Third Massachusetts locale approves multi-domestic partnerships

Arlington, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston adjoining Cambridge and Somerville, has just joined those two cities in offering legal recognition to domestic partnerships of three or more people.

Arlington had no domestic partnership provision at all. Last night (April 28, 2021) its Representative Town Meeting voted to enact one — and also voted to amend it by adding the language "two or more" people, thanks to heads-up work by local poly activists.

The amendment with the key wording, from the sponsor's powerpoint video presented last night at Arlington Town Meeting. The amendment also included removing Section 10 from the proposed bylaw because that section's language paralleled domestic-partnered families to married families. Some feared that this wording might give the state attorney general grounds for finding a conflict with the state's anti-bigamy laws.

The "two or more" amendment, offered by local polyfamily member Amos Meeks, passed Town Meeting by a lopsided vote of 192-37. The entire bylaw as amended then passed 221-11.  

Because this is a new town bylaw, it does not yet go into effect. The town has 30 days to submit it for approval to state Attorney General Maura Healy, who then has 90 days to vet it for any conflict with state law. No problem is expected. (Somerville and Cambridge did not have to go through this procedure because they are cities, not towns, and passed city ordinances, not bylaws.)

Here is the full bylaw as passed. Here is Meeks's full "two or more" amendment. 

Congrats, folks! Who's next?

Update: Three days later there has been practically no media attention to this event. That's also what happened after Cambridge passed its ordinance in March, and totally unlike what happened when Somerville set the precedent last June; that event made headlines nationwide and even overseas. I guess that's normalization.

The two exceptions I find are in the local Patch.com, which had this brief mention, and in the Arlington Advocate, which ran a longer story: Town Meeting approves domestic partnership for relationships with more than two people (April 30, by way of WickedLocal.com). Here's most of it. As always, the boldfacing is mine:

By Jesse Collings

In what could be a watershed moment for multi-person relationships, Arlington became the first town in Massachusetts [Somerville and Cambridge are cities] to approve domestic partnerships of more than two people when Town Meeting approved an amendment to a warrant article Wednesday, April 28. 

The motion states the town will recognize domestic partnerships containing two or more people, which is more inclusive of people in polyamorous relationships or other non-traditional family situations. The town recognition helps people in those relationships achieve the same kind of civil rights permitted to married couples, including visitation rights at health care facilities and access to children's school records. 

Somerville and Cambridge are the only communities in Massachusetts recognizing domestic partnerships between more than two people. However, those were proposed through city ordinances, which can only be removed if appealed by private residents. Because Arlington is a town, the motion approved at Town Meeting is subject to review and approval from the state  Attorney General's office, and without any town having approved this type of motion before, Arlington will be in unprecedented legal ground when the AG reviews it. 

Originally, the article proposed at Town Meeting was to solely recognize domestic partnerships of two people. Town Meeting member Amos Meeks proposed the amendment extending the definition of recognized domestic partnerships to people who are in polyamorous relationships. Meeks said he worked with Town Meeting member Guillermo Hamlin and the Rainbow Commission, who helped put together the original article, as well as the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition, an organization promoting the rights of people in polyamorous relationships. 

Meeks, who said he lives together with his two life partners, said the formal recognition would help him and anyone else in a similar relationship achieve certain civic rights, such as getting onto the insurance plans of their partners. 

"I wanted to get dental insurance through one of my partners' employers, but they required proof of a domestic partnership. Registering a domestic partnership that would not exclude a member of my family only became an option when Somerville passed their domestic partnership ordinance this past year, and I'm excited to be able to register our domestic partnership with Arlington once the bylaw goes into effect," Meeks said. 

Meeks said that childcare can also be a legal challenge for people in polyamorous relationships, and further legitimacy of their domestic partnership can make that process easier.

"I can't speak directly to anyone else's experiences, but I think legal barriers around childcare and parenting are a challenge for many people. By providing some legal recognition of the family relationship for domestic partnerships with children and by providing rights that make co-parenting kids and interacting with schools easier I think that bylaws like this one are a big step towards helping families with children," Meeks said.

...Meeks said that future measures, such as introducing protections for people in polyamorous relationships in the workplace and in child custody situations, are important improvements to be made. However, the approval at Town Meeting and the potential approval from the AG is a big step forward. 

