conversation about gay marriage and the person I talk to is a straight person, like on the podcast, right?
So I'm wondering why these conversations are often combined.
I think there's three main reasons for that.
The first being actual literal overlap between the communities.
So studies have shown that one in five LGB folks actually are engaging in polyamory or consensual non-monogamy practices.
That's pretty large when you compare it to the four to 5% of the US population.
So you have actual literal overlap between the Venn diagrams.
Second, you also have metaphorical overlap because of the similar treatment of social and legal institutions against LGBTQ folks and also polyamorous ones.
We're often facing a lot of the same repercussions, like not being able to access marital rights or divorce processes, child custody disputes, wrongful death statutes, et cetera right.
And as a result of that discrimination, we've tried to solve for it ourselves outside of the legal institution, by creating chosen families in polyamory, but also chosen families in the queer community.
And then the third bucket I would say is sort of discursive.
Judges, Supreme Court justices, legislators and other electeds have noted sort of raised this alarm and fear-mongering of the slippery slope that if we adopt gay marriage, oh my goodness, we're going to have polyamory suddenly become legal.
And so we're often lumped together in the exact same discussions.
And to the point about the slippery slope, in case that comes up for the audience in any way, I would really urge you to think about it more like a trudging, brutal trek up a mountain towards inclusivity, rather than a slip slide.
I think it's erroneous and hurtful to say that the work of advocates for the last 50 60, even longer years just slip slowed, to their rights.
I think that was a really great overview.
And I think the only thing I would add to that is, you know, it's interesting.
Yesterday I was teaching my class and we were just doing the unit that I do on the Supreme Court case cases recognizing gay rights and recognizing marriage equality right.
And I always reread those opinions every year for this course and every single one of them the refrain from the dissenting conservative justices.
How do these arguments not apply to polyamory?
How does that not apply to just letting multiple people marry each other?
That's going to be the end of this.
How do you justify this, right?
And so for a very long time, I think that there was this pressure within LGBT activism to be like no no no no no no no no, no.
It's not like that.
We're just the same as you.
We want all the same things.
We just want to switch the people.
And for many people in the LGBTQ community, that is true.
Just because you're queer doesn't mean that you don't want the things everybody else wants sometimes.
A lot of people want one partner and a dog and a picket fence, and that's awesome, right?
It's awesome.
I think that the thing that is important though, is that there is that pressure to divide and conquer that pressure to say no, we're not like this, you know, and we can.
You know.
We have to say we're more like everybody else and not like some other group that is getting discriminated against.
And so there can be this pressure to not recognize as part of our community.
And that's actually where a lot of, why did I get into this?
Like I, unlike these folks, you know, didn't identify as a longstanding member of this community.
I just thought we shouldn't be leaving people behind who are in our community, because we had to make certain arguments that said you're not a part of us, right?
And I think the other component I just that I think is connected is that one of the ways that you see discrimination happening against poly people is that people think that saying that you are polyamorous or saying you have multiple relationships is inherently inappropriate or sexualized right.
It's this idea of like oh, if I say that I'm polyamorous at work, somebody else thinks that person was coming on to me.
And I'm like, well, not any more or less than somebody saying I'm gay at work is coming out to you.
If somebody has a picture on their desk of their polyamorous family, that is because that's their family.
And so the discrimination I think is very reminiscent of that kind of thing of like.
It's about the idea that these are not inherently.
Yes, sex is a component, but the most important aspect is social and relational and about how you live your life and who's important to you.
So growing up, you know, I had divorced parents, like everyone my age, I think.
And I really, I think partly because of television, which modeled chosen families, which modeled community, especially as I was growing up.
When I think about the media that mattered most to me.
It really affected the way I began to structure my life.
Having a group of friends that could act as family.
Family, I wanted to behave like friends.
I would move to Boston and have a roommate for probably seven years of my life, which is longer than a lot of marriages.
And we were not romantic together.
We were platonic partners in a home.
And she's still an incredibly close friend.
And there were points in our journey together in that same home where I covered more of the rent, where she covered more of the groceries, because we were a family and still are.
And yet I couldn't insure her.
It would have never occurred to me that I could have given her some of my benefits.
