03/07/2025
LGBTQ Nation reports in with a lengthy piece this week on polyamorous relationships both amongst heterosexuals and the LGBT+ population. Here are a few choice snippets from their essay and a link to it - it really does make for fascinating reading:
Such relationships involving more than just two partners are hardly unique. While estimates vary, about 4 to 5% of U.S. adults practice nonmonogamy (at least 13 million Americans), one out of five Americans has consented to a polyamorous romantic relationship at some point, and 31% of millennials say that their current relationship is non-monogamous to some degree. Even dating apps have reported a dramatic increase in users who include “non-monogamous” and “polyamorous” in their online profiles.
“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.
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.
“Plural marriage, like same-sex marriage, is encompassed in the right to personal choice inherent in the concept of individual autonomy,” lawyer Lynne Strober wrote. “The right to marry is fundamental, but nowhere is it required that it be limited to two people, just as it is nowhere written that it must be limited to individuals of the opposite sex. Just as it would be demeaning to lock same-sex couples out of a central institution of our nation’s society, it would be just as debasing to bar polygamous couples from this institution of marriage.”
Regardless, Schechinger, Adams, and the other PLAC coalition members would like to see an increase in multi-partner domestic partnership laws at a city and state level. To reach this goal, PLAC, the Modern Family Institute, the Chosen Family Law Center, the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy, and the Harvard Law LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic are compiling a packet of materials that will help people lobby their city councilperson for such policies. The packet will include relevant research and educational information, case examples, legal insights, and advocacy strategies.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/07/lgbtq-partners-in-polyamorous-relati...