"We are a family by any reasonable sense of the word, but not in the eyes of the town or the state. I think a really important part of laws like this is just recognition and external validation," Meeks said. "(When the amendment was approved) I felt welcomed and accepted by my neighbors. I felt proud to be part of this community, and I felt extremely grateful for the support of my fellow Town Meeting Members, especially those who helped craft the article and those who spoke up in favor of it."

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●  In other legal news... The ten-year-old Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association has put out a Canada-wide call for polyam people and households to declare themselves as such for Canada's national Census Day, May 11. Personal census information (such as this) is kept private.

The CPAA Encourages Polyamorous Individuals to Participate in Canadian Census Day (May 11)

April 22, 2021 –  Statistics Canada conducts the census every five years. This study is essential for maintaining an equitable distribution of electoral boundaries, estimates the demand for services (and allocation of government funding), and provides information about the population and housing characteristics within geographic areas. This supports planning, administration, policy development and evaluation activities of government at all levels.

Why should Polyamorous Individuals Complete the Census?

We strongly encourage all polyamorous individuals residing in Canada to complete the census. We view this year’s census as an opportunity to demonstrate the importance of advocacy for the needs of polyamorous individuals and families in Canada. Data pertaining to multi-adult households, multi-parent families, and the prevalence of non-nuclear family structures is important for regional districts in terms of future planning for housing capacity, schools, and essential infrastructure.

The current census options do not allow for the inclusion of polyamory or data about multi-partner relationships, families, or other forms of open relationships. In order to advocate our need for inclusion, we need to demonstrate our numbers. Our hope is that in areas with a high concentration of polyamorous individuals and families (such as Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal), the responses we suggest below will be statistically significant enough to warrant polyamory-inclusivity by Statistics Canada studies in the future.

As more data is gathered about the numbers of polyamorous individuals within Canada, we at the CPAA will be better resourced with data that demonstrates the importance of our legal advocacy work, including working towards legal and cultural changes that permit multiple parents to be listed on birth & adoption certificates, and that allow for polyamorous partners to be legally recognized as family, common-law, and next-of-kin, without contracts of marriage. 

The census asks for basic information about your age, your relationships with the people you live with, your sex assigned at birth, your gender, what languages you speak, and a few other pieces of biographical data. If you receive the long form census (1 in 5 households receive this) you will be asked for additional information regarding disabilities, employment, and education. All identifying information is kept private, and you do not need to use your legal name to answer (a nickname, for example, is fine).

In both the short and long forms of the census, one resident is asked to complete the census on behalf of all occupants. You will be asked to list the occupants of your home and then describe their relationship to you. We are recommending that all polyamorous individuals who cohabit with any partner (regardless of whether they are married, common law, etc.) choose "Other Relationship" and write in specifics from the following, as appropriate:
Polyamorous Partner
Polyamorous Spouse
Polyamorous Metamour
Polyamorous Co-parent
Polyamorous Family Member

For more detailed information, see the Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association website: http://polyadvocacy.ca/polyamourous-2021-census-participation/

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Cambridge delays action on nation's second domestic poly-partnership law

Cambridge City Hall

Polyamory activists nationwide hoped that last night's meeting of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, City Council would expand the city's domestic partnership law to allow for polyamorous families of three or more adults, as neighboring Somerville did on June 29.

It didn't happen. But that may be a good sign, not a bad one. 

At 1:10 in the morning, more than seven hours into a contentious City Council meeting with an overloaded agenda, Cambridge Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui postponed consideration of the multiple-domestic-partnership ordinance until next week or later. She explained that the city lawyer did not yet have materials ready, and that recommendations for changes to the proposed ordinance may come from the city's LGBTQ+ Commission and other interested parties.

Those changes may include the improvement to the definition of what a qualifying polyamorous partnership can be, making it more realistic for many poly people, that Kimberly Rhoten has proposed and describes below. Rhoten, who holds a law degree, is a local legal activist for poly and LGBTQ+ issues who has been on this since at least June.

The City Council next meets in six days, on September 21. The ordinance may not be finalized and ready for "second reading" and passage by that time (though it's on the meeting's agenda under "unfinished business"). [Update Sept. 22: It was deferred again.] The measure's approval on July 27 to go to second reading, by a Council vote of 6-0 with two abstentions and one absence, suggests that it's very likely to be enacted when it does come up.

