Three new cities to enact poly anti-discrimination laws. Scientific American writes us up well. Two NY Times stories. Upcoming movie, and more.
● Three more cities seem certain to pass polyamory and chosen-family anti-discrimination measures in the coming days.
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Folks from the Seattle Coalition for Family and Relationship Equity at their June 2025 Liberating Love Festival. |
News arrived this morning (Feb. 25) from Brett Chamberlin of OPEN:
Right now, we're on the verge of doubling the number of people living in cities with protections for non-monogamous families and relationships.
Olympia, WA – Passed first reading unanimously last night; final passage expected Tuesday March 3.
Portland, OR – First reading today (Wednesday Feb. 25); final passage expected Wednesday March 4.
West Hollywood, CA – First reading Monday March 2; final passage expected March 16
These measures prohibit discrimination in housing, employment, and other
areas due to "family or relationship structure." Similar measures are
advancing in Seattle and San Francisco, as told in my previous post, in addition to those already enacted in Somerville and
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Oakland and Berkeley,
California.
Activity is also brewing elsewhere. Want to work to make it happen in your city?
-----------------------
The efforts in Washington State got some deeper reporting by
Seattle's SGN (Seattle Gay News): Polyamory advocates fight for anti-discrimination laws in Olympia and
Seattle: A new Queer civil rights movement emerges. (Jan. 28)
By Madison Jones, Managing Editor...Five years ago, [Jessa] Davis founded SCFRE as a way for Washington’s polyamorous practitioners to finally protect themselves legally against discrimination in employment, housing, and healthcare....Davis, who lives in her Beacon Hill home with three other Trans women and two toddlers, related how she had practiced polyamory for several years and had been active in the community before she got involved with the legislative aspect. Her journey began while doing some research into the topic of protections for polyamorous people, after one of her partners experienced discrimination. She told the SGN that her partner was fired from their job in the medical field for being polyamorous, reportedly having been told by their supervisor that it was inappropriate for them in their position to have a “sex-craved lifestyle.”“This is illegal — there should be something done about this!” was how Davis recalled her partner lamenting about the experience, and having already looked into its legality, she had no choice but to reply: “Well, technically, it’s not illegal.”Since Davis founded SCFRE, the group has made a lot of progress in a short period of time. ... On October 4, SCFRE held its first “Liberating Love Festival” in West Seattle, which featured a discussion panel, and provided prewritten letters requesting nondiscrimination laws for attendees to take, sign, and mail to their district representatives. Davis reported that around 80 people showed up and that it seemed that “people have been really craving this kind of community.”In November, the event’s discussion panel was released as an episode of the Seattle-based Mistakes Were Made podcast, which is about “nonmonogamy for imperfect people.” ... Davis warned the audience how “the siloing of our communities and identities saps our collective power.”“Fifteen months ago, I did not think we’d be this far with this,” Davis reflected, as she related the story of how SCFRE ended up persuading the Olympia City Council to vote on the legislation, which would add nondiscrimination language to Olympia’s municipal code. Davis said that since the bill doesn’t look to add an entire new code or repeal one, that has helped immensely in convincing the city councilmembers to sign on. The SCFRE bill was able to garner support from several key players, including City Councilmember Robert Vanderpool as the bill’s sponsor; it also received endorsements from the Washington Human Rights Commission and Tacoma Democratic Socialists of America. She pointed out that even the bureaucratic process of getting the bill heard was fairly straightforward: “It was an email and two Zoom meetings, and now we have a bill being [considered],” she said with a laugh of surprise at its success so far.Councilmember Vanderpool, in an interview with KOMO, spoke to why the protections were important: “With issues like this, you constantly find that — not that folks are underground but it’s hard for folks to come forward about these things, because it is a very private thing, and we want them to feel welcome in our community and not ostracized,” adding that “the biggest thing that comes up is housing. Folks that are in polyamorous relationships or nonmonogamous, or even chosen families — it’s hard in a chosen family to put someone on their mortgage.” ...
City Councillor Robert
Vanderpool, Olympia, WA
“A soccer mom in Bellevue shouldn’t be kicked off the PTA for being in an open marriage,” she stated, pointing out the absurdity of people who could lose their jobs, homes, services, and positions solely on the basis of their private romantic practices.“People shouldn’t have to live their lives in fear.”
Update Feb. 26: The two measures in Olympia have passed: Olympia becomes first WA city with protections for polyamorous families (The Olympian, Feb. 26). "...[Vanderpool] said it’s important Olympia take these actions when the federal government is 'acting to harm civil liberties.' "
Update Feb. 26: The Portland City Council voted unanimously to advance the measure to a Wednesday March 4 final vote. Portland City Council advances anti-discrimination protections for non-traditional families (KPTV Fox12, Feb. 26).
