OPINION
(Photo: ANGELOS TZORTZINIS/AFP via Getty Images)
Natalie Sandoval
Patriots Writer
March 12, 20265:01 PM ET
A Quiet Coastal Revolution
“Why only two?”
The question, posed six years ago by J.T. Scott, a member of the city council of Somerville, Massachusetts, is at the heart of the debate concerning government recognition of polyamory.
Scott and his colleague on the city council were considering a domestic partnership ordinance. The original language of the draft specified a domestic partnership as being “between two people,” according to The Harvard Crimson.
Councilor Lance L. Davis paused, saying “something didn’t feel quite right,” reports The Crimson. Scott asked the question: “Why only two?”
Davis, in his words, executed a “few simple tweaks,” altering the ordinance to permit groups of more than two adults to register in domestic partnerships together. The city council voted 11-0 to pass the ordinance.
It was signed by then-Mayor Joe Curtatone on June 29, 2020, becoming the first “multiple-partner domestic partnership ordinance” in the United States, according to the Harvard Law Review.
Cambridge, Somerville’s neighbor, followed suit, amending their existing domestic partnership statute to cover two or more persons in 2021.
The Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition (PLAC) offered the Cambridge City Council “detailed input” on the new ordinance, calling it “the first of what advocates hope will be a wave of legal recognition for polyamorous families and relationships in 2021.” PLAC got its way. Arlington, Massachusetts, recognized multi-partner domestic partnership in April 2021.
Cities soon turned their sights on anti-discrimination ordinances.
Somerville passed a non-discrimination ordinance in 2023, prohibiting discrimination in employment and policy based on “family or relationship structure,” according to The 19th, a news publication. The ordinance was drafted by PLAC, reports The Somerville Times. PLAC is supported by the American Psychological Association Division 44 Committee on Consensual Non-Monogamy, the Chosen Family Law Center, and the Harvard Law School LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic. (RELATED: ROOKE: Tackling The Suicidal Societal Trend Coming For Marriages)
Cambridge, following Somerville’s model, passed a similar non-discrimination ordinance later in 2023.
Naturally, activists on the West Coast took notice. Oakland and Berkeley, California, adopted comparable measures. Olympia, Washington, followed. The Portland City Council in Oregon unanimously advanced an anti-discrimination ordinance in late February, according to Fox 12.
Similar legislation is pending in Seattle, Astoria, and West Hollywood.
The Polyamory Movement’s Legal Strategy
Roger Severino, vice president of economic and domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Caller over the phone that polyamory advocates are using tactics “right out of the same-sex marriage playbook as a logical outgrowth of it.”
“When you displace the state’s interest in protecting children and their flourishing, and instead make marriage all about the fulfillment of adult desires, then there’s no logical reason to limit it to two people. Why not three? Why not four?”
“The legal argument is that polyamory should be recognized as a protected class, locally, then statewide. If they get it expanded far enough, they will say that it should be nationalized.”
Severino proposes it’s time to bring the “Defense of Monogamous Marriage Act” to the fore.
“There should be a federal law defining marriage as a union of a committed couple, and not groups of three, four, or more to prevent these sorts of things from spreading,” he explains. “After one locality recognizes polyamorous unions, there will be pressure for the state to call it a marriage and then activists will sue under the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the constitution to require other states to adopt it as well. We need this act to ensure that no other states are forced to recognize and privilege polyamorous relationships.”
“Not all relationship structures have equal outcomes and governments should not only be free to recognize that reality, but have a duty to, for the sake of children.”
Law And Sex And Culture
The law shapes and constrains conduct. The law might also be construed as the “expression of the general will,” as Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote.
In the case of legal protections for polyamory, the law seems the expression of the will of a minority of highly motivated individuals. Polyamory fascinates our media class. The New York Times (NYT) is especially fond of publishing pro-polyamory perspectives: “Lindy West Thought She Couldn’t Handle Polyamory. She Was Wrong.”; “I Was Content With Monogamy. I Shouldn’t Have Been.”
The New York Post described polyamory as “the saucy swing away from tradition that’s sweeping the nation” in a bizarrely cheery article on “hotwifing,” aka, consensual cuckolding.
Jennifer Wilson, writing for The New Yorker, asked, “How Did Polyamory Become So Popular?” in 2023.
“Marriage has been drafty lately. Everywhere you turn, the door couples close behind them when they enter the sanctum of matrimony is being left ajar,” claims Wilson.
