A Massachusetts City Decides to Recognize Polyamorous Relationships

The New York Times 2 July 2020
Family First Comment: As we predicted.
If gender doesn’t matter, why should number?
“Mr. Scott, the councilman, said he had been inundated by calls and messages all day, including from lawyers interested in pursuing a similar measure at the state or federal level.”
#ProtectMarriage
#MarriageOneManOneWoman

The city of Somerville has broadened the definition of domestic partnership to include relationships between three or more adults, expanding access to health care.

At the tail end of a City Council meeting last week, so quickly and quietly that you could have easily missed it, a left-leaning Massachusetts city expanded its notion of family to include people who are polyamorous, or maintaining consenting relationships with multiple partners.

Under its new domestic partnership ordinance, the city of Somerville now grants polyamorous groups the rights held by spouses in marriage, such as the right to confer health insurance benefits or make hospital visits.

J.T. Scott, a city councilor who supported the move, said he believed it was the first such municipal ordinance in the country.

“People have been living in families that include more than two adults forever,” Mr. Scott said. “Here in Somerville, families sometimes look like one man and one woman, but sometimes it looks like two people everyone on the block thinks are sisters because they’ve lived together forever, or sometimes it’s an aunt and an uncle, or an aunt and two uncles, raising two kids.”

He said he knew of at least two dozen polyamorous households in Somerville, which has a population of about 80,000.

“This is simply allowing that change, allowing people to say, ‘This is my partner and this is my other partner,’” he said. “It has a legal bearing, so when one of them is sick, they can both go to the hospital.”
READ MORE: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/us/somerville-polyamorous-domestic-partnership.html