Polyamorous couples will now receive special recognition in West Hollywood following a unanimous vote by the five-member city council last week. The ordinance (Ordinance No. 26-13) allows domestic partnerships “between three or more persons” to register with the city and receive visitation and tenant privileges. Social conservatives warned this day would come, but already the activists for sexual anarchy want more.
Introduced by West Hollywood Mayor John Heilman, the ordinance permits registered polyamorous partners to enjoy visitation rights at health care facilities and jails equivalent to those of married couples, as well as lower barriers to cohabitation and shared property. It reportedly takes effect on December 2.
Marriage law is defined by the state, and California does not (yet) recognize polyamorous couples. So, to avoid a quick legal defeat, the resolution desperately claims that it “does not create a marriage or registered domestic partnership.”
It does, however, create “a multi-partner domestic relationship … if all of the following are true.” Partnership, relationship; pot-a-to, pot-ah-to.
“The following” includes nine provisions:
“A. The persons are not related by blood closer than would bar marriage or domestic partnership in the state of California;
“B. The persons share the common necessities of life;
“C. The persons are eighteen years old or older;
“D. The persons are competent to enter a contract;
“E. The persons declare that they are engaged in a multi-partner domestic relationship with the consent of all partners involved;
“F. The persons are responsible for one another’s welfare;
“G. The persons agree to notify the City of any change in the status of their multi-partner domestic relationship;
“H. None of the persons have declared that they are in a different concurrent multi-partner domestic relationship; and
“I. The persons file a statement of multi-partner domestic relationship as set forth in Section 2.86.040.”
In other words, the ordinance implements the logic of the Sexual Revolution to the fringe of its current development. It reduces the requirements for legal recognition of romantic relationships to the lowest common denominator of consent — an exceedingly flimsy foundation. Sharing the common necessities of life and being responsible for one another’s welfare characterizes many social relationships, from the church to (healthy) roommates to extended family to bizarre cults. But such common sense cannot make itself heard over the deafening modern mantra, “Love is love is love.”
“Love is love is love” was the cry that first made divorce easy and common. “Love is love is love” was the cry that homosexual activists used to first justify their behavior and then demand its legal recognition.
“Love is love is love” is the cry that polyamory activists now use to justify legal recognition of a “multi-partner domestic relationship.”
But why stop there? The West Hollywood ordinance precludes incest or pedophilia, but only out of legal necessity. The logic of “love is love is love” does not permit such restrictions as age or blood-relation to stand in its way. Eventually, those barriers will fall.
In two embarrassing paragraphs, the city council made clear that it was not duped into taking this abominable step. Far from it, the city “hereby declared” its policy “to recognize and protect the right and opportunity of all persons to have multi-partner domestic relationships formally recognized and respected, and to be free from discrimination on account of their partnership in a multi-partner domestic relationship.”
The only justification for this step was that “diverse relationship structures … are becoming increasingly common.” Therefore, “the City finds that there is both tangible and symbolic value in the registration of such multi-partner domestic relationships, as it allows for the formal recognition and protection of such relationships, serves as a public declaration of commitment within such relationships, and creates a floor of protections with an eye towards the future recognition of these relationships on the local, state, and federal level.”
West Hollywood already began down this road in March with a resolution barring discrimination based on “family or relationship structure.”
Unfortunately, West Hollywood is not even the first American city to take this step into the abyss of sexual anarchy. Somerville, Mass. and Cambridge, Mass. already recognized polyamorous relationships several years ago, and West Coast cities including Portland, Ore., Astoria, Ore., and Olympia, Wash. have followed suit this year. Those who remember the progression of same-sex marriage may tremble at the eerily similar route polyamory has taken.
Alas, conservative critics of all such policies have proven as clairvoyant as Cassandra — but just as contemptuously cast aside.
“California Family Council saw this coming,” the organization protested. “In 2024, as Oakland and Berkeley moved to ban discrimination against polyamorous households, CFC called the push ‘cultural suicide.’ That same year, CFC warned that Proposition 3 would strip any clear definition of marriage from the state constitution. Voters passed it anyway.
Already, activists have transferred their sites from West Hollywood to Sacramento. “This law is just the beginning,” declared Christina Fialho, an LGBT activist who promoted the idea in West Hollywood. “I think it makes it possible for people to dream about a future they once thought was out of reach.”
But the California Family Council warns that LGBT activists are ignoring the havoc that polyamory can wreak on family units. “Polyamory advocates frame this as adult freedom. But these households include children,” they warned. “Polyamorous households multiply the very risk factor researchers keep finding: adults in the home who are not the child’s parents. Children need stability, not a rotating cast of partners on file at city hall.”
“Scripture is plain,” CFC continued. “‘Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh’ (Genesis 2:24, KJV). Jesus affirmed that same design in Matthew 19. Marriage is one man and one woman because God made it so, and children flourish when raised by the mother and father who gave them life.”
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared at The Washington Stand.
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