The Future of Marriage Rights

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:45 Thomas: And welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1063. I'm Thomas Smith and in a moment I'm going to be joined by Matt and a special guest. Know, it's been truly amazing and awe -inspiring and so satisfying to watch the DNC and these amazing positive examples of family, of that with the RNC, which is, you know, know, supposed to be the party of family, they that it's so funny, I saw a thing just today that was like, Republicans, the party a family values, and it just reminds me of when Trump in 2016 just started saying the target message rather than, like, trying to, they used to do a thing, political consultants would be, hey, try to come across as, you know, strong, or we're authoritative.

And Trump would just be like, I'm strong and authoritative, he said, I'm the law and order candidate, and it reminds me of that, we're the family party, but they're not at all, they're the party of, in Trump's case, you know, several ex -wives who he cheated on with, worst example of family that one could imagine. Why am I talking about this?

Well, one great thing about, I think, being on the left is, is we're, I think we very much can be, and just the party of family values in a real sense, because families need things like, you know, health care and stuff. And that's very important. Also not bound by any religious, religious idea of, of what a family has to be. That's really cool. Today we're going to have attorney Diana Adams on to speak with us.

This is someone who Matt very much wanted to talk to very early on, on the list of brainstorming that Matt did right away when he first knew he was going to be on OA, months and months ago. Was definitely on the lista, among others.

Diana is with the Chosen Family Law Center, and they are at the forefront of advocating in policy and law for how we can rethink our traditional understanding of committed relationships to that people in non -traditional partnerships can start to see the same kind of rights and respect as anyone else. Know, I really think we're on the the precipice, is we surprised that philosophers haven't written something on this. Maybe they have, that every single election is the most important election of our lives.

It's both true and useless, but all, but it is true every single time because we really are at the precipace. We could go one way and potentially lose marriage rights that were hard fought. Genuinely believe that. It could still happen even if we, we win, just because of the court. We'll see. Or we win and we expand those rights to more and more people. I think that's just such a clear choice in my mind.

And I'm so excited to have Diana Adams on to speak about what that might look like. So without further ado, why don't we take a little break, which you can avoid at patreon.com/law. We'll see you in the next one. And I'll be back with Matt and Diana Adams.

0:03:34 Matt: Thomas, I'm very excited to have on one of the first people identified I wanted on as a guest when I joined this show.

0:03:39 Thomas: True.

0:03:40 Matt: Diana Adams from the Chosen Family Law Center. Welcome to Opening Arguments.

0:03:43 Diana: Thank you so much. And that's so sweet. I'm delighted to be here.

0:03:46 Matt: Yeah, I really mean it. When I was sitting down thinking about guests, this is something I wanted to talk about for a long time, and I knew that you're the person to talk to. So I guess I should start by finding out why you're the person to talk to. What's your background? How'd you get into this? That's

0:04:00 Diana: I worked in legal services and always knew that I wanted to do interest law or work with social justice issues as an attorney. And I, working in legal service, really discovered that there was not adequate provision of legal services to my own community of queer and polyamorous people.

And so I started my law law firm in 2007 as a family law firm and mediation firm, working particularly with LGBTQ people and same -sex couples, but also with the many of us who are in the queer plus or other of like me who are bisexual, polyamorous, I'm gender non -binary. And I was really excited about providing support for people who are in family structures beyond couples. And there are so many of us, we're actually the vast majority of the U.S. population, and in particular, the queer community has a lot of people who were in family configurations that are beautiful and perfect that are beyond marriage. And during that time, it was, of course, the long long battle for same -sex marriage as the focus of the LGBTQ legal movement. And that was an important provision of justice to our community.

And at the same time, by arguing that we need marriage as a fundamental right, because over a thousand different rights and benefits come with marriage beyond all of the cultural benefits, we've now just moved the line of discrimination back to marital status. Us. And I was really passionate about being able to provide services for everyone else. So I that law firm, Diana Adams Law and Mediation, which continues now with a partner, Andy Isenson, and a wonderful associate.

We support people with mediation nationwide who are doing family formation, particularly polyamorous people, queer people, people in platonic Partnerships and Families, and then had an pro bono department that became Chosen Family Law Center in 2019. And we started taking cases throughout New York State, and we provide direct legal services as the first organization to provide direct legal services, including polyamorous people and platonic partners as the families and and communities that we serve.

And we also do legislative advocacy and get involved in public education about the many kinds of families that are out there. We're launching our continuing legal education programs this year too.

0:06:30 Matt: Great. Was there any kind of one moment in your legal services career early on that you realized that the system was letting everyone down, that they were just only that they're privileging monogamous marriage? Yeah,

0:06:41 Diana: Think it was a of those moments, but in particular, a lot of my legal services background was in advocacy for women and children related to single motherhood, poverty, and intimate partner violence survivors. And overwhelmingly, I saw again and again that we are relying on that institution of marriage or on the fathers of children for the support of a child and a dependent mother. And I spent a lot of time chasing down terrible guys, these women did not want to have to be in communication with to try to get them to pay child support, while being aware, as somebody who studied a lot of comparative politics and ended up living in Germany for seven years, that in other developed countries, we don't make abused women track down their abusers to try and get them pay child support. We just provide benefits to women and children who need it.

0:07:38 Thomas: What an idea.