And what continues to puzzle me is that, no matter how we talk about this, we often frame it around romance, that this is a we are sort of mimicking marriage and the business of marriage.
And I cannot remember I was interviewing one of the three of you, I believe, where I said I want a world in which I can cover my sister on my health insurance, because I am very codependent with my sister and we are quite tethered.
But even that doesn't work with a domestic partnership, because she is a sibling which does not actually fall right under, from what I understand of Somerville's ordinance.
So how do we make all this work when, in fact, sometimes it's even our own family that we can't?
You know, you can insure your child, but not your sibling, and this is still modeled after a romantic relationship, even if we know it's others.
So how is it flawed that we are still talking about this right in the context of that kind of partnership?
And also to what extent is this an American conversation because of our health insurance issues?
These are big, let's fix the universe conversations.
However anybody wants to hit at that, I'd love to.
And we will answer all of that in half an hour.
No, I mean, it's a huge question and it's one that scholars and lawyers and advocates have been grappling with for a very long time, and not specific just to the polyamory movement or for the polyamorous community right.
Think that in the united states we have privilege, not just romance, but a particular type of self-sufficient, supposedly nuclear family model.
That that's supposed to be it and that that's your family unit and that's the only thing you're supposed to care about.
But in actuality the american family does not look like that at all right like.
If we look at pew research center data that's come out over the last couple of years, the majority of families don't look like that right.
So we're seeing a rise in unmarried parents who are raising children, step families that are being created, multi-generational households, people living with roommates to your point for a lengthier period of time, and platonic partnerships and so many other differing types of family formations.
And I think, to answer your question of how could we solve for X, I think we have to start thinking about the ways that we can deprivilege that family unit and instead focus on okay, how can we create a community of care?
How can we support that through our legal system?
Could we break these down into divisible contractual rights of which I can say oh actually, my spouse has great health insurance.
They don't need it.
But who really doesn't have health insurance is my best friend, who you know.
I'm happy to sign something saying I'll take on blank blank whatever it takes, but I want to give health insurance to my best friend.
That, to me, is a path forward to start thinking about how to make the system work for us and the community, and the communities and the families we really have.
Yeah.
And we talk about this all the time, right?
Like why don't?
If we had single-payer healthcare that was universal, we wouldn't necessarily have so many people who are trying to get people on each other's benefits, right.
That's just real.
And also our ability to do that is, it seems, in a really protracted, admired political process.
And so if we want to be realistic about where we are as a nation, then what are the things that we can do day to day?
That's one piece of it.
And I think the other piece of it that sometimes I say is like I think that you know how you think about what something like marriage or family is for is also really different depending on your political orientation.
And so there are studies that show that liberals tend to think of these as very practical.
It will get you health insurance benefits.
It will let you visit people at the hospital.
And that kind of thing wins progressive support.
However, if you want to talk to conservatives about marriage and family.
You talk about love and duty and care.
And I'm saying that not to say that one of these things is more important than the other, but to say that actually, in a way, I think that you can think of this work as, funnily enough, bipartisan.
Because actually, we're not saying we want the state to take more of a role to take care of us.
We're saying we want to take care of each other.
We would like the state to make it easier and cheaper and incentivize it.
There's a very well-known concept in family law called the shadow of law.
And it's this idea that like yeah, you did all that stuff with your roommate, but the way you thought about her and what you and she could do together was really colored by what legal rights are possible.
And if other legal rights were possible, maybe you would have formed a different kind of relationship.
And so the legal structures we have sort of tend to funnel people away from or towards different kinds of relationship right.
And that's kind of the kind of thing we're trying to address with our legal reforms.
Personally, I feel like the communities that we have built together in Somerville of mutual care, of interdependence.
They were built a lot around the point you made before regarding COVID.
In this period of massive social upheaval, massive economic upheaval and a time in which people said the federal government's not here for me.
My community is, you know, barely making it by economically.
But how can we come together to support each other?
And I find that the polyamorous world is very similar to that.
It is people who come together and say, how can we make sure that this person is taken care of?
How can we form a unit of mutual support that is going to drive us all forward?
And I find a lot of that is actually formed in addition to law based on the economic context in which we live today.