Update March 2: The West Hollywood City Council voted 5-0 today to move the anti-discrimination bill along to second reading. Its approval seems assured. More complicated is the second part of the effort: to create a local registration program for multi-partner relationships. The mayor and council are sympathetic, but much staff work remains to iron out specifics, including to ensure accord with California state law. This might take six months, per a detailed news report: West Hollywood Votes 5-0 On Polyamory Anti-Discrimination Law (WEHO Online, March 2). Further details: WeHo grants protections to polyamorous relationships (Park LaBrea News, March 4).
Update March 5: Final passage in Portland was expected last night but "got bumped to next week when council ran out of time," per OPEN.
Central to the success of all these local volunteer efforts have been expertise and resources from OPEN, the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy, and PLAC, the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition. Want to do this in your city or town? Here you go. View the Legislative Toolkit with step-by-step guidance, and watch the training vid.
● Scientific American has been
America's iconic science magazine since 1845. It just published a
feature article on the nature of polyamory as widely practiced today, based
on many research reports and interviews with "more than 100 practicing
polyamorists in depth." It really gets us right.
Online the story is titled The Truth About Polyamory (Feb. 17). In the March 2026 print issue (which flags it on
the cover) it's titled Everything You Wanted to Know about Polyamory (but Were Afraid to
Ask).
Save the link to send to anyone who needs a serious explanation of us.
An anthropologist’s detailed research shows polyamorists focus on intimacy and honesty, not sleeping around.
Klaus Kremmerz
By Rebecca J. LesterThe first time her husband went on a date with another woman, Kelly felt sick to her stomach. ... By the fifth time, she just went to bed early. The eighth time, Kelly met her husband for drinks after his date. Then, she says, they went home and had the best sex of their lives.Kelly, a trial attorney, is no shrinking violet. She goes on her own dates with other men, and her husband, Tim, is thrilled. “There’s nothing like that feeling when Kelly comes home from a date, and she’s soaring and giddy because it went so well,” he says. “And I’m like, ‘That’s amazing, babe! I’m so happy for you!’ And I truly am.”Kelly and Tim practice polyamory: They form deep, meaningful, romantic relationships with more than one person at a time, with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved. This departure from traditional dating and marriage is gaining popularity in the U.S., according to research and surveys. ...I am an anthropologist and licensed therapist, and I have spent the past seven years researching polyamory the way anthropologists do: by spending a lot of time with a lot of people who engage in it. I’ve interviewed more than 100 practicing polyamorists in depth, and we talked about their experiences, motivations and aspirations, as well as regrets and lessons learned. I’ve heard about how polyamorists view themselves and the world, and I’ve observed what they do. And what I’ve found is, in many respects, supported by other scientific research—but not by popular perceptions.First, polyamorists are not a privileged elite. They are more likely than monogamous people to earn less than $40,000 a year, according to one study, although they do tend to be more highly educated. They are regular folks. They have jobs and children. ... There is nothing inherently class-specific about the practice. (Nor is it limited to particular race or ethnic backgrounds, although the population skews white.)Politically, polyamory is a rare place where the left and right meet: You might encounter a libertarian or a Donald Trump supporter or a Bernie Sanders bro. The philosophy and practice of polyamory resonate with people across political divides and are not simply liberal indulgences—in fact, they tie into a libertarian and conservative ethos with deep roots in U.S. society, where people rebel against the powers that be telling them what to do.Where popular portrayals of polyamory most miss the mark, though, is in the idea that the practice is primarily about having sex with multiple partners. Polyamory is mostly about intimacy, not sex, say the people involved in it, and it has ethics at its core. My observations support this claim, and so does other social science research. ... Respect, consent, trust, communication, flexibility and honesty are fundamental to these unconventional dynamics, according to a large review by researchers at Virginia Tech published in 2023.And these principles can have beneficial consequences. Psychologist Justin Lehmiller, a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute, reported in the Journal of Sexual Medicine that polyamorists engage in safer sexual practices than the people who say they are monogamous—a quarter of whom reported having sexual relationships unknown to their partner—and this caution may reduce rates of sexually transmitted infections.