0:07:39 Diana: Imagine that, right? And it just really felt like, we've the idea of a welfare state by having what I call a welfare state of two with the institution of marriage, which often is forcing women into what's expected to be a sexual relationship to provide support for themselves or their children, which I think is the government pimping poor women in America. America and single motherhood is the largest indicator of poverty in the U.S., not recent immigrants, not people with severe mental health issues, not people with disability issues. Single mothers are the single largest group of people in poverty in this country. And then, of course, their children. And I think we need to get beyond this idea that we are interested in punishing them for not conforming to a Christian idea that they should get married before having a child and be more interested in supporting supporting the kids that exist, and then looking around and seeing that there's many other kinds of valid family forums out there and other ways of finding that support. So I got down these guys for child support and was much more interested in fixing the systemic issue underneath it.

0:07:39 Thomas: Yeah. I'm

0:08:45 Matt: Makes a lot of sense. I that in your TED Talk, which we'll link to, that you use that phrase, social welfare state of two, and it's a really good way to put it. And if you could expand on that a little on what you mean there.

0:08:56 Diana: I mean is that, for example, living in Germany, as I said that I did for for nearly a decade, had a wonderful experience there. I got really involved in the European legal movement and actually started the network of LGBTQ lawyers across Europe who were serving LGBTQ families and got involved with the European Parliament and started to look at what's going on with family policy elsewhere and was just really astonished at the ways that in the U.S. we have such an us against them idea about being resentful about providing for one another, and that that doesn't have to be the way that it is, and and just saw the ways that, for example, there are there's Kindergeld in Germany and many other countries, um, you know, is providing parents, um, monthly checks, um, for financial support for their kids, which is actually part of Kamala Harris's platform.

And the way that there's such provision for daycare that's very, very heavily subsidized and affordable, maybe $25 a month in much of Europe to go send your kid to a safe and quality daycare, which as a parent here is unthinkable. I know. Yeah. Right. Right? Then they just send you money for being a parent in addition to that. There's And all manner of of support for parents and children everywhere, everywhere you turn. And just imagining that in the US, we have political parties who are fighting about who's more pro -family. And even what the Democrats are suggesting now would be considered very right wing and austere by most developed country standards in terms of what we're offering. Just the minimal suggestion of child tax credit.

So just realizing we just have not created that robust social welfare state and instead have really put so much of our emphasis in policy into pushing people into getting married. And that really has roots in wanting to control out of wedlock births, partly so that we can make sure that the father is the one who's providing for these kids. And it also comes from our original sin in the U.S. of slavery and racism, because another reason to be pushing people to get married young is to try to prevent those interracial births, that we've really outsourced the potential dependency of women and children as well as of young mothers and children, but then also disabled people onto families in a way that's absolutely unreasonable and is putting too much on us.

And so I have an an inner outrage as a mother and as an advocate for mothers and children, um, and all families that, you know, in our politics, Republicans are talking about being pro -family, um... being so absolutely brutal, um.. in the kinds of policies that are actually suggested.

So that's what I mean when I say rather than create one of those robust social welfare states, we created deliberate incentives for marriage, as well as a tremendous financial and social push toward marriage to get people into that institution as sort of a way of not having to provide those kinds of benefits. But the nuclear family was only the most common family form in the U.S. in the 1950s and 60s. And then, it's not been working.

It turns out if you give women credit cards, we're not willing to stay with abusive men if we can go out and get a job and a credit card and sign a rental application ourselves, much to the dismay of the mediocre men in the Republican Party that want to push us backwards.

0:10:04 Thomas: Sorry. What?

0:12:26 Matt: Yeah, because of course, when Republicans are they're talking about family values. They're talking about heterosexual cis couples as far as I know. And that's, I mean, that's all I've been hearing about. And even last night at the DNC, we saw the presentation of a blended family in way that I thought was very sweet. I don't know if you saw that, but I

0:12:34 Diana: Absolutely. Oh, I did. I was so delighted by that. And I think We've really reached a cultural tipping point on this issue. And, I find it really fascinating. And just the level of outrage when we aren't providing additional financial supports. You know, the affordable daycare, things like that, to parents and, you know, calling themselves pro -family by denying people IVF and denying people reproductive health care and shaming women if they don't have children and they don't fulfill any purpose in society.

Society, just the level of outrage, the hundreds of thousands of of women who joined Zoom calls immediately, I'm part of all of these angry cat lady groups on Facebook and things like that, um, I'm just, I'm, I'm hopeful that this is a moment that gives us an opportunity to realize that the majority of us are doing something a little bit different, um, terms of family structure, and that those kinds of blended families are beautiful and valid and ideal, they're, know, I don't like using the term non -traditional families because actually we've been duped into thinking that the nuclear family was what is traditional.

And my friend Christopher Ryan's book, Sex at Dawn, talks about anthropology related to sexuality and relationships, relationships, and in a great chapter titled Origin of the Species, he writes about how, you more non -monogamous and group living and group parenting dynamics were very common with early humans, and when scientists would want to present on that as anthropological truth, they would be threatened with being beheaded by the Christian church. So they would say, sure, you're right, it's a married mom and dad in a cave together. And so please

0:12:43 Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,

0:14:24 Diana: Don't behead me.

0:14:24 Thomas: And They saved themselves, by the way, we can tell by the, by the bones, they saved themselves for marriage, we know, it, she's

0:14:33 Diana: Right. They can, yes, absolutely. Definitely, definitely virgins at the wedding day.

0:14:37 Thomas: Wearing white bones, that's how you can tell, sorry.

0:14:39 Diana: Right. Very white bones, very white bones. So pure. Know, and then it was actually this, this Polish -British anthropologist, Bronislaw Mazalowski, I may have butchered that last name, it's a hard one. But he was the person who coined the idea of the nuclear family and that phrase in like the 1910s. That's how recent this idea is. And up until that time, throughout history, we've mostly lived in extended family networks. You the auntie who lives here and your in -laws and cousins who live next door, we share, you child care, that's how we've always lived and that's still how the global majority of people of color still live across the world. And so this idea of the nuclear family was created by this, uh, know, anthropologist we would now declare explicitly racist, the majority of all of his book titles include the word savage, just to give you a sense.

