The Two Big Waves of Polyamory in the News This Spring

I've gone way too long without posting! I will speed up Polyamory in the News again.

For now, some catch-up.

●  The wave of poly-rights legislation in Pacific Northwest cities (see previous post) caught the attention of, among many others, the New York Times. Which thought it spotted a long-term trend brewing. In the Northwest, Polyamory Finds Something New: Legal Protection (Feb. 28)

From big cities like Seattle and Portland, Ore., to small ones like Astoria, Ore., proponents of “nontraditional” romantic relationships are making headway in getting legal recognition.

By Anna Griffin

Under President Trump’s leadership, the country as a whole is swinging to the right on social policy. But the Pacific Northwest, as usual, is swinging its own way.

A wave of recent local ordinances in large liberal bastions like Portland, Ore., but also smaller communities like Astoria, Ore., which has a population of 10,181, would confer the beginning of legal protections to polyamorous relationships. The goal, pushed by a group based in California, is to establish legally protected family structures for groups of adults who are romantically or otherwise tied together under one roof.

...National Democrats might be trying to move the political conversation away from divisive social policies that helped cost them the White House in 2024, but proponents of the polyamory changes say Mr. Trump and his supporters have forced them to act. Adding protections for “nontraditional” households is a response to efforts to roll back rights for groups that already enjoy legal protections.

...Conservative activists say officials in the Northwest are using the language of nondiscrimination to foster broader cultural changes that have already run afoul of U.S. law, such as polygamy. ... “It’s ultimately an effort to recognize polygamous marriages and to do that by saying it’s discriminatory not to,” said Roger Severino, a vice president at the conservative Heritage Foundation and the architect of many of the first Trump administration’s social policies when he headed civil rights at the Department of Health and Human Services.

...In Portland, city councilors are considering a similar change in city ordinances, which they packaged as part of a response to hundreds of measures being considered in more conservative states to roll back gay and transgender rights.

At a hearing last week, they heard from more than 40 people supporting the addition of broader nondiscrimination laws that would include nontraditional family structures, including several speakers in polyamorous relationships who said clearer legal protections would help them feel more open when going about the day to day business of looking for jobs, renting homes, signing their children up for school or just engaging in small talk.

Brett Chamberlin, executive director of OPEN, the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Nonmonogamy... cited cases of polyamorous people being denied promotions or fired from their jobs, being denied rental applications from housing providers or being refused a sexually transmitted infection test because they’re listed on paperwork as married.

...“Chosen families take a lot of different forms,” said Ms. [Jessa] Davis, executive director of the Seattle Coalition for Family and Relationship Equity, who is helping with the Olympia [WA] ordinance.  “Even polyamory isn’t just about having sex with multiple people. It’s about what your community looks like.”...

Seattle's NPR station KUOW interviewed the author of that article: Polyamorous people want to be Seattle's newest protected class (March 11).

As of May 31 the measures have passed in most of the cities named. But Seattle's City Council has still delayed introducing the legislation. Some supporters attribute this to councilors' concern over political backlash.

●  Almost two months after that Times story, The Guardian (US edition) followed on at length: Polyamorous Americans are celebrating new laws establishing their ‘inherent worth and dignity’  (The Guardian US, May 3)

 AzmanL / Getty

By Jake Thomas

Amy Nash-Kille knows that not everyone would choose a polyamorous family like hers. But she called it the “greatest blessing” of her life.

Nash-Kille said she has spent the last 17 years in a committed relationship with “two gentle, loving men”, sharing the costs and responsibilities of raising four kids.

But she’s concealed her family arrangement from her graduate school adviser, co-workers and even her hairdresser. She said someone harassed her family for more than a year, and she took out a restraining order to stop it before moving her family from a Colorado suburb to Portland, Oregon, in 2011.

In March, the city became the largest in the US to pass an ordinance protecting polyamorous people and multipartnered households from discrimination in housing, jobs and public accommodation. For Nash-Kille and her partners, it was “one of the greatest relief moments of our lives”.

...The new law, she said over email, “is helping to establish the inherent worth and dignity of people who have unusual family configurations when considered by society at large”.