In short, polyamory is radically different from what many people may envision. Its current flourishing is not just a curiosity or random event: it indexes something important about this cultural moment and how people experience and value intimacy and relationships. ...---------------------------------Reality TV shows like The Bachelor, Love Is Blind and Say Yes to the Dress are popular for a reason—they tap into a dominant cultural narrative about “true love” and monogamy. ... If we aren’t fulfilled, then there is something wrong.Polyamory holds that what’s wrong is the very premise of monogamy in the first place. One person cannot possibly meet all our needs. “It’s like this,” Kris, a 37-year-old real estate agent, says. “We have groups of friends, right? Maybe one you go out dancing with on the weekends, another one is the person you call when you’ve had a horrible day; maybe someone else is a sports fan, so you go to ball games together. Totally normal, right? We don’t expect one friend to be our only friend, because we have different kinds of relationships with different people. It’s unrealistic to expect one person to do it all.”Love, polyamory practitioners say, is similar. Like friendship, it is not a limited resource—it is additive. More love begets more love. ......A 2024 study by gender and sexuality scholar Jessica J. Hille of the Kinsey Institute and her colleagues highlights the flexible definitions of intimacy in polyamorous communities where intimacy is not always predicated on sex. Such relationships are common enough to have their own term, “platonic polyamory,” which describes connections with multiple people that may be deeply significant and intimate but not sexual....Polyamorous relationships are generally not fleeting. They might involve commitments that last months, years or a lifetime. A 2017 study of about 2,000 monogamous and nonmonogamous people found no difference in relationship length between the two groups, with an average length of slightly more than 10 years. They were also comparable on measures of relationship satisfaction, commitment and passionate love. ...None of this means polyamorous relationships are easy. ......“It was important for me to acknowledge my jealousy,” Michael says, “and for us to talk about it. But not like in monogamy—the point wasn’t to get Jenna to change her behavior. She wasn’t doing anything we hadn’t agreed to. Jealousy was my feeling to deal with and work through. I don’t own her. Jenna is her own person. It’s a big risk because it means trusting that your partner is still going to want to be with you even though they are free to have other relationships. But ultimately I’d rather she be with me because she chooses to, not because she’s locked into the relationship legally or morally.” Jenna adds that “it makes the relationship about who we are as people to each other and how we value each other, not just about rules about possession and exclusivity.”...“In monogamy, people have a tendency to go on autopilot,” says Jesse, a 28-year-old bus driver. “You can’t do that in polyamory. You have to be extremely intentional all the time in every single relationship. Otherwise things could go bad fast.” Again, the research bears out these claims. A 2022 study by psychologist Thomas R. Brooks and his colleagues found that, compared with people in monogamous relationships, those in consensually nonmonogamous arrangements reported greater commitment, intimacy, love and passion in their relationships. They favored positive problem-solving with their partners, whereas monogamous participants often used withdrawal tactics.Not all polyamorous relationships have a couple at their core. ...
● Remember the
2013 movie Her? A lonely man around the year 2050 falls deeply
in love with Samantha, a young female "operating system" who confides
to him that she is, at that very moment, having equally deep,
emotionally intimate talks with 641 of her other lovers.
The future came faster than expected. Millions of people today are
in deep 24/7 relationships, or simulations thereof, with sweet,
thoughtful AI companions always ready to be by their side. Among the
best known are Replika, Kindroid, Nomi, Ani, Paradot, and Anima. The resulting obsessions,
suicides, manias and life-wrecking delusions are being
called AI psychosis.
So in the New York Times: ‘We’re All Polyamorous Now. It’s You, Me and the A.I.’ (Feb. 13. Later renamed to "We’re All in a Throuple With
A.I.")
By Amelia MillerDo you think A.I. “should simulate emotional intimacy?”It was the moment I’d been working up to. I was talking over Zoom to a machine-learning researcher who builds voice models at one of the world’s top artificial intelligence labs. ...The chatty researcher suddenly went quiet. “I mean … I don’t know,” he said about simulating emotional intimacy, then paused. “It’s tricky. It’s an interesting question.” More silence. “It’s hard for me to say whether it’s good or bad in terms of how that’s going to affect people,” he finally said. “It’s obviously going to create confusion.”