0:15:32 Thomas: Oh.

0:15:32 Diana: Yeah. You Know, it's like, like, the white man and savage societies are his books. And so he says, in in opposition To the savages, we could do a very white thing where we have a nuclear, a nuclear family, you know, that's male-led, which keeps those women under control and conveniently, um, very capitalist, sells a lot more ovens, sells a a lot more cars, um, idea. And and that is where this idea came from, this, this kind of crackpot that we would say now, racist, crackpot, misogynist, capitalist idea that's just over a hundred years old. And I'm happily married, I'm in a nuclear family, I's not bashing that there's anything wrong with kind of family structure, not as if this is the natural way of living, which we're hearing from right-wing parties all across Europe.

0:15:32 Thomas: Okay, geez. Yikes. Yeah.

0:16:25 Diana: We're think it's really important that we pierce the bubble of that lie. It's not true that that's the way humans have always lived and are supposed to live. And that something like a blended family is a dangerous experiment. It is not. What That is actually traditional.

0:16:40 Matt: I briefly experimented with monogamy in college in my wilder days. Didn't really take to it. I've heard it can work for some people, but, I'm also happily married, but just never really believed in monogamy. And I appreciate what you're saying and what you are doing for families like ours. And I think that This is a good time to talk about what those other kinds of families can look like, because certainly, I think most people are familiar with the kind of blended family that Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff were presenting last night, of a long-term step-parent that has been there in a stepchild's life and maybe that might even be the only parent they've known. What other kinds of families have you worked with and combinations of people and circumstances are you seeing?

0:16:51 Diana: Right. Good for you. Thank you.

0:17:18 Diana: You for that. So, of course, I work with polyamorous people like us. And while I am am married and have a child, have other long-term serious partners who are part of our family system. And I with many people who are in various configurations of open relating and polyamory. And sometimes that means three people who were living together or four people who are living together, sharing finances, sharing a house, co -parenting a child perhaps.

And other other times family configurations that are more like mine, in which, you look from the outside, perhaps like a nuclear family, although with obviously queer hair, but still have, you know, other kinds of long-term partners we would want to include in our advanced medical directives and in our wills, for example, and in family planning.

And so as a lawyer, helping people with those really solidifying legal documents to make sure my non -marital, non -nesting partner could visit me in the hospital, for example, that he's mentioned in my will as somebody that I want my child to be in touch with co if -parent and I both pass away. So those kinds of documents bring people the kind of security that they deserve. And what everyone's really asking me underneath when they come to me is, am I safe? Is my family safe?

How can you make us safe? And so what I'm trying to do is often cobbling together legal agreements to try to give people as much stability as possible when they're doing something that's a little bit different, whether or not they're married. Um So those co -parenting agreements, those agreements about sharing finances, that's really common, um working with people who are in platonic partnerships, and that's something that really on the rise.

I I work with assisted acid reproductive technology and people doing egg donors and sperm donors and embryo donors and gestational surrogates. And you know, you have the question of separating out the biology from the intention to be a parent. And we're seeing that movement now, that generally, you know, in many places in the US now, your intention and your behavior as a parent can can be even more important than your biology.

And we're even seeing that with this idea of a rise of a defacto parent, an emotional parent, a psychological parent. It's called different things in different states, but in the majority of the US, even if you don't have any biological connection or legal connection to a child, if I lived with a serious girlfriend or boyfriend, or even just a best friend or sister for many, many years who helped me parent my child, and my child knew as a parental figure, I couldn't just kick them out in most of the country at this point, because they would have a right to keep that relationship going, because we've learned that stability for kids does not have to mean a married mom and dad, it means stability of parental figures, whoever they are.

So with that, um, to um, reproductive technology and um, -biological parents, um, Have worked with people, as I mentioned, to our platonic partners, so it might be that um, has gotten accidentally pregnant or left an abusive relationship and finding somebody else in their life who wants to step up and be a parent for that child, whether or not they're biologically connected, and then creating legal connection for them, doing a second parent adoption that acknowledges them as a legal parent so that the child can benefit from having that strong legal tie to the other parent and be able to inherit from them, get on their health insurance, and legally connected.

It's also really becoming common for a, know, the prototypical example is a woman and her gay best friend deciding that that relationship could be a great platonic partnership relationship in which, you they can embark on being biological parents together by going through an insemination. And that's a way that these two can decide that this can be from the start their their unit. And that's particularly appealing for gay men who want to be biological parents, because the cost of doing a gestational surrogacy process in the U.S. is approximately a hundred thousand dollars. So for the 99 percent of us that couldn't afford that, this is another option, and I really have seen the ways that this can be a really stable way to create a family, because Because many of us know, and friends and clients have included many women who are, you know, reaching their late 30s and are like, I I need to have a baby. And have, you know, it's important to me. And so how do I do this?

I'm going to marry a guy I met online five months ago, you know. And then they come back to me as divorce clients often a few years later, when they realize, you of, intensity of being married. I don't, I wanted to be a parent, but person is not necessarily right for you for that long-term journey.

I think that instead, I am often steering clients and friends, and I want to have a cultural conversation about what about that, instead of that being the only way to become a parent? What about looking around at like a long - term friend who also wants to become apparent?

In fact, I think you actually make a better decision when you're not in the throes of, you and beginning the first few years of a relationship, because as many women have discovered, if we're choosing the person we're going to be parents with, based on, you who you had the most heady romance with in your 20s, the actually happens when you're married and your parents together is you're running a small daycare and a business together and on a cooking rotation.

