Listen to this note:
Earlier this month, the Oakland City Council passed new legislation formally recognizing polyamorous families, the first of its kind on the West Coast, with the intention of expanding safeguards against discrimination to include polyamory and other ? diverse family structures? in sectors such as housing and public services.
The bill was launched by Janani Ramachandran, Oakland's first LGBTQ council member of color, who said that among the families that would be protected by this new legislation would be those with multiple couples, reconstituted couples, single parents, multigenerational households and asexual relationships.
This new ordinance modifies the Oakland Municipal Code to prohibit discrimination in real estate transactions and in the provision of goods, facilities and services by any business, the city or a city-funded entity, on the basis of a non-traditional family and relational.
In turn, it expands legal protections to a diverse range of family configurations and relationship structures, including polyamorous relationships, multiparent families, stepfamilies, and other non-nuclear family structures.
"It is a significant step towards recognizing and safeguarding the rights and dignity of all residents, reflecting the city's commitment to inclusivity and equality," Ramachandran said.
The councilor highlighted that, in today's diverse society, a significant portion of households deviate from the traditional nuclear family model, detailing that research indicates that only a minority of American households conform to this normative structure, showing a variety of configurations including multi-couple/multi-parent families, stepfamilies, and multigenerational households.
At the same time, he said that an estimated 5 percent of American adults practice consensual non-monogamy (NCM), and surveys reveal that more than 1 in 6 adults express interest in non-monogamous relationships at some point in their lives. life.
Despite this prevalence, she said, diverse family and relationship structures lack explicit protection in current laws, leading to widespread stigma and discrimination.
In that sense, he noted that almost two-thirds of non-monogamous people say they suffer discrimination in critical areas such as housing, health care and business services, underscoring the urgent need for legal recognition and protection.
?This ordinance aims to foster a more inclusive and empathetic community. “It is a necessary step to ensure that all residents can live authentically without fear of discrimination, reflecting Oakland's long-standing commitment to diversity and inclusion,” Ramachandran stressed.
Oakland is not the only city in California that has set its sights on the issue; Berkeley legislators plan to vote on the same bill on May 7.
At the national level, the cities of Somerville and Cambridge in Massachusetts passed the first laws granting rights to non-traditional families.
John Owens, a 37-year-old artist and writer who identifies as polyamorous and lives in Oakland, told KQED in an interview that, in less than a decade, he has had to move house 5 times and the one he currently lives in is gone. feels uncomfortable, because the owners "are quite critical of polyamory."
Owens, who shares with one of her three romantic partners and two roommates, said that "at one point, they tried to ask us to leave, threatening an owner-occupied eviction." Then they backed down and said we could stay, but with a 10 percent increase in rent?
He explained that, even, when looking for an apartment a few years ago and telling the owner that he was polyamorous, she got angry and disrespectfully told him: “I don't rent to whores,” and they did not give him a rental application.
“That kind of discrimination is pretty common,” Owens said. “It's hard to even think about all the different times, the different people I've met in professional, medical, living or institutional settings who have made it pretty clear to me that they don't agree with the way I live my life,” Owens said. .
According to research, two-thirds of people who participate in consensual non-monogamous practices report that they feel stigmatized, leading many to hide that they are polyamorous for fear of retaliation and discrimination.
This publication was supported in whole or part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the CaliFornia State
You may be interested in: Hate crimes are extremely difficult to convict, says California Attorney General Rob Bonta