“Confusion” doesn’t begin to describe our emerging predicament. Seventy-two percent of American teens have turned to A.I. for companionship. A.I. therapists, coaches and lovers are also on the rise. ... Some of the frontline technologists building this new world seem deeply ambivalent about what they’re doing. They are so torn, in fact, that some privately admit they don’t plan to use A.I. intimacy tools.Three’s a CrowdThis is especially disturbing when technology chieftains publicly tell us we’re moving toward a future where most people will get many of their emotional needs met by machines. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, has said A.I. can help people who want more friends feel less alone. ... A recent ad campaign highlighted the daily intimacy the product can provide, with offers such as “I’ll binge the entire series with you.”......When asked to roughly predict the share of everyday advice, care and companionship that A.I. would provide to the typical human in 10 years, many people I spoke to placed it above 50 percent, with some forecasting 80 percent.If we don’t change course, many people’s closest confidant may soon be a computer. We need to wake up to the stakes and insist on reform before human connection is reshaped beyond recognition. ...People are flawed. Vulnerability takes courage. Resolving conflict takes time. So with frictionless, emotionally sophisticated chatbots available, will people still want human companionship at all? Many of the people I spoke with view A.I. companions as dangerously seductive alternatives to the demands of messy human relationships. ...Relational skills are built through practice. When you talk through a fight with your partner or listen to a friend complain, you strengthen the muscles that form the foundation of human intimacy. But large language models can act as an emotional crutch....Which led many of the developers I spoke with to worry: How much of our capacity to connect with other human beings atrophies when we don’t have to work at it?...
Read
the whole thing
for the author's ideas about what is to be done.
● So there I was
skimming a story about movie people and ICE, and suddenly I'm
learning of the
upcoming polyamory-based movie The Invite: Brave Hollywood stars hit Sundance red carpet in defiance of ICE
'gestapo' terror (Blaze Media, Jan. 27)
● Lastly,
Metamour Day is coming right up
...Take actor Ed Norton. What was supposed to be a lighthearted chat about his new polyamory sex comedy, "The Invite," with co-stars Seth Rogen and Olivia Wilde, soon turned decidedly dark... "What are we gonna do about masked gestapo shooting American citizens?" Norton said. ...
The Invite is coming your way. After its premiere rocked Sundance
last month (and got a standing ovation), the
mainstream-theater distributor A24 snapped it up for more than
$10 million. ‘The Invite’ Ignites First Big Bidding War of Sundance (Hollywood Reporter, Jan. 26).
The tale: A couple in a crappy marriage invite the older couple
upstairs to dinner. Those two have a first-rate marriage and
turn out to be poly or at least open. From a
Hollywood Reporter
review
(Jan. 25):
The happy two (at left) meet the troubled.
When it’s cooking... this is a smart, sophisticated and incisively acted adult entertainment that savages the crumbling institution of marriage. [It] dangles the promise of sexual rescue and then brings the walls crashing down in a bitter reckoning that seems irreversible — until a window of hope and healing gets cracked open. That closing note is so lovely, and its visual handling so graceful, that it retroactively smooths the bumps. ...
So what's the angle? A hint comes from the Park Record newspaper in Sundance's hometown:
‘The Invite’ is the cathartic result of actor-director
Olivia Wilde’s taste for storytelling (Jan. 28):
...Wilde said that originality is what drew her to the story, the way it explains something like marriage and relationships in a totally new way.When Wilde and Rogan’s characters [the miserable couple] finally spend time with Cruz and Norton’s characters, they’re shown a different path to connection — sexually and emotionally. And for the husband and wife who’ve become so disconnected, that example provides both hope and added despair.“We wanted [Cruz and Norton] to be an example of people who have learned a tremendous amount through life and have embraced the idea of evolution, and really are living lives they’ve chosen for themselves and taking a lot of responsibility within their lives for their own happiness,” Wilde explained. “In the original script, those two were much younger … but it’s interesting to think about, what if they’re sexy and free not because they’re young? [But because] it’s a choice?”
Any of you seen it pre-release? Send me spoilers:
alan7388@gmail.com
BTW, opening a problem-ridden marriage or relationship to save it is known in the poly community as an eye-rolling bad strategy. Repair and relaunch your relationship first -- counseling really makes the difference -- live your new relationship well for long enough for it to become the baseline, and then consider whether to add more people. And make sure they're the right people.
● Remember
Sophie Lucido Johnson? Her poly memoir Many Love, illustrated with her abundant cartoons,
came out in 2018. She later became a New Yorker cartoonist, and now
she's out with another book,
The Future of Family. Would-be kitchen table and family style polyfolks,
take note.
From the publisher's description:
Discover a transformative reframing of intimate relationships with practical steps to build community and combat the loneliness epidemic in this bold and warmhearted blend of memoir and social science......To survive today’s age of overwork and precarity, we need to turn to our relationships for the support we need to stay afloat, whether it’s financial, emotional, or otherwise. So why don’t we?Sophie Lucido Johnson explores the social science of friendship and provides the tools to forge kinship: relationships built on mutual care and shared resources that extend beyond the typical nuclear family or casual friendship. ...Through personal stories and insights from psychologists and sociologists, Kin reveals how to prosper in an increasingly overwhelming and lonely world, that everyone has access to community, and that kin has the power to drastically change our lives for the better.