And it turns out that the guys that are the most dreamy in their 20s are not always great at running a cooking rotation and running a small daycare with, that you might rather do that with your female best friend or best friend,

0:22:44 Thomas: Yes.

0:22:44 Diana: Or whomever.

0:22:44 Thomas: Chef.

0:22:45 Diana: So yeah.

0:22:45 Thomas: I don't know, sorry, anyone watches The Bear, that might have been funny, but yeah, that.

0:22:51 Matt: Do family courts have any problems with the kinds of things you're talking about with these kinds of designations or alternative family structures?

0:22:57 Diana: Depends. As you can imagine, it depends how conservative or progressive the Place is. And so in general, in New York State, and particularly in the closer to New York City you get, the more progressive judges are. I win all my cases south Albany and sometimes start to lose them north of Albony as it gets more and more conservative and rural. I do consultations nationwide about polyamory and child custody issues. And my best prognosis for how it's going to go down is by looking at the voting history of that area, you know, because there's so much discretion, too much, I think, put with judges judges in terms of what is the, you know, best interest of the child, which can be incredibly subjective. And it's really, really crazy.

0:23:02 Matt: Sure.

0:23:36 Thomas: Is crazy because You're saying in the same state with the same laws you get different results just based on like the surrounding? Is that, is that right? Or sure.

0:23:46 Diana: Yeah. I mean, depending on what's, know, what it is, if it's something like, would a judge accept a third parent adoption? It really depends on the judge. You would they support a, you non-biological parent that doesn't have their legal paperwork in order, but was acting like a parent to the child to get visitation rights you're much much more likely in a more progressive place and um you're having child being polyamorous brought up against you in a child custody case by your angry abusive ex usually um are more likely to have concerns about that in a uh more conservative place from that judge um and those those in particular are the cases where I've won all of them south of Albany and have lost all of the north of Alabama related to polyamory and child custody.

But these things are changing and shifting. And so what's promising is when we start to have cases with precedent, as well as when we have actually legislation in New York State. And that's something that we're working on now. Working on the Modern Families Act that would actually codify this and then, you it really clear, which should be obvious that you can't be violating, you New York State's non-discrimination laws in your child custody determinations.

And what does that mean, in you terms of if a parent's transgender, for example. And so just really expanding and codifying the kinds of family family protections that we should have. We did a first step toward that with the Child Parent Security Act in 2020 in York State, which made clear that sperm donor agreements need to be accepted. And here's the things that make them valid. For example, it legalized gestational surrogacy. And it codified also that you can have that non-biological parent relationship protected.

So those kinds of legislative pieces that kind of summarize the trends that have been happening in litigation to protect families, that's really what we need. And that is a national effort to all create more of a unified family court act is model for each of these states. And that's also tremendously helpful because just as we used to have that complicated complicated proliferation of different versions of civil unions and domestic partnership. In some places we have same-sex marriage, in some places we don't.

And civil union and domestic partnership don't mean the same thing in different states. It's just incredibly confusing for families. It is confusing enough for lawyers, much less just a family trying to live their lives. And so what the Unified Family Act is trying to do is create a common definition nationwide of what makes a valid sperm donor agreement, for example, so that you can feel protected.

0:23:46 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:18 Matt: That law you're talking about in New York sounds like it would be pretty far ahead of the curve. I'd like to think Massachusetts could catch up sometime soon, but

0:26:23 Diana: Massachusetts actually just passed, I believe last week, a Massachusetts Parentage Act.

0:26:27 Matt: Awesome. I am not keeping up on Massachusetts family law, obviously, so check that out. But what kind of other stuff would that the New York bill you're taking about? It sounds like a package of amendments, changes.

0:26:39 Diana: And that's something that we're talking about actively right now, and I'm glad to be part with Chosen Family Law Center of working on that bill. State Senator Brad Hoylman Siegel has been an absolutely fantastic champion of the work of LGBTQ organizations like ours. And so we're figuring out how to really explicitly include three legal parents, for example. And I'm convening groups of lawyers in New York State to talk about some of the first third-parent adoptions, which is really exciting.

Being able to actually have an adoption that acknowledges three legal parent is something that's just at the cusp, and this just has happened in New York State, and so we're working together to be really, uh, about the kinds of forms that we're using, um, it, it would really expand and make really clear, um, kinds of family configurations that should be given respect, um, that ultimately comes down to making sure that kids are protected to stay close to people that they know as their parents and that the parents don't have the undue burden of having to figure sure that their parental status is secure between New York and Massachusetts and Pennsylvania and just having a more concerted nationwide effort to make it easy for these families.

0:27:50 Matt: You Are you saying that this would also include eliminating discrimination in family court, allowing those kinds of arguments, the prejudicial arguments against poly people?

0:27:56 Diana: Unfortunately, that's a future project after this one. This one is just really clarifying things like three legal parents, and a future attempt that we're talking about is trying to make sure that there isn't discrimination, discrimination, and codifying that. I'm excited about that too. And able to not just say non-discrimination against trans parents, for example, but also to expand that to include polyamorous families and that that shouldn't be used against people. And it's been really inspiring to be part of this movement since I started taking these cases in 2007, when if they brought up in court that you're polyamorest in a child custody case, it, it was really bad news, and now, feeling like we might actually get something codified, and, and that's an exciting, that's exciting thing, where I haven't gotten, I'm not less of a radical weirdo than I was then, but it's an amazing thing over the course of a career to start to feel like you've been around long enough, people respect you, people trust you, and then you can get some preposterously, you know, exciting things done, which is great, and

0:27:59 Matt: Mm -hmm.