Portland’s ordinance is the latest in a recent wave of cities including West Hollywood and Olympia, Washington’s capital city, extending civil rights protections to those in nontraditional family or romantic arrangements. Eight cities across Massachusetts and the west coast now have some form of legal recognition of polyamorous relationships.

Taken together, the efforts signal the emergence of a stigmatized group as a political constituency, as well as a challenge to the legal dominance of the traditional nuclear family – which has become the exception rather than the rule.

...“I’d like to get the government out of the business of evaluating our personal relationships,” said Diana Adams, an attorney who heads the Chosen Family Law Center and helped write ordinances in Massachusetts.

Adams said their bigger goal isn’t marriage for polyamorous people, but “unbundling” rights and benefits tied up in institutions that favor people in traditional relationships, including taxes, health insurance benefits and hospital visitation.

Brett Chamberlin – the executive director of the Oakland-based Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy (Open), which has campaigned for the ordinances – said polyamorous people are moving from being viewed as a “lifestyle oddity” to organizing into a movement.

Efforts are already under way for more ordinances in Pacific north-west cities such as Seattle, Eugene and Astoria, as well as Hazel Park, a small city near Detroit. Chamberlin hopes this will eventually create a tipping point where states and the federal government adopt protections for polyamorous people.

A more visible population

...Greater visibility hasn’t always come with greater acceptance. Open’s 2024 survey of nonmonogamous individuals found that 60% had experienced stigma or discrimination when dealing with healthcare, child custody or acceptance from their own families.

...After Portland’s ordinance passed, Skylar Cruz recalled her group chats lighting up with supportive messages. Cruz, a 33-year-old transgender programmer, said she has been in a polyamorous relationship for about a year after she and her male partner of six years added a trans woman to their relationship.

Skylar Cruz between her partners, Jordan Lewis and Robin
Bogushevich, in Times Square, New York. Courtesy Skylar Cruz

...“I feel like we’re at a crossroads in a lot of our political values here in the US,” she said. “And we ultimately have to decide whether or not people are worth protecting for being different. As somebody who is very different, I can’t opt out of being different at this point.”

...Despite the recent momentum for protecting polyamorous people, advocates say there are hurdles ahead. For instance, Seattle’s city council has yet to officially introduce the ordinance that local advocates have lobbied for. ... Davis said councilors in larger cities have privately expressed concern that adding polyamory protections to their municipal code could draw the ire of the Trump administration. ...

...For now, Cruz said, she was considering what the future holds after securing legal protections for her relationship, which she hopes lasts the rest of her life.

“I’ve got probably 50, 60 years left,” she said. “And in that time, I want to ensure that not only are we not being discriminated against, but that we are moving towards being seen as more ordinary, more common, more accepted.”

●  The religious right is taking alarmed notice.  Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and the “reigning intellectual of the evangelical movement in the U.S.” (as Time once called him), has a huge following – partly because he has earned a reputation as a genuinely thoughtful and kindly man.

Mohler has been distressed by the rise of polyamory since at least 2009. After the New York Times story, he called on red-state legislators to urgently pass laws banning their "blue dot" cities from protecting us against being driven out of our jobs and homes A Page Out of the LGBTQ Playbook: Liberal Activist for Polyamory Reveals Gameplan – This Should Be a Wakeup Call for State Legislatures (March 12).

This from a kindly and thoughtful man – in his own closed world.  As Voltaire said, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

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●  But the biggest polyamory in the news event of the last two months has been something else: comedian Lindy West's memoir Adult Braces: Driving Myself Sane. And the flood of mainstream reactions to it, and the reactions to the reactions, and on and on..

West was already famous as a brash voice of millennual feminism and fat pride. Adult Braces tells how a case of Poly Under Duress, pushed her by her spouse, morphed into her more than four great years now in a happy triad. The book is her story of that transformation, centered on a fraught road trip thrashing it out with her spouse  (who identifies as nonbinary and goes by either he/him or they/them) as they drove across the country. Hence the subtitle.