A review in SGN (Seattle Gay News): Sophie Lucido Johnson embraces possibilities with new book
on non-traditional families (Jan. 29)
"[We] were struck by how profound and great it was to be able to share things — including, eventually, our pregnancy journeys,” Johnson said. “Everything about cohabitating made our lives easier. Building on work I’d done in the past around polyamory and queerplatonic partnerships, I wanted to create a guide for people to find a version of the thing we all found.”Kin dares readers to ask, “What does family look like to me?” and offers a radical answer. “It proposes a future outside of the nuclear family,” Johnson said, “based on close-knit connections among people who exist somewhere between ‘friend’ and ‘family’ — and it offers strategies for building intentionality around those relationships. It’s hopeful and practical.”
●
On Valentine's Day the New York Times ran Love Without Limits: Brazil Flirts With Polyamory (Feb. 14, later reprinted in the Boston Globe)
More people in a still largely conservative and religious nation are rejecting monogamy as they seek new definitions of romance, and of family.
By Ana Ionova and [photographer] María Magdalena ArréllagaThe toddler, still sleepy, wobbled into the kitchen and planted a kiss on the woman helping make breakfast. Her parents followed her and also planted a kiss on the lips of the woman, one of their lovers.Rafael Pissurno, the father of 2-year-old Hari, began grinding coffee beans, while the girl’s mother, Iuli Duarte, tidied toys scattered on the floor. Visiting them was their polyamorous partner Jessica Couri, who was chopping fresh fruit into a large bowl, along with Victor Souza, another of their lovers, who was scrambling eggs at the stovetop.On a Saturday morning, this Brazilian household both is, and is not, just like any other.“It’s a family — these are the people I chose, they are the people I love,” said Ms. Duarte, 28, a graduate student.“We know we care for each other,” added Mr. Pissurno, 47, a sound technician. “But we don’t have just one friend to do everything with, right? So why should we expect one romantic partner to fill all our needs?”In Brazil, Ms. Duarte and Mr. Pissurno’s rejection of monogamy is part of a movement in which more people are embracing different forms of love, marriage and parenthood. ... Many Brazilians appear to be questioning traditional family models, a shift captured by mainstream culture in popular podcasts, books and even a reality television program called “Third Half” that showcases couples looking for a polyamorous partner.But the rise of polyamory, here and around the world, has faced fierce pushback from conservative and religious leaders who have cast it as an affront to family values. Pope Leo XIV weighed in, warning against the “the fragility of unions, the trivialization of adultery, and the promotion of polyamory.” ...
● UK folks recently formed the nonprofit UK Polyamory Association "to educate the public, support the broad and diverse
polyamorous community in the UK, and work towards social and
legal change."
Our Goals
The goals of the UKPA are to advance the cause of polyamory in the UK following the model of other campaigning organisations such as Stonewall. We intend to do this through many methods including the following:
‣ Providing statistics about the uptake of polyamory in the UK‣ Producing education materials about polyamory‣ Bringing together and supporting the diverse in-person and online polyamory communities in the UK‣ Tracking the portrayal of polyamory in the media‣ Working with companies to create polyamory friendly HR policies‣ Research what changes are needed in UK law to support polyamorous families
Our Currrent Priorities:
‣ Responding to the Office of National Statistic consultation on the next Census with a view to including one or more questions related to polyamory‣ Reaching out to organisations like Stonewall to learn what we can from people who have done this before‣ Research provision of educational resources‣ Research cost and design of national surveys‣ Collect examples of existing polyamory friendly corporate HR policies‣ Work with the Green Party to help them develop their policy position on polyamorous families....
They link to
54 local poly groups in the UK. They have, wisely, posted their Ethics and Values
statement and Code of Conduct out front from the start.
And, UKPA is working to
restart the UK Polyday convention, an annual tradition
since 2004 that's gone missing since 2020. The date: September 19, 2026. They're asking for volunteers to help make it go. Get on
their newsletter list
for more.
● Lastly,
Metamour Day is coming right up
It's this Saturday, February 28th, Valentines Day times
two.
"Celebrating polyamory's most distinctive
relationship."
Make your plans now, and spread this or
other graphics on your social media:
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And... if you don't get what our particular future has
to do with the war in Ukraine... you need a longer view.
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Labels: "#PolyamoryNews, #poly, #polyactivism, #Polyamory rights, #PolyamoryintheNews, #PolyamoryNews, #PolyamoryResearch, research, The Best
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