I know approximately zero couples who admit to being in a non-monogamous marriage or relationship. Granted, that may be the sort of detail most keep private, but polyamory appears a phenomenon the left is intent on popularizing, rather than one that is presently popular. (RELATED: ROOKE: The Best Thing Married Women Can Do For Themselves In 2026)
Wilson invokes a long list of media which features “consensual non-monogamy”: novels, movies, television shows, perfume campaigns. In other words: our taste-makers find polyamory attractive and would like us to find it attractive, too.
Among the young, this effort may be working. Over half (51%) of adults aged 18-29 agreed that an “open marriage” was an “acceptable arrangement for people to have,” according to a 2023 Pew Research Center poll. Stated preference may diverge from revealed preference in this regard.
For women aged 25 to 39, “higher incomes are associated with higher marriage rates,” according to the Institute for Family Studies. College-educated women — often the first to boast of their openness to diverse relationship structures — are significantly more likely to get married than non-college-educated women. Non-monogamous marriages are likely the exception to the rule, for now.
I return to Scott’s question: “Why only two?”
If the immediate welfare of children isn’t sufficient reason to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, consider the long-term welfare of Western civilization.
In “Sex and Culture,” ethnologist J.D. Unwin claims that increased sexual constraints (of the pre- and post-nuptial variety) lead to cultural flourishing: in literature, the arts, science, architecture, agriculture, and engineering, to name a few categories. Unwin claimed pre-nuptial chastity, combined with absolute post-nuptial monogamy, led to the finest results.
“The whole of human history does not contain a single instance of a group becoming civilized unless it has been absolutely monogamous, nor is there any example of a group retaining its culture after it has adopted less rigorous customs,” Unwin argued in a 1927 article.
“Marriage as a life-long association has been an attendant circumstance of all human achievement, and its adoption has preceded all manifestations of social energy.”
Unwin concludes: “Civilization is but a period of compulsory sublimation during which the society expands in all its intricate activities, increasing its knowledge of the physical universe, exalting its ideas of the gods, enlarging its social outlook, and manifesting itself in art and culture. Such compulsion is a law of social development, and just as I must pay the penalty should I at any time by falling from the roof transgress the law of gravitation, so must any transgression of this law (that is, any modification of indissoluble monogamy) result in certain decline.”
The evidence suggests we are already paying the penalty.
Source
A Quiet Coastal Revolution
“Why only two?”
The question, posed six years ago by J.T. Scott, a member of the city council of Somerville, Massachusetts, is at the heart of the debate concerning government recognition of polyamory.
Scott and his colleague on the city council were considering a domestic partnership ordinance. The original language of the draft specified a domestic partnership as being “between two people,” according to The Harvard Crimson.
Councilor Lance L. Davis paused, saying “something didn’t feel quite right,” reports The Crimson. Scott asked the question: “Why only two?”
Davis, in his words, executed a “few simple tweaks,” altering the ordinance to permit groups of more than two adults to register in domestic partnerships together. The city council voted 11-0 to pass the ordinance.
It was signed by then-Mayor Joe Curtatone on June 29, 2020, becoming the first “multiple-partner domestic partnership ordinance” in the United States, according to the Harvard Law Review.
Cambridge, Somerville’s neighbor, followed suit, amending their existing domestic partnership statute to cover two or more persons in 2021.
The Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition (PLAC) offered the Cambridge City Council “detailed input” on the new ordinance, calling it “the first of what advocates hope will be a wave of legal recognition for polyamorous families and relationships in 2021.” PLAC got its way. Arlington, Massachusetts, recognized multi-partner domestic partnership in April 2021.
Cities soon turned their sights on anti-discrimination ordinances.
Somerville passed a non-discrimination ordinance in 2023, prohibiting discrimination in employment and policy based on “family or relationship structure,” according to The 19th, a news publication. The ordinance was drafted by PLAC, reports The Somerville Times. PLAC is supported by the American Psychological Association Division 44 Committee on Consensual Non-Monogamy, the Chosen Family Law Center, and the Harvard Law School LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic. (RELATED: ROOKE: Tackling The Suicidal Societal Trend Coming For Marriages)
Cambridge, following Somerville’s model, passed a similar non-discrimination ordinance later in 2023.
Naturally, activists on the West Coast took notice. Oakland and Berkeley, California, adopted comparable measures. Olympia, Washington, followed. The Portland City Council in Oregon unanimously advanced an anti-discrimination ordinance in late February, according to Fox 12.