There's a reason that I have four roommates.
There's a reason that there's memes about polyamorous people right now, where it's as much about paying rent as it is love and relationships.
But we have a government that is so slow to move towards these changes and to recognize them and to create structures that support people in the midst of these, this context and these crises that it takes advocates and it takes sometimes young, plucky electeds to really look at the system and say there has to be a change here to actually catch us up to the context in which we live.
Because unfortunately, the laws we have on the books and the economic structures were made by a lot of dead white guys who don't have to deal with the consequences.
We'll be back with more of Globe Summit's State of the Union discussion after the break.
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We're all out of the ordinary.
There's a battle playing out right now over who should control American universities.
We're going to bankrupt these universities.
In season one, we were guessing what was to come.
Now we know.
We want nothing less than $500 million from Harvard.
From the Boston Globe and on the media, it's season two of The Harvard Plan.
This time, it really is personal.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts, just as a button on the story about my roommate, we had actually looked into buying property together.
And we thought about it quite seriously.
And at the time I think we were just before the big short, so it would have been affordable.
Maybe for questionable reasons.
But a realtor said to us like listen, if you do this, it will be limiting to your lives, because one of you is going to meet someone.
You're going to evolve and move on.
And my friend and I joke to this day had we just not listened to that person, we'd be so much wealthier.
Because I would then, of course, continue to live with her for many years after that, right?
It would have been fine.
But this is a chicken and egg question, right?
Which is that if maybe this were more talked about and we spoke about the examples we have, he would have been like you know what.
I've seen people who do this and it's fine and it's great.
And there's policy to suggest that there are many different ways to to begin that kind of ownership that way.
And I just think it's fascinating right, that when you have ordinances on the books and things are kind of normalized, you might not wind up in that realtor's office hearing we'll just wait until you find a husband, which you know.
That wasn't the answer, right.
That wasn't the right answer.
Which maybe should also be illegal to ask that.
Say that to someone who's walking in your office.
No, it was really.
It was an interesting.
I think we were too young at the time to understand the greater questions around it.
But this idea especially, that as young women, we were going to need to, we were going to want to do different things, when in fact, we happily, you know cooked for each other.
She cooked for me mostly for many years after.
And it's interesting, you mentioned this gender component, right?
Because you know, many of you may not remember, but actually there used to be this type of relationship that Boston was famous for back in the 19th century called a Boston marriage.
Yes, please talk about Boston marriages.
Do you want to talk about Boston marriages?
No, no, I want to, because you're going to give a better history.
Well, you probably know more about Boston marriages than I do, but my understanding is that in the 19th century there were, you know, upper middle class educated women who who were sufficiently educated to not want to really be within a patriarchal marriage structure in the 19th century and were sufficiently independently wealthy to not have to do it, and that they formed lifelong companionship friendships with other women that were so strong and enduring that people called them Boston marriages because they were so prevalent in this area.
It is when I lived with this friend Jess, where people would say oh, you have a Boston marriage.
And that was when I started to Google the concept and I highly recommend looking it up because
This seems like a good time, since we're talking about Boston marriages and the localness of this, and knowing we're going to give this as a podcast episode to people who listen to the Love Letters podcast, and so many of them don't live here.
This seems incredibly important that we're having these conversations in Massachusetts.
I moved here in the early 2000s and it's been fascinating to be a part of a state that has so many firsts.
And I wondered if anybody might speak to that and also how Massachusetts has helped other places figure this out.
I can take this, I guess, because I'm in government and Willie, I'd love to hear your perspective as well.
Yeah, I mean.
Massachusetts is known for being the progressive leader in the United States, along with California and New York, right?
Particularly when it comes to LGBTQ rights and all of the recent, even recently, like the adoption of the Parentage Act in Massachusetts which, for folks who don't know, is bringing Massachusetts family law up to speed, with the creation of diverse family formations through assisted reproductive technologies.
So like IVF and IUI and other sorts of arrangements, and making sure that the parents and those children actually have a legal relationship to each other.
Like, how essential is that, right?
But on the leading cutting edge, we're sort of an experimental state.
We get to try things out here and make sure that they work and they work well.