0:28:59 Matt: The culture is changing, too. I mean, it's just...

0:29:00 Diana: The culture is really changing. I started my practice in 2007, and I came out really publicly as polyamorous in 2008. My partner and I were, we think, the first mention of polyamory in the New York Times, and did a profile in the style section where it has all the nice, uh, couples getting married, and, um, had a picture with us and each with an arm around a girlfriend saying, "we're not getting married," and explaining polyamory. And think it was a really positive depiction. And so I did a lot of polymedia in those early years, in particular because I didn't see other positive examples and wanted people to be aware it was an option.

0:29:01 Matt: When did you start practice? Yeah. So, Awesome.

0:29:38 Matt: That's fantastic, because, you know, I know the same feeling, 2007, 2008. I just kind of feel like you're making it all up. It's hard to explain sometimes to people around you. Even in this bubble, and right now, of course, where I'm in the greater Boston bubble, where I just kind of assume that everybody knows about alternative family structures, if not polyamory, ethical non -monogamy. Certainly, I know it's not that way everywhere. And I've even heard stories recently around this area of family court judges still having problems with people being poly and making decisions, or at least these arguments being taken seriously. And it's hard to hear, knowing how successful these families can be and how good it can be for kids. Overall, I'm sure, I don't know the research, but I assume that this is, generally speaking, very good for kids to have solid adult figures in their lives, no matter what combination they are. It's

0:30:21 Diana: Absolutely. And that's been really helpful over the course of my career. We've seen the need for data that we can present to courts rather than just the anecdotal evidence, and we have that now. Dr. Eli Sheff put out The Polyamorous Next Door, and that was a longitudinal study of kids who grew up in polyamorous families who are now adults. And summary is the kids did great, and in fact, often did a bit better because they had several committed adults devoted to them.

As a parent myself, when we're absolutely frantic in our atomized society, it's, you know, I think that the ratio of three adults to a kid is a great one, if you can get it. And, and kids do better, I think, in some ways, even, because, you adults with the bandwidth to support them, more people who can chip in to send them to the horseback riding camp they want to go to, or the gifted program, more adults with, with the space to mentor and guide them.

So the kids did very well in that study. And colleagues at the Modern Family Institute, they are doing the research piece, and we work together, and they're doing the, the research piece, needing more data about the kinds of families that are out there and being able to demonstrate that they do very well and they can be absolutely stable family forms.

0:31:36 Matt: Wonderful. That doesn't surprise me, but it's great to hear the data, pretty

0:31:39 Thomas: Monogamy in this economy, is that's how I feel

0:31:41 Diana: Exactly. I have that on a t -shirt.

0:31:42 Matt: Much. Totally.

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0:35:17 Matt: To talk for a minute about the future of marriage as a legal institution. That's just one thing I really wanted to talk to you about. And I try not to tell you about the angry dissents from Antonin Scalia and John Roberts and Alito over the years that have invoked this idea that, well, actually, Scalia, I went back and look today. In Romer v. Evans, he actually drew a direct equivalent between murder, polygamy, and animal cruelty. He's talking about things that people don't like, and those are all in the same category apparently.

0:35:38 Diana: I remember I remember that. Yeah.

0:35:41 Matt: But of course, in Obergefell, all the dissenters, and especially Roberts and Alito, were very concerned about the possibility of this slippery slope and the fact that we were going to be on the path to hell of allowing multiple adults to just decide what marriage is. And I just wanted to read this very quickly because I thought it was interesting from nine years ago in a Bergiafell from the Robert's dissent. Is striking how much of the majority's reasoning would apply with equal force to the claim of a fundamental right to plural marriage. If there is dignity in the bond between two men and two women who seek to marry and in their autonomy to make such profound choices, and that's in quotes, so he clearly doesn't think there is, why would there be any less dignity in a bond between three people who, in exercising their autonomy, seek to make the profound choice to marry? He's right.

0:36:21 Thomas: Yeah, I love it. Live goes on longer enough to where it's like, yes, this, but unironically.

0:36:25 Matt: Yeah, this is where we're at. I had that thought with the Bergerfeld, I'm sure you did too, that yeah, obviously, this is the next step. I mean, this Is where it goes. And I don't want to call it a slippery slope, because I think it's more like a rainbow path or something. I don't t know. But it's like, we're

0:36:26 Diana: Yes, absolutely. Mm hmm. Uh huh.

0:36:37 Thomas: Yeah, rainbow road on Mario Kart. Yeah, something like that sorry

0:36:40 Diana: Yes.

0:36:39 Matt: Yeah, something like that, right? A slippery slope generally is going somewhere you don't want to go. But I just don't see any reason at all when you remove the institution of marriage from being a religious one to being a purely civil one, why the civil governments can't make their decisions about how these things are going going to be structured and, you know, between consenting adults. And But at the same time, I guess I should say it's a crime in all 50 states, including this one, including when you're in, um, or polygamy

0:37:04 Thomas: What's a crime? Time, another that's an additional person

0:37:06 Matt: Yeah

0:37:06 Diana: Look at me. I, remember that that and that dissent and everybody in the LGBTQ legal movement that I knew was saying like, uh huh, absolutely, that's what we're gonna do. But we're not gonna say that right now. It's not strategic. But yeah, I think it makes sense.

As I said, if we're saying that there's all of these different rights and privileges that come with marriage and half of the country is married, I'm actually less interested in shoehorning more people into the institution of marriage and instead interested in no longer treating marriage like that social welfare state of two or three or four even. So I think there's a real power in resurrecting the concept of domestic partnership.

