Washington city pursues polyamory protections in proposed civil rights ordinance

The Washington state capital city of Olympia is pursuing an ordinance that supporters say would protect polyamorous relationships and other non-traditional families from discrimination. 

"With issues like this, you constantly find that, not that folks are underground, but it’s hard for folks to come forward about these things because it is a very private thing, and we want them to feel welcome in our community and not ostracized," Olympia City Council Member Robert Vanderpool told KOMONews. 

The ordinance being considered would make "family or relationship structure" a protected category under Olympia’s current civil rights protections. Polyamory generally refers to relationships featuring multiple romantic partners, in contrast to typical monogamous relationships.

It would include, but not be limited to, "The composition of interrelationships within a household, involvement in intimate personal relationships between consenting adults, non-normative and non-nuclear family arrangements, including multi-partner and multi-parent families, blended, (step) families, multi-generational households, single-parents-by-choice, chosen families, and similar configurations," the city of Olympia said in information shared with Fox News Digital. 

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"I think the biggest thing that comes up is housing, folks that are in polyamorous relationships or non-monogamous, or even chosen families – it’s hard in a chosen family to put someone on their mortgage," Vanderpool said.

According to KOMONews, city leaders are working with activists such as OPEN, the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-Monogamy, based in Oakland, California, for help in drafting the ordinance.

"OPEN's research found that 60 percent of non monogamous individuals report experiencing stigma or discrimination on the basis of their family or relationship structure," Brett Chamberlain, executive director of OPEN, claimed in the article. "This can look like family rejection, social rejection, being denied promotion or even fired from a job, having Child Protective Services called, being denied medical care by a medical care provider, or stigmatized by a mental health care provider."

KOMONews reported that if the ordinance passes, Olympia would be "the first city in Washington state to address the growing number of families with diverse structures."

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Chamberlain told Fox News Digital in a statement, "These protections are critical because family and relationship structures have fundamentally changed. Only 18% of US households fit the ‘traditional’ nuclear family model, yet our laws haven't caught up with this reality. About 5% of adults are currently in consensually non-monogamous relationships, and 1 in 5 will be at some point in their lives."

He said he expects the ordinance to pass on Feb. 9, which he said would make "Olympia the first city in Washington and the fifth nationwide (following Somerville and Cambridge, MA in 2023 and Berkeley and Oakland, CA in 2024) to establish these protections." 

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In a statement to Fox News Digital, Jason Rantz, a conservative radio host and columnist at Seattle Red, said, "This proposal pretends it's about tolerance when it's really about the government elevating a lifestyle choice into a protected class and forcing everyone else to accommodate it."

Rantz, who published an opinion piece Monday on the proposed ordinance, added that, "Once you blur the line between immutable traits and personal romantic arrangements, anti-discrimination law stops being a shield and becomes a weapon against landlords, employers, and families. That kind of vague, activist-driven policymaking is what happens when the Radical Left runs a city." 

The Olympia city manager told Fox News Digital that "Staff is working to prepare a draft ordinance that will come forward to the Council at a future date to be determined."

Fox News Digital reached out to Vanderpool for comment. The city is in left-leaning Thurston County, which went easily for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election as she won the state.