Under President Trump’s leadership, the country as a whole is swinging to the right on social policy. But the Pacific Northwest, as usual, is swinging its own way.
A wave of recent local ordinances in large liberal bastions like Portland, Ore., but also smaller communities like Astoria, Ore., which has a population of 10,181, would confer the beginning of legal protections to polyamorous relationships. The goal, pushed by a group based in California, is to establish legally protected family structures for groups of adults who are romantically or otherwise tied together under one roof.
“Right now, we’re just talking about a basic level of protection, having certain mechanisms in place so that if I’m discriminated against in employment or housing because of the way I choose to structure my home life, I have redress,” said Jessa Davis, a transgender activist and organizer in Seattle who lives in a nonromantic family structure with three other transgender women and two toddlers. “It’s about the law catching up to where we are culturally.”
National Democrats might be trying to move the political conversation away from divisive social policies that helped cost them the White House in 2024, but proponents of the polyamory changes say Mr. Trump and his supporters have forced them to act. Adding protections for “nontraditional” households is a response to efforts to roll back rights for groups that already enjoy legal protections.
The initiative in Olympia, Wash., to ban discrimination based on “diverse family structure,” for example, grew out of a drive to bolster the city’s sanctuary laws, which already included immigrants, to cover the L.G.B.T.Q. community when Mr. Trump returned to office last year.
“We had folks come to say, ‘OK, you’ve become a sanctuary city, but what does that really mean?’” said Robert Vanderpool, an Olympia City Council member who proposed the additional protections. “We heard from people in our L.G.T.B.Q. community who wanted more protection, including people living polyamorously.”
Advocates of expanded nondiscrimination laws say they’re also hoping to recognize the increasing number of Pacific Northwesterners who are choosing less traditional family structures. Those numbers are difficult to track, but supporters of expanded nondiscrimination policies point to a 2016 study from the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy in which researchers estimated that one in five unmarried Americans had been in a consensually nonmonogamous relationship at some point.
Conservative activists say officials in the Northwest are using the language of nondiscrimination to foster broader cultural changes that have already run afoul of U.S. law, such as polygamy.
“It’s ultimately an effort to recognize polygamous marriages and to do that by saying it’s discriminatory not to,” said Roger Severino, a vice president at the conservative Heritage Foundation and the architect of many of the first Trump administration’s social policies when he headed civil rights at the Department of Health and Human Services.
Civil rights protection to address widely recognized societal problems stemming from “animus-based discrimination” is one thing, he said.
“What we see here is a political movement that is trying to legitimize alternatives to the traditional family household as a cultural norm,” he continued. “That’s a very different thing.”
Olympia, a city of 58,000 on the southern end of Puget Sound, is Washington’s state capital. It is also home to Evergreen State College, known for being among the most quirky and liberal schools in the country with its lack of majors or grade point averages and its motto, “Omnia Extares,” which roughly translates to “let it all hang out.” Olympia increasingly is a refuge for young people who are seeking a progressive environment but feel priced out of larger cities like Seattle or San Francisco.
Mr. Vanderpool said Olympia residents are likely to be more familiar with the concept of “ethical nonmonogamy” and nonnuclear forms of family than people in more conservative parts of the country. The move his city made this week does not impact state or federal marriage laws or call, for instance, to allow three people to share Social Security benefits. That sort of move could clash with anti-bigamy laws that are well established.
“This is not a controversial policy stance here,” Mr. Vanderpool said of the nondiscrimination language. “What I’m hearing isn’t pushback but more like ‘Yes, and?’ As in, ‘Yes, and what are you going to do about all the other problems with discrimination and inequity we need to solve?”
One voice against the policy change, which first came up in January, was Andrelyn Izquierdo, who said existing nondiscrimination laws should be enough and accused Olympia leaders of supporting “heterophobia.”
“How many more letters are going to be added on to L.G.B.T. Q.?” Ms. Izquierdo asked at a City Council hearing. “It’s already too many letters.”
In Portland, city councilors are considering a similar change in city ordinances, which they packaged as part of a response to hundreds of measures being considered in more conservative states to roll back gay and transgender rights.
At a hearing last week, they heard from more than 40 people supporting the addition of broader nondiscrimination laws that would include nontraditional family structures, including several speakers in polyamorous relationships who said clearer legal protections would help them feel more open when going about the day to day business of looking for jobs, renting homes, signing their children up for school or just engaging in small talk.
“When colleagues talked about their family plans, I kept quiet. I never knew who might react badly and with what consequences,” said Mark Kille, who owns a home with two partners and helped raise four children with them. They moved to Oregon from Colorado in 2011 because “life there was untenable” for a nontraditional family.
The initial draft of Portland’s policy did not include specific language explaining what city leaders meant by “family or relationship structure.” At a meeting Wednesday, more progressive councilors successfully pushed to add a detailed list that included “consensually nonmonogamous relationships.” That worries moderates who fear unwanted attention from conservatives or from the Trump administration.
“I thought we could take an action and not put a particular spotlight on Portland by those will do us ill,” said one council member, Eric Zimmerman.
Proponents of more protection for polyamorous families already succeeded in passing versions in the liberal strongholds of Cambridge and Somerville, Mass., and Oakland and Berkeley, Calif., before turning toward the Northwest. They’re hoping Seattle city leaders will add polyamory and other nontraditional family structures to city policy this year.
“Given the realities of making political change in the United States, we have to start with cities where they’re going to be more receptive to these kinds of protections and not look at passing it in a city where conservative state legislators are going to catch wind and then pre-empt it,” said Brett Chamberlin, executive director of OPEN, the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Nonmonogamy, which worked on the Massachusetts and California policies and is now helping with the Northwest efforts.
“But even in the Bay Area or Portland or Seattle, there are people who don’t feel comfortable talking about their nonmonogamous identity and might still be at risk at work if they’re open about that aspect of their life,” Mr. Chamberlin said.
He cited cases of polyamorous people being denied promotions or fired from their jobs, being denied rental applications from housing providers or being refused a sexually transmitted infection test because they’re listed on paperwork as married.
Mr. Chamberlin and other proponents stress that adding language about household structure to local nondiscrimination policies can also provide protection for single parents, adult children living with their aging parents or collections of friends who choose to live together long term.
“Chosen families take a lot of different forms,” said Ms. Davis, executive director of the Seattle Coalition for Family and Relationship Equity, who is helping with the Olympia ordinance. “Even polyamory isn’t just about having sex with multiple people. It’s about what your community looks like.”
Supporters see these local ordinances as baby steps toward broader attempts to extend rights for people living in nontraditional households. The policies being discussed in Olympia, Portland and Astoria wouldn’t cost business owners or government entities any money, advocates said. They don’t, for example, require employers to provide health insurance for multiple domestic partners or states to issue marriage licenses for three people.
“We can have a conversation about the bigger legislative agenda,” Ms. Davis said, “once people can come out of the closet.”
Anna Griffin is the Pacific Northwest bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of Washington, Idaho, Alaska, Montana and Oregon.
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