And I pushed during the time when we were overjoyed about same-sex marriage for states to not get rid of their domestic partnership alternatives. Because I think it really is helpful to give people a different choice. Because domestic partnership, of course, doesn't come with all those rights and benefits, but also does not mean that you're going to be combining all of your finances together and being each other's safety net in that financial way. And that may not be the best thing for people.

And it's good for people to realize and have a choice. But also, I think domestic partnership is powerful because it takes it out of the Christian sacrament realm into just a legal institution, you know, and I think marriage just is so it's, so imbued with that religious idea that that's part of what was so challenging about achieving same sex marriage.

And I would like to get government out of the business of evaluating whether the people that we are creating relationships and family with, whether those relationships are worthy and valid. I'd be able to have our domestic partnerships function a bit more like an LLC. You know, if I want to create a corporation and I want to do that with three people and we buy houses and have a common health insurance

0:37:06 Thomas: Yeah oh wow

0:37:07 Matt: Yeah yeah

0:39:00 Diana: Plan, it doesn't matter if they're my lovers and we're in a big polyamorous triad. If it's the Golden Girls, if they're my business partners, if one's my brother and one's my lover, who cares? We want to pay taxes together. Doesn't matter. Doesn't, doesn't matter to you, right? Let us buy a house.

0:39:01 Thomas: Yeah what a radical thought, start treating marriages like businesses. And all of a sudden the rules are all, oh man, you can have businesses within businesses, you can, oh my gosh, the common, the ways that people can arrange themselves in the comfort of their own homes and businesses. Yeah. Exactly, I

0:39:28 Matt: Are people

0:39:30 Diana: Right. And, you actuality, I've tried this with clients and you need to be very wealthy for forming a corporation to make sense, right, because you have, you have to deal with additional taxes, buying the health insurance, you're paying the employer portion. It gets complicated. And so, you know, that's a possibility for the people, for my clients who are wealthy on the law firm side who are, are wealthy and want to have properties in multiple states with, several with partners or two different countries. Great form of corporation. And that works really well for them. But for the rest of us, I'm excited about the multi-partner domestic partnership laws that I was part of writing and drafting and passing in several cities now in Massachusetts, in Somerville, Cambridge, and Arlington, and more places to come.

0:40:15 Matt: Shout out, Somerville. Yeah.

0:40:16 Diana: Yep, shout out to Somervill for the very first. And so with that, that allows people to get domestic partnered with, it could be more than one people. It could be in that a V triad, so maybe I have two partners and I'm domestic partner to each of them but they are not with each other. It also allows, and this part's radical, um, me to be married to one person and domestic partnered to a different one with the written consent affidavit from my spouse. So could also allow all three people or four people to all be domestic partnered.

So it's a flexible structure enter into. And then that does not require residency. So what we've been seeing is people are coming from, for example, I've spoke about this to Microsoft employees, and we've had some folks come from the Seattle area and go and get a domestic partnership and then be able to go back and switch who's on their health insurance. Insurance. So in a situation, for example, I've seen cases of, I'm polyamorous, boyfriend just got a cancer diagnosis.

I want him to be on my really good tech company insurance. My husband does not need my insurance. My boyfriend does. So we sign the consent from the husband. Boyfriend and I fly to Somerville for a long weekend. We get registered, go back and switch who's on my health insurance. Also seen that for trans healthcare surgeries.

0:40:19 Matt: Leads

0:41:36 Diana: It doesn't have to be a romantic relationship. My best friend needs my great insurance. And so I can go get domestic partnered with her and put her on my health insurance instead of my spouse. And so in future, I think we'll be having the conversation of, well, you know, if I could put five children on my health insurance. Why couldn't I put two partners on my health insurance? All incremental. Ultimately, I just like people to have universal health care because they're humans.

0:42:01 Thomas: Was just gonna ask, yeah. Yeah, I can't help but ask, like, how much of this, and mean this entirely in the spirit of support of what you're doing, but how much of all of this could be like, I don't want to say solved, but like, just if we had a strong, you know, I, dunno if welfare states the like pejorative term, but if we had a strong social safety net and people didn't want for health insurance and, you provided the things that I think should be fundamental human rights that our citizens should have. If all that was like kind of taken care of, more or less, how much of this does that solve?

0:42:02 Diana: Right.

0:42:37 Diana: Think that's a great point. And I see this as incremental progress on the way toward that goal. And, um, think it's still useful to have that multi -partner domestic partnership because it's not just about health insurance and things like that. It also helps people to demonstrate that they have a close family relationship. Domestic partnership is an institution that is recognized internationally for things like crossing a border in a pandemic to visit someone who's ill. One of those kinds of close family designations.

It's also a person who could visit you in the hospital, for example, and it's a powerful way that queer people, polyamorous people, platonic partners can demonstrate the commitment of their relationship, and that still is helpful. And we've, just since we passed these laws, there was at least one person we know of who was able to have both of her partners with her, um, she was dying in hospice during COVID and they have these very strict rules.

She was able have both of her partners there because of the domestic partnership. So there's a tremendous power to able to having a legally recognized relationship with someone, brings people tremendous security. But beyond that, in terms of things like health insurance, I see this as a stepping stone because that's the 10, 20 -year goal. I hope in my lifetime, I hope on our lifetimes that we've achieved universal healthcare, but this helps people today.

This is, get I your boyfriend on your good tech company health insurance in two months, here's how we do it. And so it's giving people the support that they need right now. And frankly, it also is a public education and activism tool. We've also passed, with Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition is the group that I helped co -found with Chosen Family Law Center and Harvard Law School's LGBTQ Advocacy Clinic and psychologist researchers from Modern Family Institute. We founded Polyamory Legal Advocancy Coalition.