And other states look to us for some guidance of like, you know, okay, you did this first.
And like to you know on that point Somerville was really the you know a first two times over.
That helped us at the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition convince other municipalities from other states.
This really can be done.
It's been done already.
There wasn't a massive blowback.
People, you know, the world will continue spinning.
Like this is doable.
And so I just want to again like thank Somerville so so much, and also Massachusetts for just leading the way in so many different areas.
Can you, can someone explain sort of after Somerville, this went to other communities as well?
Yeah, absolutely.
So there's two different kind of, of phases here that we're talking about.
We're talking about both the domestic partnership ordinance, which happened in 2020 in Somerville, as well as the non-discrimination ordinances, which were 2023.
And the domestic partnership ordinances kind of immediately spread.
I think it was Arlington that kind of immediately after Somerville passed it they brought it up for discussion and then ultimately passed it through their town meeting structure the non-discrimination ordinances immediately after we passed it in Somerville, which got not only national but international coverage.
Actually, a journalist flew over to Somerville from Germany to discuss it with me and we walked around the community and she talked about how much she wanted to bring these ideas to the far side of Europe.
And it reverberates so deeply in our communities that Cambridge immediately started having discussions about how they can adopt these ordinances, and they have.
Oakland passed theirs, you know, a little bit further along, as well as Berkeley.
And, you know, personally, I'm always happy to be the first to take these swings.
I know that from conversations I've had.
There are elected officials who don't want to be the first to tread these grounds, who are worried about what it will mean for their political careers or the kind of scrutiny it will bring on to them.
But I find that is incredibly important, especially at a time where we see the LGBTQ community under attack, families of folks who have children, who need gender-affirming healthcare, a national conversation about parental rights and whether, if you have kids, you should get more votes, or whether, if you don't have kids, you aren't actually civically engaged or invested in this country.
It's important for people to be able to look at politics and government and say this isn't just a space where good ideas go to die and where people want to take away rights and freedoms from me, but it can be a space where new ideas are brought forward, people feel engaged supported, empowered and can actually bring in the whole tapestry of our communities.
And I feel as though the ordinances that we put together and passed through Somerville have really made a lot of people that I've spoken with feel as though they have a true home that is reflective of their values and all the different kinds of families around them.
I want to take a question that came in for us.
Do you think there's any fear of social discrimination, even in a place like Somerville, about registering legally as a polyamorous unit?
And I think this is an interesting question because you can have that protect you from discrimination.
But that doesn't mean it's not scary to do.
So what have you been told by people who've come forward about this, and are people feeling comfortable?
Personally, I've been overwhelmingly shown not only support but excitement from folks who have heard about these ordinances.
And let's be clear, government, it doesn't have the best PR and the best comms team.
So, you know, Sometimes you pass a law, then people are like, oh, did something happen?
I don't know.
Is there something going on here?
Not everyone immediately hears about the things that are happening.
In fact, just this afternoon someone created a TikTok at Chill Polyamory the account talking about these ordinances.
And I saw just a slew of people, including people in Massachusetts, who were just hearing about this for the first time.
And both when we pass the ordinance and both when I see people learn about it for the first time, we get a slew of people who say I want to move to that community.
I want to be a part of a place that actually recognizes my family and my inherent value and supports me.
And I'm sure that there are individuals who are aware and are not sure what it would mean for their lives to be out and to be public about their relationship structure or their family structure.
And at the same time, I just know so many more people who are so happy and feel valorized by this.
And I have a lot of empathy just when you put your name, when you get married, right?
This is like a public record.
It's how I found the people to interview, right?
Which is that it's public record.
And then you've got a journalist like me saying, can you talk to me?
And, you know, and luckily they did.
But it's a courageous thing to do.
Talk about your life.
And I'll just like sort of plus one, the international reverberations here, right?
Because, you know, recently I was traveling through Asia and I met a triad, a gay triad there, who you know were visiting the city.
I was visiting because they were bringing one of them was bringing the other two home to meet their family.
In this country, in which there's no legal rights recognized for LGBTQ plus people, let alone polyamorous couples.
They were so moved by hearing that in America, these rights are starting to be recognized.
They live in Australia full time, but their family lives in Asia.
