Legislating for polyamory and diverse family structures

In this final episode of our Polyamory in Depth season, Karen chats with David Carlson, campaign coordinator for OPEN, about how to begin legislating at the local level for nondiscrimination ordinances protecting polyamorous folks and those in diverse family structures.

In this episode:

• OPEN - The Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-Monogamy
• OPEN’s campaign coordinator David Carson 
• Host, sex educator, and energy worker Karen Yates 
• OPEN’s Legislative Toolkit

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Prefer to read the convo? Full episode transcripts are available on our website.

Transcript

Wild & Sublime S7E4: Legislating for Polyamory and Diverse Family Structures

David Carlson: [00:00:00] the Polyamorous community has done so much mutual aid for each other through, working on ourselves and our mental states and our communities that now we're in a place where we can become a powerful voting block, right? 5 percent of the U. S. population. And so now we get to take this legitimacy step and focus on policy that really affects us and changes our society in a meaningful way. 

Karen Yates: Welcome to Wild & Sublime, a sexy spin on infotainment, no matter your preferences, orientation or relationship style, based on the popular live Chicago show, I chat about sex and relationships with citizens from the world of sex positivity and comedy, you’ll hear meaningful conversations, dialogs that go deeper, and information that can help you become more free in your sexual expression. I’m sex educator Karen Yates, our monthly patreon supporters pay for a large part of our operating expenses. Their contributions from $5 on up, help us big time. Plus members get discounts on show tickets and merch and receive wild and sublime news before anyone else and more interested in helping us spread the message of sex positivity. Go to patreon.com, forward slash wild and sublime.

Karen Yates: Hey, David, welcome. 

David Carlson: Thanks for having me. Appreciate being here, Karen. 

Karen Yates: Oh, absolutely. So we're going to be talking today about Open's Legislative Toolkit, which has just been birthed out into the world, a really awesome resource.

But I would love to hear before we start talking about the toolkit, a little bit about the organization Open. When did it start? 

David Carlson: Open started in 2022 with the minds of Brett [00:01:00] Chamberlain and some of our board members. And he brought this forward to fill a niche that he felt wasn't being being filled really on the national level for advocacy awareness and movement building around ethical non monogamy and polyamory. 

Karen Yates: And there's a lot of heavy hitters involved support organizations involved with this with OPEN. Can you tell me about a little bit about a few of them? 

David Carlson: Yeah, so Some of them are the Harvard Law School, their LGBTQ plus advocacy clinic that is founded and headed by Alexander Chen.

Super pivotal in a lot of the policy work that we're doing. Currently working with organizers in Seattle to pass legislation there. We have the Chosen Family Law Center with Diana Adams Esquire. And she's also done a lot of the policy work with us. We've got the Modern Family Institute they've been great friends, and then all of those kind of [00:02:00] coalesce under the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition where all, a lot of these lawyers have come together to really focus on polyamorous law specifically, and we're working with them very closely as we advance this legislative toolkit, and my job as the Legislative Advocacy Committee campaign coordinator in cities across this country. 

Karen Yates: Yeah, it's it's, it was so amazing when I came to the site and saw, all of these support organizations. To see like this coalition building can be such a shot in the arm.

Sometimes I think in the polyamorous community, polyamory community, there's this feeling of I don't know, I don't want to say the ugly stepchild because that's a horrible thing to say, but it's oh it's not really real. Because it has to do with relationships and sex. I don't know.

Do you know what I'm saying? Like, like, LGBTQIA seems to have such a place at the table legislatively. Well, not right now. We'll be talking about that later, [00:03:00] but it's really heartening to see advocacy in this arena. 

David Carlson: Oh, yeah. I think what you're talking about is like the difference between people don't necessarily see mutual aid as legitimate, as these like statewide organizations that are trying to work for policy advancement and working with our legislators.

And we're at this point where the Polyamorous community has done so much mutual aid for each other through, working on ourselves and our mental states and our communities that now we're in a place where we can become a powerful voting block, right? 5 percent of the U. S. Population. And so now we get to take this legitimacy step and focus on policy that really affects us and changes our society in a meaningful way. 

Karen Yates: Absolutely. And I know one of opens one of the branches is a kind of a [00:04:00] global outreach. And I know that there've been some statistics globally about non monogamy. Can, do you happen to know the numbers offhand? 