That's the group that drafted and passed those first multi -partner domestic partnership laws and also drafted and passed the first relationship structure non -discrimination laws in those cities in Massachusetts and also in Berkeley and Oakland this year. Now, I, that with the non -discrimination laws, it's to add people. At the same time, how many people are being denied an apartment in Somerville or Berkeley because they're polyamorous or platonic partners? I don't know, right? Not sure how many people are facing that.

It gives people a sense of security. But moreover, every time we pass one of those laws, we get major local media, national media, media, international media that allows us to educate people about the fact that the vast majority of us are doing something different than nuclear family, and people are astonished and it raises the conversation over and over again.

Every time we pass one of these, only 18 percent of u .s adults live in a nuclear family with kids where both people are on their first marriage. 18 percent, percent, right? Majority of us have, if the idea is that, you know, you have one monogamous marriage for life and a child, the majority of us have messed that up, right. People have gotten divorced.

People had a child out of wedlock, right, but I think it's helpful to help people stop putting that on the pedestal as the of family that is ideal when we recognize how few people are doing that, and then it helps us realize, like, well, why are are we building and zoning houses with the idea that that's what's most common? And why are we setting up our whole society with the ID? That's what most common when it isn't, you, it's no longer normative.

0:45:55 Matt: Have to ask you, it's my world. I, that you've done some work with immigration, and I think a lot about this as someone who is coming from this background and has been working with married couples trying to immigrate for about 18 years now. And the entire immigration system at this point, the majority of visas are issued on the basis of family ties. And those family ties are primarily based on marriage and on the nuclear family.

And it can be very frustrating to have to counsel people about how to get through the system when they do have other partners, because as I'm sure you know, there's a bar to polygamy. It was one of the first things that was added in immigration law in 1891, even in 1875 when they were trying to stop Chinese women specifically from coming here because we were concerned about polygamy. And the system defines polygamy really as intent to live with more than one person.

That's really all it takes in marital union, right? So it's just very frustrating to have this sort of very 50s immigration system running up against the changing culture and the changing reality of the law that we're talking about here. And I'm just wondering if you've thought about what an immigration system that does not favor marriage the way that ours does right now, monogamous traditional marriage, what that might look like, how it would work.

0:47:01 Diana: I love that topic. And that question. And I'm sure you've thought about it. And they want to hear what you have to say as well. And, I think it's been really interesting. In our work, I'll preface by saying, though, my work with immigration has been really limited to two things. One, supporting people with adjustment of status based on marriage through our Law firm, and then also for adjustment of status for people who are LGBTQ asylees. And for the non-lawyers, adjustment of status is what we think of as a green card, right? So that is something we do through Chosen Family Law Center.

We're one of only two organizations that we know of that give people the entire adjustment of the status, long, expensive process, process for free because that, one of the gaps in legal services that I saw as an attorney, that there are people in our LGBTQ worldwide family that somehow did the Herculean effort of getting all the way to the U.S., somehow getting one of the rare visas, making their way here, and being able to be declared an asylee, which is a short relatively but arduous process of documenting your own torture and persecution, which was horrific and re-traumatizing, and then they can't afford the $15,000 or so to hire a lawyer for two years to get their adjustment of status, and they get sent home and

0:47:22 Matt: $15 ,000.

0:48:13 Diana: In a New York City, it's expensive because it's long. Yeah.

0:48:15 Matt: Never charged that much for anything in my life.

0:48:16 Diana: Oh. Yeah, uh, I Would say come to New York, but then I sound like a shark, but, um, I think, yeah, it could be a tremendously arduous and expensive journey for people. And so I think that's one of the reasons that we, we provide that service and that support with Chosen Family Law Center. But in of that adjustment of status work, one thing I will note is that although, of course, immigration is the people that you go in front of to, you have to actually explain your own family life, are local, of coarse, right? And just like we have the family court judges that are progressive or conservative, more likely based on where they live. In New York City, our law firm has had at least two cases in which people were polyamorous and explicitly polyamorus, and

0:48:30 Matt: That's good.

0:49:01 Matt: Awesome.

0:49:01 Diana: In fact, got divorced. Know, one example, a gay couple who are polyamorous, had a long-term boyfriend who came from one of the many places where it's the majority of the world where it is very, very dangerous to be LGBTQ and you can face horrible persecution and imprisonment and things like that. So there was like, we need to find a way for him to stay, couldn't get the employment visa, and then made a difficult decision for the main couple to get amicably divorced so that they could restructure. And one of them would marry the boyfriend so that he could do adjustment of status. Worked, and They all still lived together. There was obviously a recent divorce.

They were pretty clearly a gay triad. And we went, and we didn't try to lie. We said, this is a big part of the LGBTQ community. You know, sometimes you hear, you the sort of coaching of like, you have to make sure you look more like a couple and we have to, maybe we have, we have to make up a story about why you recently divorced and why he still lives there. And no, just go with the truth. And the immigration officer was able to accept, like, yeah, okay. It's a real, it's a legitimate marriage. It's polyamorous marriage, but it's legitimate relationship. And so we've, I've done that kind of case twice.

0:49:35 Matt: Wow.

0:50:10 Matt: Awesome, yeah.

0:50:11 Diana: So, I think we are seeing at a more, at a local level, at least that the ideas about what a family is and what a family can be that pervade our culture have those impacts legally as well because that means that the immigration officer, if you're in New York City or maybe in Boston or San Francisco, who knows, you know, like the person you come in front of is more likely to be like, "Oh yeah, I've heard about that.

