West Hollywood OKs Polyamorous Partnership Registry
Is this necessary to protect different family dynamics or an attack on the very meaning or family?
Above: Voters cast their midterm ballots in West Hollywood, California, on Nov. 3. Image credit: Caroline Brehman/Bloomberg/Getty Images
The Facts
- The City of West Hollywood City Council unanimously voted on Tuesday to create a domestic partnership registry for polyamorous relationships, approving an ordinance introduced by Mayor John Heilman that grants hospital visitation and tenant protections.
- The ordinance defines a multi-partner domestic relationship as one involving three or more consenting adults who are not closely related by blood and are responsible for one another's welfare. Approved 5-0, it takes effect 30 days after adoption.
- Healthcare facilities and jails within the city's jurisdiction must allow registered partners to visit patients and inmates, and the measure updates protections for rental housing. People who live outside West Hollywood may also register.
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The Spin
Left narrative
Families don't all fit one mold, and the law shouldn't pretend otherwise. Being locked out of a hospital room or tossed from an apartment because a household has three adults instead of two is cruel and pointless. Recognition costs taxpayers nothing, harms nobody and simply lets consenting adults look after each other the way any family would.
Right narrative
The anti-gay marriage warnings of more than a decade ago have now been fully vindicated, after predicting this and its inevitable follow-up act of polygamy. Once any arrangement of adults can claim the standing of a family, the law loses any coherent idea of what a family is. West Hollywood has better things to chase than polycule registries.