But first it needs significant work, says Rhoten, currently a graduate student at Boston University. This is from a post they made to New England Polyamory on September 11:

Polyam/CNM Legislative Update and Information: 

While I hope we can celebrate this step forward for our communities' legal protection, I also hope we can take a moment to be critical of the alarming ways in which the most current draft of Cambridge's legislation [is inadequate]:

– You can only be in ONE domestic partnership with multiple people [as the legislation is currently drafted]. You cannot be in multiple domestic partnerships with multiple individuals. Meaning, if anyone of those individuals dies or is no longer involved with any one other person in that domestic partnership, the whole partnership dissolves and is terminated. There is a "cooling off" period before you can refile, leaving folks without each other's health insurance and/or other benefits during that time. You would then have to refile again for the remaining people. For more information on why this is a legal and bureaucratic nightmare, see analysis by Infinity_8p.

– If you are married, you can only enter into a domestic partnership if your spouse is in that relationship configuration as well.

– If your domestic partnership is in some way legally contested (by insurance companies, your employer, the City itself for example), you must submit evidence of "how you hold your relationship out to the world."...That's right, evidence of how you out your relationship to the world around you.

...Again, heck yes, celebrate the second city caring about polyamorous relationships, but also maybe someday we'll see something better, more representative of the complex relationships our communities have, and more protective of our right to disclose our relationships to the world at our own pace and safety.

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– Somerville did an excellent job in wording their ordinance, which allows multiple two-person domestic partnerships as well as all-in ones, depending on what the folks engaging in them actually want.

– Here is the email I sent the LGBTQ+ Commission of Cambridge when they were reviewing the draft:

...2) Issue: The Ordinance's Failure to Provide Appropriate Dyadic Domestic Partnerships

The current ordinance would require that a polyamorous persons be in only one domestic partnership at a time. Though there may be multiple people in that partnership, the ordinance would only permit that one domestic partnership be used to cover all persons involved. This is exceptionally problematic. First, it fails to consider situations in which a polyamorous persons' family does not all consider each other family. For example, consider a polyamorous women, lets call her Miranda, living together for the last 20 years with her two life partners, Bob and Tom. Bob and Tom are not dating nor would they consider each other family yet they both consider Miranda family and Miranda considers each of them family. The current ordinance would not be capable of providing appropriate protection and recognition for Miranda. Note that the ordinance would require that Miranda submit evidence that all three of them operate and consider themselves a three person family, which is not the case. In contrast, a dyadic option (which is exactly what the City of Somerville aptly and correctly provided to the City's polyamorous constituents) would allow Miranda to register her two dyad domestic partnerships: one with Bob and one with Tom.

Why is this a problem (besides of course, not recognizing the structure of Miranda's family)? According to Cambridge's current law (which is unchanged by this new ordinance) Section 2.119.030 Registration and Termination, the death of one person in the domestic partnership would dissolve the entire domestic partnership for all persons in it. For Miranda, Bob and Tom, this would mean that if Tom passes away, Bob and Miranda are now no longer legally partnered. Whereas, by using Somerville's dyadic approach, for the case of Miranda, Bob and Tom, the death of Tom would not destroy the domestic partnership Miranda has with Bob.

This exact issue would also arise if [irreconcilable] differences surface between any person in the domestic partnership and anyone else. If these two individuals decide to terminate the partnership, it would obliterate the rest of the family's legal standing rather than solely the legal standing between these two persons. And, according to Section 2.119.030(E) none of the domestic partners in this former multi-person partnership may file another domestic partnership until six months have elapsed from termination, leaving this family completely unprotected legally for half a year.

The issues with this type of legal recognition for polyamorous persons is well known, documented, and discussed by long time poly activists.

Recommendation: Strike provision 2.119.020(D)(5) from the proposed ordinance.

Rhoten tells me this morning, "The last time the City Council looked at this [July 27] they sought additional comment and guidance from the LGBTQ+ Commission and the city solicitor [city lawyer]. I and a few others commented to the LGBTQ+ Commission, but they haven't really followed up with me. They meet once a month." The commission's next meeting is September 24th. The minutes of its August meeting won't be available until they are approved at the September meeting.

"I hope they have adjusted their language to include a dyadic approach [multiple separate, two-person domestic partnerships] just like Somerville did," says Rhoten. "I think it would be incredibly problematic for municipalities to start passing legislation that doesn't do that."

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Cambridge moves to follow Somerville in recognizing poly partnerships

That didn't take long! Remember the speculation that Cambridge, Massachusetts, might follow the lead of its smaller neighbor Somerville and recognize domestic partnerships of three or more people?