David Carlson: I do not know the numbers globally. I do know that in 2024, Open did a survey and it got responses from six different countries and 4, 500 people. And we are seeing discrimination all across this the planet around this. And some places do have Stronger laws against polyamory or, like even in the States, we have adultery laws and some countries have means testings that they have for marriages that can delegitimize them. Things we don't have in this country right now, but yeah, there's definitely discrimination all around. 

Karen Yates: So one of the things we're going to be talking about in a second here is legislative act action against discrimination, but there's also other campaigns.

On the open website. And by the way, if you want [00:05:00] to find the surveys and what have you about, and all the numbers you can go to, to open opens website and we'll have all the links in the in the show notes, 

but I would love David for you to talk a little bit about the other campaigns that are active on The open website like there is something with meta, correct?

David Carlson: Yeah, there's a couple things going on with Meta. Meta's introduced its AI chatbots, and they have a practical dating coach, and it doesn't find polyamory to be a reasonable relationship status in that, if you ask the chatbot to like, me and my partner want to explore an open relationship, it's come back with, responses like, I don't think that's a good idea.

It says open relationships can lead to feelings of jealousy, insecurity, and emotional distance. Monogamy fosters deeper connection, loyalty, and long term stability, which I find to be really funny [00:06:00] because the fact that we're more afraid of having those feelings than working through them and actually building those deeper connections that come from discussing our jealousy and our loyalty by openly choosing to be who we're with without restrictions.

Yeah. So that's one of our campaigns that's on here as well as Facebook only allows one relationship status currently. And so you can go on our website and sign the petitions that are there. And, let them know that our differing relationships deserve to be shown. 

Karen Yates: Awesome. Awesome. I did not realize, talking about legislation, that relationship structure is not a protected status.

I don't even know if I thought about it which is ludicrous, but I love that, that the toolkit addresses this squarely about actually working through the municipal legislative [00:07:00] process. And part of what this toolkit's all about is also talking about the discrimination against diverse family structures and what can be considered a diverse family structure and why is it important to have legislation protecting it?

David Carlson: Yeah. To your point, it is really interesting that I think for most people we don't think about relationship structure as something that's It's needed to be explicitly protected, but there are laws on the books that do limit how our relationship structures can be validated or are invalidated.

Whether it's places like Georgia where they have laws on the books where only three people who are unrelated can live together. 

Karen Yates: Wow. 

David Carlson: So for housing protections, that's something that we need to be boosting, and some states have gotten rid of those, or adultery laws that are used as means in means for at fault divorce or [00:08:00] for custody cases, and then to your point about what is a non monogamous relationship, but diverse relationship structure we're looking at blended families who aren't married, right? My, I have a great example where I was in a relationship with somebody who, had kids and we were living together.

And at the time I was the main breadwinner. I tried to file as head of household. The government at first said, okay, that's great. And then turned around and said, no, just because we weren't married. Even though I was, paying for the kids food and taking them to school and, providing clothing and other things for them.

I still wasn't able to have that protection to get that tax incentive. That's something that's very for the nuclear family, which is funny. It's only 19 percent or 21 percent of the entire population lives that way. So blended families, multi generational families, chosen families, right?

When we're looking at [00:09:00] the LGBTQ plus community, chosen families are really big because we've all been displaced from our blood families, right? For many reasons. And so these are all really important to explicitly give protections to them. 

Karen Yates: Great. So the toolkit talks about how municipal or city wide ordinances can protect against housing, business, and public service discrimination, but other practical areas like sharing family memberships and adding adults to insurance rely on corporate, state, or federal policy.

And the open toolkit states that working first on this local level to effect non discrimination ordinances that respect all forms of ethical non monogamy and diverse family structures is the first step toward greater political traction. [00:10:00] Now can you give me an example about how local policy change led or can lead to broader change? 

David Carlson: Yeah, I can totally talk about those examples. Since this is a newer focus of policy there's a lot of things happening congruently. While Somerville and Cambridge in Massachusetts in 2023 and Oakland and Berkeley in 2024 passed their municipal ordinances, we also saw at the state level, California acknowledged chosen families for the purpose of family paid leave and family caregiver discrimination in the workplace. So those weren't connected campaigns, but they were happening simultaneously. And this is really exciting stuff because this the building blocks that we're creating right now at this municipal level across this country it's the bedrock of democracy.

And once we show that need, and really [00:11:00] once we show us as a a protected class we have to have that before we can really get into the weeds with HUD and with SNAP benefits and all of those other things because, again, we won't be seen as a legitimate voting block until that point 

Karen Yates: you know, One of the things that I was very interested in reading on the website was, just work, basic workplace discrimination of, coming , out as non monogamous or polyamorous at work can lead to, some discrimination.