Similar legislation is pending in Seattle, Astoria, and West Hollywood.
The Polyamory Movement’s Legal Strategy
Roger Severino, vice president of economic and domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Caller over the phone that polyamory advocates are using tactics “right out of the same-sex marriage playbook as a logical outgrowth of it.”
“When you displace the state’s interest in protecting children and their flourishing, and instead make marriage all about the fulfillment of adult desires, then there’s no logical reason to limit it to two people. Why not three? Why not four?”
“The legal argument is that polyamory should be recognized as a protected class, locally, then statewide. If they get it expanded far enough, they will say that it should be nationalized.”
Severino proposes it’s time to bring the “Defense of Monogamous Marriage Act” to the fore.
“There should be a federal law defining marriage as a union of a committed couple, and not groups of three, four, or more to prevent these sorts of things from spreading,” he explains. “After one locality recognizes polyamorous unions, there will be pressure for the state to call it a marriage and then activists will sue under the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the constitution to require other states to adopt it as well. We need this act to ensure that no other states are forced to recognize and privilege polyamorous relationships.”
“Not all relationship structures have equal outcomes and governments should not only be free to recognize that reality, but have a duty to, for the sake of children.”
Law And Sex And Culture
The law shapes and constrains conduct. The law might also be construed as the “expression of the general will,” as Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote.
In the case of legal protections for polyamory, the law seems the expression of the will of a minority of highly motivated individuals. Polyamory fascinates our media class. The New York Times (NYT) is especially fond of publishing pro-polyamory perspectives: “Lindy West Thought She Couldn’t Handle Polyamory. She Was Wrong.”; “I Was Content With Monogamy. I Shouldn’t Have Been.”
The New York Post described polyamory as “the saucy swing away from tradition that’s sweeping the nation” in a bizarrely cheery article on “hotwifing,” aka, consensual cuckolding.
Jennifer Wilson, writing for The New Yorker, asked, “How Did Polyamory Become So Popular?” in 2023.
“Marriage has been drafty lately. Everywhere you turn, the door couples close behind them when they enter the sanctum of matrimony is being left ajar,” claims Wilson.
I know approximately zero couples who admit to being in a non-monogamous marriage or relationship. Granted, that may be the sort of detail most keep private, but polyamory appears a phenomenon the left is intent on popularizing, rather than one that is presently popular. (RELATED: ROOKE: The Best Thing Married Women Can Do For Themselves In 2026)
Wilson invokes a long list of media which features “consensual non-monogamy”: novels, movies, television shows, perfume campaigns. In other words: our taste-makers find polyamory attractive and would like us to find it attractive, too.
Among the young, this effort may be working. Over half (51%) of adults aged 18-29 agreed that an “open marriage” was an “acceptable arrangement for people to have,” according to a 2023 Pew Research Center poll. Stated preference may diverge from revealed preference in this regard.
For women aged 25 to 39, “higher incomes are associated with higher marriage rates,” according to the Institute for Family Studies. College-educated women — often the first to boast of their openness to diverse relationship structures — are significantly more likely to get married than non-college-educated women. Non-monogamous marriages are likely the exception to the rule, for now.
I return to Scott’s question: “Why only two?”
If the immediate welfare of children isn’t sufficient reason to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, consider the long-term welfare of Western civilization.
In “Sex and Culture,” ethnologist J.D. Unwin claims that increased sexual constraints (of the pre- and post-nuptial variety) lead to cultural flourishing: in literature, the arts, science, architecture, agriculture, and engineering, to name a few categories. Unwin claimed pre-nuptial chastity, combined with absolute post-nuptial monogamy, led to the finest results.
“The whole of human history does not contain a single instance of a group becoming civilized unless it has been absolutely monogamous, nor is there any example of a group retaining its culture after it has adopted less rigorous customs,” Unwin argued in a 1927 article.
“Marriage as a life-long association has been an attendant circumstance of all human achievement, and its adoption has preceded all manifestations of social energy.”
Unwin concludes: “Civilization is but a period of compulsory sublimation during which the society expands in all its intricate activities, increasing its knowledge of the physical universe, exalting its ideas of the gods, enlarging its social outlook, and manifesting itself in art and culture. Such compulsion is a law of social development, and just as I must pay the penalty should I at any time by falling from the roof transgress the law of gravitation, so must any transgression of this law (that is, any modification of indissoluble monogamy) result in certain decline.”
The evidence suggests we are already paying the penalty.
Source
No comments:
Post a Comment