A New York Times headline sums it up: She Wrote a Book About Her Throuple. The Internet Lost Its Mind. (March 31)

By Elizabeth Spiers

...Lindy West has written a 336-page memoir, “Adult Braces,” that, among other things, describes her polyamorous marriage to her husband, Ahamefule Oluo, and their relationship with another woman, Roya Amirsoleymani. Ms. West is a feminist writer and comedian who first gained notoriety for her take-no-prisoners work at Jezebel over a decade ago. She is, therefore, something of an internet character, at least of a certain vintage, with a yearslong trail of writing and posting where she hashes out her ideas and gives readers a sense of who she is.

Sam Whitney/New York Times

Now much of the current-day internet has decided she either isn’t who they thought she was or is lying to herself in saying she’s happy in a throuple. The resulting discourse has ranged from concern that she was coerced into agreeing to nonmonogamy to accusations that she has betrayed feminism.

She wrote an earlier memoir, “Shrill,” which was turned into a TV show starring Aidy Bryant. Ms. West has written searingly about being a fat person in a fatphobic society, reproductive rights and her abortion, and refusing to define herself by how men see her. I picked up “Adult Braces” in part because she has written so well about these issues.

In a recent interview with The Times, Ms. West said she was at first devastated by her husband’s request to open things up. “Our initial conversation was a lot of me crying and being like, I don’t want anyone else,” she said. But after much soul searching and a road trip from Seattle to Florida, she accepted the situation and eventually formed her own relationship with her husband’s girlfriend.

Any discussion of polyamory reliably generates strong opinions. ...

Much of the reaction to Ms. West’s new book has been focused on adjudicating whether she can be truly happy in a throuple when nonmonogamy was her husband’s idea and whether her happiness is consistent with her feminism. Voices on the right claim she is a victim of millennial feminism run amok, and voices on the left claim her situation is a consequence of her feminism not going far enough. Both claims rely on a caricatured idea of what feminism is. 

...Actual feminism is not a neat list of dos and don’ts; it’s simply the idea that women deserve the same agency and rights as men. That includes the ability to decide whom they want to be with and how they choose to conduct their relationships. ...

There’s another element that makes this discourse catnip: She’s not performing marriage the way some would apparently like. People often bring insecurities about their own relationships — what would they do if their partner wanted a third? — to their evaluations....

...Ms. West insists she’s happy. Many of her readers insist she isn’t. But there is no one way to be happy, just as there’s no one way to be a feminist or to conduct a marriage. ...

●  There's been so much media about this that I won't even begin to list it. Here's the rundown from Google News (very incomplete) as of the time you read this.  

●  West gives the details of how it began in a podcast with the New York Times' "Modern Love" columnist, Anna Martin: Lindy West Thought She Couldn’t Handle Polyamory. She Was Wrong (March 4). Short version: She and the other woman fell in love. For real.

Lindy West

...West: It becomes clear that the next thing we need to do is hop on a call and discuss what the heck is going on. Aham [her spouse] and Roya [his new would-be lover] video-called me. There was definitely incredible tension in the air. I think all of us were like: “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” And also I don’t want to make it sound easy, because also there’s still the part of me that’s terrified. And so it’s like, inside me are two wolves; one is having the time of her life and is so electrified by this. And the other one is definitely terrified. ... And I’m using my new skills to stay in the moment with what’s actually happening in front of me, which is that I’m feeling really connected with this person, who’s beautiful and sweet and kind and funny and smart, and who loves Aham, and I love Aham. It was a very complicated video call.

Martin: And let’s just say there’s nothing more electric than finding out someone has a crush on you. How did that make you feel?

West: It was very powerful. I was immediately like, “Oh, I like her a lot more all of a sudden.” She had just been this big cloud of mystery and suspicion, and I was like, “How do I know that she’s not trying to get rid of me so that you guys can be together?” And she’s not out there thinking the vile stuff that is happening in my head. She’s out there thinking: “Oh, Lindy’s beautiful. And she seems so smart and interesting. I would love to get to know Lindy.”

And I am processing my changing feelings about Roya while I’m on the road trip. And I think I started to feel so soothed by that feeling of safety. I liked the feeling of not having a stab of panic when Aham brought up Roya’s name. And all of a sudden I wasn’t having that anymore. And I was like: “What is this new place? I want to stay here.”