And how, part of that is, of course, speaking up and continuing to be out, but then the policy like this put in place really Is a way to solidify your position in the workplace and make sure that, you're not getting fired or all of these things, but there's also this aspect of making [00:12:00] employers aware that there needs to be things in the policy book to keep one from being discriminated against.

Correct? So these all of these things go hand in hand. 

David Carlson: Oh, most certainly. They're very interconnected. And as far as employers, we've seen a backslide and D I immediately as. Trump was elected, right? And so what that says to me is that if a company's pushing it forward, it's executive orders, right?

It can be rescinded at any point in time. And most of our workers in this country don't have a union currently. And that real power to enshrine that stuff. Yeah. is union contracts. And so what we're seeing is moving forward, our kind of focus on building that out, working with local and statewide unions to get that into their bylaws and then get that into their contracts.

And so that's a long game, but that's another way that [00:13:00] we legitimize and secure those protections for workers. 

Karen Yates: Yeah, I'm definitely seeing, in the past couple of weeks, just more and more talk about the need for strong unions as a way to combat any sort of change in worker status and what have you.

So it's great to hear that there is this long game for your organization as well. What I loved about this toolkit. so much is that it's not just a toolkit for non monogamy and polyamory, it's a toolkit for basically anybody that wants to advocate for change at the municipal level.

And it, it's a step by step because there were so many lawyers involved. I love that there are so many lawyers involved in your organization and putting this toolkit together that like this is like airtight Like a playbook. This is a playbook and so it's just so great. It has [00:14:00] boilerplate, uh, you know How to put an ordinance together the boilerplate on that as we get into it now what is, what is the most critical aspect of advocacy and activism to affect change in this arena of consensual non monogamy and diverse family non discrimination.

David Carlson: Great question. I think building community really is the bedrock, right? We were actually already have. A lot of that within the polyam and E and M communities. Because we're, we're well practiced and having uncomfortable conversations, openly communicating needs and boundaries, and then creating those relationships.

And like I said earlier, we're already 5 percent of this country and there's the rule of 3. 5 percent for creating lasting change. 

David Carlson: 3. 5 percent of a population is able to maintain a sustained effort. That that change will occur. [00:15:00] And so I, I really love this toolkit because yeah, if you want to go in and you want to want to change anything at the municipal level this toolkit is useful, right? 

Karen Yates: Absolutely. 

David Carlson: It demystifies. Policymaking and policy changing, and it's not as hard as people think it is a simple example is I built relationships from a previous campaign I was on with two people who became city counselors. In Corvallis, Oregon, and we're in a really incredible position where I took a meeting with them a few weeks ago and said, Hey, I'm on this new campaign would love to get this past and they're like, Okay, this is great timing, took it to their Their priorities meeting with the rest of the council and we're in a great position.

It sounds like the vp, the president, and the mayor are are all in support of [00:16:00] this and you know, without having to do much of anything in the way of organizing rallies and, and, and doing all this stuff, those relationships made this an easy win for us. 

Karen Yates: Yeah, it's like basic networking. Somewhat you create a relationship, you build trust, and then everything gets easier.

And I love, I love that you are talking about how the basic skills to be successfully in polyamorous and E& M relationships serve the legislative process. It's, it's so great. It's, 

David Carlson: it's like, yeah. Well, and I think we can look at this as a deeper level, it's like the honesty, the commitment, and the ability to have those uncomfortable conversations and set those boundaries is something that.

When we look at our legislatures and our elected officials across this country, they are not having right. They're holding [00:17:00] on to lies. They're lying for other people. They're being dishonest across the board about what their motives are. And I think honestly, we would all be a lot better if more non monogamous people were in elected positions.

We would be willing to say, Hey, this is not right. You're breaking, you're crossing my boundaries and I will not have this. 

Yeah. Yeah. But not poly saturated people. They wouldn't have time.

A little poly joke 

David Carlson: gotta get them in where you can, right? 

Karen Yates: Right,

So a lot of or I shouldn't say a lot, but a part of the toolkit talks about achieving coalitions through allyship. And where do you feel folks don't do their homework? in regards to achieving coalition with allies in related areas.

David Carlson: When it comes to coalition building what I'm noticing [00:18:00] is there's a lot of concern about mission drift. But a lot of the work that I've done in my life has dealt with things that don't necessarily have, that don't touch on one issue. And so People get into their silos of what they're working on and don't look at the intersectionality a lot.