And so I think that what we do in America when it comes to social change, especially along gender and sexuality lines, is a beacon for the whole world in terms of what is possible.
And it's not something that's happened that starts at the national level, right?
Just like with LGBTQ plus rights, everything that we're doing right now.
Sure, maybe it doesn't seem like a big deal that one city recognizes, but that's always where you start in our system.
And I tell people a lot, like you know, I know that we're in a final election season right now and it's hard not to just spend a lot of your time looking at these national headlines.
But regardless of who wins this election, this work has to continue to happen.
And just because Kamala Harris wins the election doesn't mean we get more of these rights on the ground here in Massachusetts.
Nor would Donald Trump winning the election prevent you from working in your local towns and jurisdictions.
And so I think it's such a good, powerful argument.
And I see young people are so much more excited about this.
How do we fight a backlash and get back to where we were right?
People are not excited about the idea that we'll then get back to a status quo that most people don't feel like is working for them or is good enough for them.
Instead of like no, you and I can all be a part of working together in our local communities to create a different future for ourselves and a different type of government.
And I would just say, if you're listening to this and you're like I'm excited about this, whether you're part of the polyamorous community or you're just an interested member because you're in a non-traditional or non-normative family type, we're here to help.
And, in fact, on November 23rd, the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition is releasing a legislative toolkit that will help you speak to your council members or other electeds about this important issue and walk you through what it's like to actually pass a law like this.
So we are here to help.
And if there's something, something that you want to adopt in your jurisdiction, please reach out to us.
You can find us at polyamorylegal.org.
I'd love to know what feedback you've had.
I think people might expect that there would have been resistance to an ordinance like this, or that there is discomfort.
What have you experienced on the municipal level, but also just, like, do you get pushback?
The counselor's point is overwhelming support thus far.
I mean, I don't read all the comment sections of everything.
I love myself more than that.
But I will say like across the board, like overwhelming support.
Like if you had asked me 18 years ago or so, when I first started embracing polyamory, that you would be sitting at the Boston Globe having this conversation, or that Vogue would interview you, or that Vanity Fair would feature this organization that you and others have helped create, I would have laughed at you, right.
And so it's just really been overwhelming interest and support.
And yes, of course, some of the hyper-sexualization, some of the intense stigmatization, but in general really just interest, because I think, at the end of the day, people are recognizing discrimination in whatever form is bad.
And also, wherever people can find joy at this time, in this moment, you should find joy, right.
As long as everyone is based in consent, like we are here for that.
And so like these ideas of creating this like communities of care, I think is really relational.
People can understand that, especially during and I think someone else already brought this up the loneliness epidemic that we are currently living in within the United States, that just an alarming number of adults in the United States cannot even mention loneliness three close friends of theirs or a person that might walk their dog if they suddenly had to go to the hospital.
And so realizing there are alternatives.
It doesn't have to be polyamory.
It can be living with your best friend for seven years.
It could be mom-unes, where moms who are single-raising children decide to live with other moms who are going through the same thing.
It can be so many different expressions of love and commitment.
Yeah, and I think I would just say, to be honest, Part of why I think the reaction has been uniformly positive is the jurisdictions we're working in and the politics of those jurisdictions.
And I do think that if we continue to get wins and pass legislation and it moves to the state level, absolutely there will be a political pushback.
And I don't think it will be because on the merits were incorrect about this any more or less than for LGBTQ plus reproductive rights.
If you manage to achieve a certain level of progress in our society, you see across the course of American history, a pendulum, a backslash swing where people are like okay, it's been a lot of change, maybe more than I was ready for.
And okay, can we just slow down for a second?
So I absolutely do anticipate that being part of the future because, at the end of the day, I think we are in this overall conversation as a nation about what is a family, What is a legitimate family.
What is a family we should get behind?
What are the social consequences of that type of family?
And there are some people in our country who don't feel comfortable with the pace and rapidity of social change.
And that, I think, is just a reality of the situation.
But at the same time, I think the reason why, when you really start looking into this issue and telling those deeply reported stories, you're getting people coming around is because the reality is that it's really actually pretty banal what people want.