We brought you the comment that a conservative outlet collected three weeks ago from Cambridge City Councilor Quinton Zondervan: “People in polyamorous relationships should be able to access the legal benefits that come with domestic partnership, including the right to confer health insurance benefits or make hospital visits. ...  I look forward to working with my colleagues and the community to update this law as soon as possible.”

Well, this just in from the Cambridge Day:

Law acknowledging polyamorous relationships takes step forward, two councillors holding back

The caption they ran was, "A widely used image of polyamory rights represented in a march." (This famous banner did duty in at least two San Francisco Pride Parades in the mid-2000s; one of them is seen here. The yellow sign, BTW, got it right.)
 

By Marc Levy

Cambridge took a step toward formally recognizing polyamorous relationships on Monday [July 27], advancing legislation in the City Council that would give domestic partnerships with more than two people the same legal benefits that married couples have.

City staff are asked to weigh in on the proposed law, including getting advice from the LGBTQ+ Commission and city solicitor, before it returns at the next regular council meeting, Sept. 14.

Recognizing poly relationships might seem daring to much of America, where conventional wisdom has it that no more than 5 percent of the population takes part in relationships that openly include more than two people. But Somerville enacted a domestic partnerships ordinance June 29 (“We can’t always be first,” [Cambridge] vice mayor Alanna Mallon said), and councillors heard from one resident who said the law didn’t go far enough.

In advancing to a second reading and likely enactment, the order drew six votes in favor and none against. Councillor Dennis Carlone wasn’t able to vote, being absent for the latter part of a nearly six-hour meeting. But two councillors voted “present” instead of taking a position.

“I’m going to vote present on this because there are some issues I’m not familiar with. I was hoping to have at some point a committee hearings so this can be talked about and explained,” councillor Tim Toomey said.

The second vote of “present” came from councillor E. Denise Simmons, whose term as mayor beginning in 2008 was notable because she was the nation’s first openly lesbian black mayor. When she married in 2009, her ceremony was the first same-sex marriage in a traditionally African-American church in Cambridge. She has been an advocate for LGBTQ+ rights over the years, as well as for the faith community.

Simmons took, if anything, a harder line on the motion.

“I concur with my colleague, councillor Toomey – I don’t know enough about it,” Simmons said. “I don’t want to send it to a second reading, because I don’t have enough information. And we’re just not going anyplace where it can be vetted. If it’s going right on to the second reading, I will be voting present.”

Inclusivity efforts

But councillor Marc McGovern said the order was in line with the effort last term to get state permission for a gender-neutral option on birth certificates, expanding options for transgender and gender non-binary people who wanted to correct their form, as well as for new parents. It was proposed by McGovern and co-sponsored by Simmons, as well as by Mallon and councillor Sumbul Siddiqui, who is now mayor. The city offered a domestic partnership ordinance, acknowledging non-married couples, in 1992.

“This is about an important acknowledgement of the various ways that people love and show their commitment to one another. And to think about how we continuously push ourselves to be as inclusive as possible,” said Siddiqui, author of the Monday order with co-sponsors Mallon, McGovern and councillor Quinton Zondervan.

Public comment

The order drew a handful public comments, mainly from people expressing support for the recognition for their own long-standing poly relationships – including one with a bit of drama to it. “This is my coming out,” one resident said. “If this policy order is passed, you will be recognizing my marriage of 38 years, and I deeply appreciate it.”

Another commenter wished the order went further.

“I am concerned that these changes are too narrow to achieve what I hope and believe are the city’s goal of inclusivity,” said a resident who identified as asexual and aromantic – not experiencing sexual romantic attraction. “The proposed changes are insufficient to include a partnership like mine, where my partner lives down the block from my intentional community.”

The law as written also doesn’t accommodate people who have multiple partners, the speaker said. “For example, someone who has two partners who are not involved with each other would not be able to enter into a partnership with each of those individuals. The city should take this opportunity to more broadly acknowledge the many types of families that already exists among its residents.”

The original (July 28, 2020). More news surely to follow; the lopsided 6-0-2 vote to advance the measure means it is quite likely to pass at the September 14th City Council meeting.

Compared to Somerville, Cambridge is larger in population and much larger in national and international renown, with Harvard and MIT and all that comes with them, and business and wealth; it's the biotech capital of the East.

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