And so, I worked on a ballot initiative that I created to make it so we could fill out ballot initiatives online through our Secretary of State's website here in Oregon. And I went to all of these different statewide organizations that are well respected and they're all this doesn't impact us?

 This isn't in our lane. I'm like how does it not impact you to make it so you can run a ballot initiative for say 50, 000 and get it on the ballot instead of a half a million dollars, right? Like why is this not an important issue to you? And I think that, we're seeing a lot more of this where people are going, okay, [00:19:00] liberation is, is all of us and it's all interconnected.

But I think that we're still seeing people staying siloed. 

Karen Yates: Mm. Mm hmm. And, what do you think some, what do you think the antidote to that is, of like showing the interconnection and showing the way we're all woven together? 

David Carlson: That is a question I rack my brain every day about because, when looking at the society we're in and we look at the need for a class conscious mentality to see how our politics are ran by And, Giant corporations and by lobbying and how we're being pitted against each other.

I really again, I really come back to building community and having those conversations and breaking down those silos and then and just having to Continue to show it because it takes what have I been told? It's six to eight touches like for somebody to really start [00:20:00] to get that connection and to maybe make a change based on that.

David Carlson: So just continuing to build community and continuing to reach out. Like we've got to even if, even though it's scary, even though we may get a no, we still got to reach out and just try. 

Karen Yates: [BREAK] Did you know Wild & Sublime’s twice monthly newsletter has sex news, views views and tips you can use delivered to your inbox, plus info on the latest pod episodes and upcoming live shows. Sign up at Wildandsublime.com 

[TO DAVID] So when working with politicians and writing and the writing up of the policy. The toolkit provides, model, non discrimination legislation for diverse family and relationships structures that people can use.

And I found it interesting that asexual and aromantic folks were included in the groups to be part of the anti discrimination. How do you see asexual and aromantic folks discriminated against at a municipal level and beyond? 

David Carlson: And so, from my understanding, and this is going to be a little bit of a low knowledge area for me, but most discrimination that we're seeing [00:21:00] for asexual and aromantic people is going to be through societal discrimination and ignorance.

However, there are still, and I think I brought this up earlier, are the consummation laws that happen in other countries for marriages. But Including them in there is more of a proactive measure to ensure that as we're making these building blocks, and we get to more specific policy changes like expanding domestic partnerships, and what that means we're just crossing our dotting our i’s and crossing our tees right now that makes sense. 

Karen Yates: Part of the legislative work is to bring forth witnesses during the committee process. And I love that kind of the whole committee process is worked through in this toolkit. And the toolkit states, quote, focus on witnesses who can address the issue from different angles, step parenting, multi parent adoption, multi generational families, hospital visitation rights [00:22:00] for multiple partners, lifelong platonic partnerships, long term roommates, discrimination in education, employment and healthcare settings, and the freedom to come out and speak authentically about your life and relationships, for example. Now that's awesome, but in your estimation, is it tough to find witnesses to speak during these proceedings? 

David Carlson: Yeah. They do exist while doing outreach in San Francisco. We had one respondent say, they were reprimanded and had to change departments because a coworker was uncomfortable with the relationship structure.

Um, you know, we had a person who was run out of their church and actually moved to San Francisco from the East Bay area because of, their, relationship status. And I heard from one college student in San Francisco who's, facing kind of social oppression from, even within the [00:23:00] lesbian community there regarding her non monogamous status.

So we are finding people And yeah, it's not always as cut and dry or easy to explain the systemic part of it because I think even as E& M folks, it's like we still exist in a mononormative society and we base our actions Thank you on that to fit within society. Like you said at the top, didn't even, it doesn't even cross our mind about these explicit protections or the explicit abuse or oppression that we live with based on it a lot of times.

So it's we're at this point where people are like, Oh wait, that's a thing that happened to me. Oh man. I just now I've got a story. I didn't even think about that. So [00:24:00] people are becoming more aware. So I think as we talk about this more, we'll find more explicit municipal and state level, cases and people to talk about it.

Karen Yates: Yeah. And as we're talking, part of. This diverse family structure, bringing more people in, I as you know, I talked to Laura Boyle a couple of episodes ago about her book, Monogamy in this Economy, about, living in a polycule. And part of this is as a return to pre colonial Ways of sharing resources and like spending less because we're sharing resources and that really runs against a lot of capitalist impulses.