And you get reporters all the time calling you and wanting you to tell them a very salacious story.
And I'm like I'm here to talk to you about a lesbian triad who desperately needs health care because one of them has cancer and they have a child and they are worried about health care benefits and taking care of the child and hospital visitation rights.
It's not to say I'm not anti-sex.
Sex is important.
If that's a part of the relationship, that's great.
However usually, when it comes to what the law has to say about things, we're really talking about these material aspects of life.
And I think your question's important also, just from a historical perspective.
It really gives context for why this hasn't happened before.
You know, when I started exploring the polyamorous community about a decade ago, there was a pretty well-known but hidden rule, which was that we don't do marches, we don't protest for our rights, we're not making this a political thing.
Politics is separate, because There is a real fear that if we are out, especially for families or polycules that have children involved, that the children might be taken away, that there could be jobs that are lost, that discrimination is right around the corner because of the conversation that was being had about well, if we legalize same-sex marriage, it's going to become the polyamory in polygamy, which are two different things, were kind of made out to be this boogeyman of the future of relationships that you know we're going to be some communist.
You know everybody is everybody's sexual and romantic partner dystopia.
And because of that there was a real hesitance, I think, on the part of families to come forward to local governments, including ones that are progressive or known to be progressive, to speak out about their rights and what they should be entitled to as just members of the community.
But the more that those stories come out, the more that my colleagues were hard pressed to say maybe they're not polyamorous, but they know someone who is.
And it's really hard for an elected official, who's not a total piece of crap, to look somebody in the face and say you don't deserve to have rights is worth less than my family.
You don't deserve to have any kind of social protections.
And the bravery, as you put it before, of people coming out and talking about their lives and their needs is what has helped get us to this place.
So I give just an untold amount of support to the advocates for helping us get to the place that we are in.
And I wanted to add something I feel like is really important here about which is that You know we have had a lot of challenges sometimes with talking to people about being okay to testify.
The most important thing is for people who live in those jurisdictions to say I'm polyamorous, I'm here, I'm your constituent.
And of course people have a fear about that because they have careers, they have lives, they have families.
But I will also add explicitly that it has been harder to get people of color to agree.
Because a lot of times people are like, I just can't afford to lose my job.
I have these family obligations.
I'm the only person in my family to have been to college.
I'm, you know, sending money to my siblings or back home.
I can't afford to.
And it's been.
You know more, so you know white professionals who have said I can't afford to take this risk.
They are taking a risk, but they are like, I can afford to take this risk.
And it has this systemic biasing impact on who the media covers and then who elected officials and the public thinks is part of this community.
It's often just like LGBT issues cover the fashion or the style section of newspapers.
It's positioned as this puff piece in a way that really detracts from the fact that the reality is that these reforms would benefit lower class and lower income people the most.
But it is very difficult for those people to really you know like it's so much more courage that's required when so much is at stake and your situation in society is more precarious.
And so I do think that that's so important to recognize.
And I think to your point about history really like.
I do want to say like it's I sometimes use this term too.
It's easy to use the term non-traditional when it comes to these relationships.
But actually, you know, what research has shown and I've written about this in some academic work is that this vision that we have of this leave it to beaver.
1950s heterosexual couple living in the suburbs.
It's really historical anomaly.
It's not the prevalent way that, like Americans or other people around the world have organized families.
Historically, there has been much more, you know, it takes a village, right?
Collective raising of children, extended family formations.
And you know that particular vision was predicated on a lot of different kinds of oppression, including racial oppression, but also gender oppression.
And you know it really was also predicated on this idea of, like the 1950s, housewife in the suburbs.
And, you know, think about like Betty Friedman's like the feminine mystique, right?
And so actually this construct was very much a artifact of a particular kind of time and place.
And it has continued to have this hold on us for all sorts of different reasons, but it's not because this is really, from time immemorial, what we thought was the best way to raise a family.
Well, you've answered that question of who benefits from not moving along.
And also this idea that the non-traditional like this idea that this is new or all the numbers would say.
After we had our podcast episode, a person in my life, who I have a professional relationship with you know, said this was my parents' experience and I didn't have a name for it.
So I think that's really important that this isn't so new.
I know we're running out of time.
