LGBTQ+ partners in polyamorous relationships are slowly winning legal recognition and rights
By Daniel Villarreal, LGBTQ Nation
Poly partnerships have always existed. A new generation of activists is fighting to protect them and their families from social stigma.
…“This is a really sizable community of people, and one that is really gaining steam and traction as a movement for thinking about family differently,” Diana Adams, a lawyer and activist who specializes in polyamorous family law, tells LGBTQ Nation.
Polyamorous relationships have always existed, Adams says, but they have recently gained greater recognition due to increases in media depictions, societal acceptance, and personal self-expression alongside reductions in cultural shame and stigma around consensually non-monogamous relationships.
But because courts don’t consider relationship structure a protected class—like gender, religion, or race—partners in polyamorous relationships have no explicit legal protections. All 50 states and federal law prohibit bigamy and polygamy (marriage to two or more spouses), in part because U.S. law is based on British common law and it often reflects Christian cultural values, which have both only recognized monogamous marriages, according to attorney Ty McDuffey.
As such, people in polyamorous relationships can be denied housing, healthcare, joint tax filings, property, and inheritance, be fired from work or have their child custody revoked with no recourse, due largely to legal custom, personal bias, and societal disapproval.
Polygamy is still treated as a dirty word, one mired in a religious fundamentalist view of women and children as a man’s personal property. Media depictions of polyamory often focus on sensational or inflammatory aspects, and people often view such relationships as less honest, less meaningful, and less satisfying, according to the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition (PLAC)—a coalition of academic and legal professionals that advances the civil and human rights of polyamorous people, communities, and families through legislative advocacy, public policy, and public education—that Adams helped co-found.