Martin: The circumstances of Aham and Roya’s relationship haven’t changed. If anything, they’ve intensified, right? So the safety you feel, that’s you. You’ve created that safety, no?

West: Yes. Absolutely. And that’s why it was different, I think. So the trip continues, and I’m talking to Aham more and more about Roya. And I believe Aham sent me a sexy underwear pic of Roya with her consent. And I was like, “OK, you can tell her that that’s a beautiful photo.” I’m such a dork.

...I suggested, “Why doesn’t Roya come up to Seattle, and we’ll see what happens?” I went by myself to pick her up. And she was instantly captivating. Like she was just so pretty and so sunny and smiley. And then we went to the show, and Roya and I held hands. Then we went to a bar, and Roya and I were sitting next to each other talking, and some drunk guy came up and grabbed her arm. And I was like, “I’m going to [expletive] kill that guy.” And I kind of bodied him away from us. The feeling I had was like: “That’s my girlfriend. Why would you think you can just touch her?” And then we went to the hotel, and we [all] had sex, and it was really fun.

...Martin: In 2022, you, Aham and Roya announce what’s happening in your relationship. Can you tell me about that?

West: We were a romantic triad. We didn’t really know how to launch. Because it felt intrusive and stressful, and I felt resentful about it. Like why do I have to explain my life to people? But it really was eye-opening to me how angry people are about non-monogamy. And I think it’s because everyone thinks that if it becomes normalized, then their husband is going to say, “Now I need to have a girlfriend.” And I just want to say that you don’t have to do that. I wasn’t looking for it, but it found me. And I too had that fear, and it came true, except what I found on the other side was a way better life than before for me.

Martin: Why? How?

West: I just feel so much more freedom for myself. I have two people who love me instead of one. And it’s really just three people that live in a house instead of two. And we all help with the dishes.

Martin: That sounds kind of nice.

West: Yes. So we’re all three together, still. We’re into year five.

●  The kerfuffle has spread worldwide. Just one example, a friendly one in Ukraine: A Prominent Feminist Opens Up About Polyamory and How It Transformed Her Marriage (on the news site 112.ua, "independence, impartiality, and only verified information," May 19). Translated from Відома феміністка випустила мемуари про поліаморію: як це змінило її шлюб, which talks about polyamoriyu as if everyone there already knows about it. 

By Shostal, Oleksandr

According to Vox - Feminist writer and activist Lindy West has released her fourth book, 'Adult Braces,' a memoir detailing her journey into an open marriage and her experiences with polyamory. The book has sparked lively debates online, particularly around themes of honesty in relationships and the evolving dynamics of marriage.

Polyamory Within Marriage

In 'Adult Braces,' West recounts how she and her spouse, Aham—a nonbinary individual who uses he/him and they/them pronouns—navigated the shift toward polyamory. The memoir also explores her relationship with a third partner named Roya, who moved in with West and Aham. This new relationship structure challenges conventional ideas about marriage and partnership.

The book has received mixed reactions on social media, where readers are actively discussing the issues West raises. ... West also emphasizes that 'she has autonomy, and it’s her choice.' These statements highlight the importance of personal agency in relationships—a central theme of the book.

Ultimately, 'Adult Braces' offers more than just a personal narrative; it contributes to broader conversations about relationships, marriage, and polyamory, drawing attention from a wide audience.

This memoir marks a significant step in expanding understanding and acceptance of diverse relationship models, as polyamory becomes an increasingly common topic of public discussion. It raises questions about traditional views of family and partnership, encouraging readers to rethink their own perspectives on love and commitment. The relevance of the issues explored in 'Adult Braces' reflects a growing need for new approaches and openness to experimentation in emotional connections.

More catching up on the news coming soon. 

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Speaking of Ukraine...  as I said in the deep dark cold of their recent winter, these people don't give up. Now the changing tide of the war shows that, if you don't give up, fortune might turn your way.

And if you still don't get what this war means to our future... you need the long view.

BTW, the Telegram logo of PolyamoryUkraine:

 

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