I have a really practical question, which is like I have two partners.
Let's say I work for a hypothetical company.
I go to my hypothetical company and I say I would like to insure my two hypothetical partners, who are both my domestic partners.
Because of this, does my company have to insure them?
What are the practical applications of these ordinances right now?
Either way.
I'm sorry, we're just gonna decide who's gonna handle it.
I'm just gonna give a short answer and then I'll hand it over to Professor Chen.
But unfortunately, no.
So we can only take things as far as municipal jurisdiction allows right.
Really great, wonderful.
Like you know, underneath domestic partnerships in Somerville and in Cambridge and in other jurisdictions you know you have hospital visitation rights, you have jail visitation rights, you have ease of access to your shared children at your schools in that jurisdiction.
There are other sort of rights that are embedded in that.
However, municipalities do not govern health insurance.
That's not something that's underneath their edict.
And typically it's at the state level.
And so for some sort of change at that level, you would have to be looking to the state.
That said, private employers, it is at their discretion.
And I really do encourage them to think this through, especially after listening in today about like the value of allowing that and the value of recognizing your employees for who they are and the families that they have, and how that can actually help you with employee retention.
Yeah, and I would just very briefly say it's, as you say, unnecessary but not sufficient condition for an employer.
The employers can choose to to offer domestic partnership benefits, or they can choose not to.
They're not mandated by law.
But most employers choose to because they want to retain their workforce and they want to promote the best talent available and they want to actually provide benefits to their employees.
So they can do so.
And what this gives you is the ability to say, I have a legal piece of paper from a government.
It recognizes this relationship.
I've entered into a legally binding family relationship.
And if the employer wants to modify its workplace policies to expand the way it covers domestic partners, it absolutely can do so.
One thing I will add, since I work for the public sector and my city's jurisdiction does cover ourselves.
If you were a public employee in a community like this, you have a pretty direct line to say hey, we just passed this law.
It says I have these rights.
You're the ones who passed it.
I have these rights now.
And so that's not most people.
Most people do not work for governments, although a lot do, in Massachusetts especially.
But that pathway is very, very important because as people start to get these rights, it changes the market reality, if you believe in markets, because it is something that other employers have to become competitive with, the more it becomes popularized.
And also because you get data, and the data we believe will show that it does not actually make much of a difference in terms of the overall bottom line here, just as covering things like same-sex partners and transgender healthcare did not actually make a big difference in the bottom line, despite widespread fears.
We believe that as companies start to adopt these policies, we're gonna see that the data reflect that it's not going to be a huge hit on the bottom line there.
And it's very practically, you know, like just another thing that you can cover, and it will just be okay to do that.
So
I wanna use the time we have left for all of you to whether you wanna recommend readings, say what you're sort of looking ahead to working on next, what your priorities are.
I know we don't have much time, but just as we leave.
Yeah, sure.
I'll just reiterate again, please visit us on our website, polyamorylegal.org.
Also, we are again releasing that legislative toolkit on November 23rd.
So if this is something that is of interest to you, and then you're like how would I ever do this in my jurisdiction?
We are gonna walk you through, like every line by line, and potential challenges that you would have in that.
So I would really encourage folks to check that out.
And then if you have questions about any of this, we're here to answer those questions.
We're here to create a sense of belonging so that this is not just about legal rights.
This is also about your actual feelings within society and the acceptance of your families.
And let's make Somerville the queer polyamorous capital of the United States.
I just...
I want to thank everybody for coming today.
So many readers and listeners have questions.
I hope some of them were answered.
If not, you're welcome to email.
I'll try to get you some answers.
Just thank you for your time and expertise and for this wonderful conversation.
And thanks to everyone who attended Globe Summit.
Love Letters is a production of the Boston Globe.
Today's episode was produced by Globe Summit and Christina Honitou.
Our executive producer is Kristen Nelson.
Maddie Mortel does our audience engagement.
Special thanks to Nancy Barnes and Linda Henry.
Our music is from APM.
Remember, Love Letters is also an advice column.
Send your questions about dating relationships friendships, breakups and more to lovelettersatbostoncom.
I'm Meredith Goldstein.
Thanks for listening.
