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Q&A: What does the reality of an open relationship look like?
As part of her Love Letters podcast, Meredith Goldstein hosted a panel discussion on polyamory and the future of relationships in Massachusetts.
A few weeks ago, Love Letters host Meredith Goldstein hosted a panel called “State of the Union(s),” which discussed polyamory, open relationships, and a 2020 Somerville ordinance that was first to recognize these relationship structures.
Goldstein sat down with three experts involved in the ordinance: Kimberly M. Rhoten, co-founder of Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition; Alexander L. Chen, founding director of LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic at Harvard Law School; and Willie Burnley Jr., Somerville City Councilor At-Large. Together, they discussed what polyamory looks like, how it intersects healthcare and policy issues, and the impacts of the ordinance.
This panel was part of Globe Summit, and recorded as a live podcast taping.
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Here are some of the highlights and main takeaways from the discussion. You can also listen or watch the episode.
This is an abbreviated version of the panel discussion, which has been shortened and edited for clarity.
Can you explain what “polyamory” means and the concept of open relationships?
Kimberly M. Rhoten: Polyamory is a kind of consensual non-monogamy in which an individual engages in multiple relationships with other folks — and those relationships can be romantic, sexual, and/or intimate, they don’t have to be all three — with the full consent and knowledge of their other partners.
Alexander L. Chen: There’s a distinction between people who engage in consensually non-monogamous practices, which can be lots of different terms and labels that people use in different places, and polyamory specifically, which is … part of how you organize your life.
What does the reality of polyamory look like?
Willie Burnley Jr.: I think a lot of people, when they approach the concept of polyamory or non-monogamy in general, there’s an immediate reaction that it’s all going to be threesomes and rainbows. And sometimes it is threesomes and rainbows, but a lot of times it’s more like board game nights and a lot of Google Calendar work to find time to meet up with everyone. It is just as mundane as any other relationship structure, except that it brings in more people. And with that comes logistical challenges at times, but in some cases, a lot more support and love.
Tell us what happened in Somerville in 2020.
Burnley: Somerville became the first city in the country to create a domestic partnership ordinance, which we did not have prior to 2020. But in 2020, we created one where more than two people could be part of a domestic partnership.
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Meredith Goldstein: This was a really important time, too, for those who maybe have forgotten, COVID was happening. We were still in a lockdown era. … How did that play into the decision to really push this, or the acceptance that this was the time?
Burnley: Well, it’s funny because this actually came out of specifically people’s desire to be able to share their health insurance with their partners. There was a realization that because we did not have a domestic partnership ordinance at all. In order to share their insurance, couples or groups of people would have had to get married in a traditional fashion. When we were working through that, there was a question from one of my colleagues, Councilor J.T. Scott, about “Why only two people?” And that question wasn’t rhetorical, and it was reflective of the fact that Somerville is a community filled with many different kinds of family structures and people who love each other and deserve to have additional protections that make them equitable to all other relationships.
What rights does the ordinance allow?
Rhoten: We can only take things as far as municipal jurisdiction allows. Underneath domestic partnerships in Somerville and in Cambridge and in other jurisdictions, you have hospital visitation rights, you have jail visitation rights, you have ease of access to your shared children at your schools in that jurisdiction. There are other rights that are embedded in that.
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However, municipalities do not govern health insurance. That’s not something that’s underneath their edict. Typically, it’s at the state level. And so for some sort of change at that level, you would have to be looking to the state. That said, private employers, it is at their discretion.
Did you face pushback at the municipal level? And what public reactions have you seen since it passed?
Rhoten: It’s just really been overwhelming interest and support. Yes, of course, some of the hypersexualization, some of the intense stigmatization, but in general, really just interest. I think at the end of the day, people are recognizing discrimination in whatever form is bad, and also wherever people can find joy at this time, in this moment, you should find joy. As long as everyone is based on consent, we are here for that. These ideas of creating this like communities of care, I think is really relational.
Burnley: Both when we passed the ordinance and when I see people learn about it for the first time, we get a slew of people who say, I want to move to that community. I want to be a part of a place that actually recognizes my family and my inherent value and supports me.
Chen: To be honest, part of why I think the reaction has been uniformly positive is the jurisdictions we’re working in and the politics of those jurisdictions. I do think that if we continue to get wins and pass legislation, and it moves to the state level, absolutely there will be political pushback. … At the end of the day, I think we are in this overall conversation as a nation about what is a family? What is a legitimate family? What is a family we should get behind? What is the social consequences of that type of family?
The topic of domestic partnerships is still often discussed in the context of romantic relationships. How would you shift the conversation?
Rhoten: If have we look at Pew Research Center data that’s come out over the last couple of years … we’re seeing a rise in unmarried parents who are raising children, stepfamilies that are being created, multigenerational households, people living with roommates, to your to your point, for a lengthy period of time, and platonic partnerships, and so many other differing types of family formations. … I think we have to start thinking about the ways that we can … instead focus on: How can we create a community of care? How can we support that through our legal system?
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Chen: I think that you can think of this work, funnily enough, as bipartisan. Because actually we’re not saying we want the state to take more of a role to take care of us. We’re saying we want to take care of each other. We would like the state to make it easier and cheaper and incentivize it.
Burnley: Personally, I feel like the communities that we have built together in Somerville of mutual care, of interdependence, they were built a lot around — and the point you made before regarding Covid — in this period of massive social upheaval, massive economic upheaval, and a time in which people said, “The federal government is not here for me. My community is barely making it by economically, but how can we come together to support each other?” And I find that the polyamorous world is very similar to that. It is people who come together and say, “How can we make sure that this person is taken care of? How can we form a unit of mutual support that is going to drive us all forward?”
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