And so there, there's that layer too, that like it's, it's, it's more economical to live together. In these older forms these older tribal forms, if you will that help us [00:25:00] create deeper and wider bonds, but also help us , keep our resources, which in this, And this time we're living in becomes more and more important for many reasons.

Not just basic economy, but in the face of climate change. Obviously when we had these very large disasters recently. On both sides of the coast people were having to move in with each other to find shelter and all of this is I think there, I think that's part of the discussion as well.

David Carlson: Oh, absolutely. And I think we're going to see a lot more pushback on this as we get into it, right? Like a degrowth economy the sharing economy as it's picking up. And it's really out of partial necessity and partial awareness of climate change and the fact that I think some scientists said the two degrees Celsius marker is no longer attainable.

That's very [00:26:00] scary on many reasons and we are going to have to, we have to. Live communally, right? We have to be caring for each other and we have to we have to end consumerism as we know it. And polyamory and all the work that we're all doing to have these more difficult conversations and be in community with each other really puts us as at an advantage to, to lead a lot of this politically and societally moving forward, which I'm very excited about.

Karen Yates: So we had an earlier conversation about allyship for those folks who might be allies to the polyam movement or vice versa, polyam folks being allies to other marginalized communities. Did you want to speak a little bit about that? I thought there were some very interesting points that you made.

David Carlson: Yeah we talk about allyship a whole lot in social justice [00:27:00] and on the left per se and one of the things that I've learned through the activism I've done over the years is that being an ally just isn't enough, right? I'm always being asked to be an accomplice, especially within the BLM movement, right?

Because if you're an ally, you're still only expressing sympathy in many ways, right? Like you don't, people don't take on these causes as intersectional and interconnected with their own lives and it's an othering, right? And like it, for us to gain Our full rights in a society. And we've seen this with the the LGBTQ plus movement.

We've seen it with BLM. It takes other people standing in front of us. It takes, people with. power people who are white and male presenting, standing in front of these systems of oppression for people to say this has to [00:28:00] stop because we're not going to be listened to as much as they are.

That's just a reality. And that is unfortunate. And especially since we're dealing with literal fascism at this moment, and I will never say that lightly, but it is true, and I think there's a saying about, they came for the Jews, and I did nothing because I was not Jewish and this time we're looking at, they came for the trans people, and I did nothing because I'm not trans, but, huh that, we're already at step three of five.

David Carlson: And and again that goes through that class consciousness that if you're not in the capitalist class you are the working class, and we are all in this together, literally, and but that takes doing a lot of hard internal work and looking at those internalized structures that we have inside of us, whether it's, homophobia or ableism or even like the mononormative propaganda that we've all lived with.

I think I've been [00:29:00] ingrained with. I think one of the funniest things that I talk about with my partners the most is I, the, all of the love movies that we have, right? All the romance rom coms that we have. Literally, the main issue in there is a lack of communication and a lack of non monogamy, right?

One person has a trouble with two different people that they care about and they like, and they could be with both of them. But then there would be no movie. A little bit of a tangent, but we have so much ingrained in us in a norm, mononormative. Oh, it's, yeah, it's deep. It's real deep.

So, yeah, we just got to work together. 

Karen Yates: David, this has been a great conversation. And what is the actual address of open 

David Carlson: yeah, everybody can go to open love. org. Real easy. Got a lot of great stuff on there. 

Karen Yates: Yes, you have a support group, a live support group that people can beam into, right?

You've got a book [00:30:00] chats other resources. It's a pretty rich website and I highly recommend folks going to it to learn more. The link will also be in the show notes. David, thank you so much. 

David Carlson: Karen, it has been a pleasure. I thank you for having me on here. We can talk more and more about this for days.

Karen Yates: Absolutely.

Karen Yates: For more information on OPEN go to the notes.

Karen Yates: Well, that’s it. folks. Have a very pleasurable week. Thank you for listening. Wild & sublime is supported in part by our sublime supporter, Full Color Life Therapy, therapy for all of you at fullcolorlifetherapy.com. Know someone who’d like this episode, send it to them, and we’d love a review or a rating on your podcast app. You can follow us on Facebook and Instagram. At wild and sublime, got feedback or an inquiry. Contact us at Info(at)Wildandsublime.com. I’d like to thank our design guru Jean François Gervais and editor Christine Ferrera. Our music is by David Ben Porat. This episode is part of the Lincoln lodge Podcast Network.