That seems like that's actually, I read in the New York Times that's becoming more common or whatever it is." And, um, open our minds, and that's the kind of impact that our cultural shift has because, because I would like to see in future the platonic domestic partnership status be able to have one of those kinds of people get their immigration status. Or, you know, I could go become a citizen of Germany. Why wouldn't I be allowed to bring my domestic partner with me?

Why couldn't my sister be my domestic partner? Why does it have to be based on romance, right? And so I think as we expand our minds culturally, it's interesting to think about how we then and map law onto that. And that's one of our attempts with that multi-partner domestic partnership is to really like give people legal status that they can enter into. And I would like to see a de-emphasis of marriage, you have some of those many rights and benefits go to other people and other kinds of family configurations. You know, I don't see why a sister or a co-parent aren't as valuable, for example, whether or not they're in a romantic romantic relationship. So that's, that's my wordy answer to that. And I wonder if you have any other thoughts from

0:51:02 Matt: No, that's great. And I really appreciate that you've been able to go in and do that. I've been able to do it around the edges. Certainly, I don't want to talk too much about my cases, but I feel like it's something that, like you said, it's been evolving locally enough that officers are at least familiar. But if you're talking about doing something through the service center where maybe there's not going to be an interview, a little risky to openly acknowledge that because marital union is considered to be living monogamously with one person, and they can say that you never intended to actually be married if they find out you have another partner.

0:51:56 Diana: Right. Right, right.

0:52:03 Matt: And I keep asking poly couples that I meet if they want to be a test case, and nobody wants to be a test -case. So understandable. I get it. There's got to be somebody out there that's willing to really try it because eventually this is going to happen in litigation. Eventually, going to have circuit. Press it on it. We'll see what happens. But I think generally, though, I'm completely with you.

I think that calling these unions marriages is already outdated, I think, and that we have to be more flexible. And I love the idea of being able to have people define what their chosen family is, what their partnerships are, what their living situations are. As you said, there's all kinds of platonic ways to do that as well. Of it should be, this is the person I want in my life. And you can do that in Canada.

You you can immigrate through a domestic partner, many other countries, I'm sure. And I think that it's not that hard for us to catch up with it. I've also had the thought that if we did actually just limit it to marriage, that there'd be a very interesting sort of consequence, because if you look at the map of replicant -based practice, it's going to be countries that the United States historically does not want immigrants from, frankly, from

0:52:04 Diana: It's risky.

0:53:03 Diana: Right?

0:53:03 Matt: Majority of Muslim and -white non countries. And there's a whole interesting sort of, and I'm not, you understand what I'm saying, but sort of just as a policy matter, that's going be used as an argument against it, right? If you limit it to marriage that way. And I've thought about this a lot, and I just think that, I guess maybe because I've also seen, as I'm sure you have, USCIS just get get way too invasive on people's marriages and lives and deciding what is a real marriage and what is not. And I'm tired of it. It's really just too much sometimes. And I've seen definitely legitimate couples get harassed for years about this stuff. So it's just there has to be another way. And I think that sort of de -emphasizing the nuclear family, de -empathizing marriage all around in our public policy, as you said, and the thousand different benefits. Is that really a thousand?

0:53:10 Diana: Mm hmm. Yeah.

0:53:48 Diana: Benefits and responsibilities. A lot of them are things you don't, you know, having to testify against each other being able to be buried next to each other in a federal cemetery. I mean, a lot of them are not ones you're going to care about much, but there are some that are really core and immigration is one of them.

0:53:49 Matt: Sure. Sure.

0:54:03 Matt: Well, and for those little ones, if you care about them, you probably care a lot. It

0:54:06 Diana: Right. If you care, you care a lot. People do.

0:54:07 Matt: Really does matter. And there are all kinds of things people just don't think about. I mean, we all know about the tax benefits, which I think is just another issue, like you're saying, that sort of solidifies that two -person welfare state, but so many other ways that it can affect you and that, like I said, rights and responsibilities. Yeah, no, it's really interesting to think about all these different ways it could be done. And I'm so glad these conversations are happening and that we've got people like you advocating for them. It feels like such a sea change since the last 20 years or so. I don't know.

0:54:16 Diana: I

0:54:38 Matt: It's astonishing to watch, and I'm just excited to see these legal developments. Are there any that we should be watching right now, any cases, or besides the New York Wall, you've mentioned, are there legislation we should keep in track of? No,

0:54:48 Diana: Invite people to follow along with Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition. And if people are interested in their local areas and trying to help pass, especially if you've got a progressive city council, if you are a city council person, there's a lot of exciting action there. So, following along with us on our email list. Chosen Family Law Center is really involved in particular with those laws, as well as with what's going on in New York State.

I would expect that people are going to be seeing more of these relationship structure and status on discrimination laws. And it's also something that I'm really excited about bringing to corporate spaces and academic spaces and having employers, for example, affirmatively declare their non-discrimination nation based on family structure.

And that's something that I part of seeing that happen in the transgender movement for health insurance coverage, that even big tech companies, big law firms can have a lot of, employees can have lot of impact by pushing because once one big employer starts offering that kind of care, then it becomes something that other places, there's a for for other places to match that.

And so I think sometimes people who are working in tech, working in business, corporate lawyers, they'll come to my talks and they'll say, "Oh, I'm not an activist. I can't really do much to help," and don't realize the power that we have as privileged employees.

And so I would also just encourage people to think about what they could do locally, whether it's at their own city council or whether it is with their own employer, getting them to maybe have more extensive family leave policies than what the state has, you and include other kinds of family members explicitly, right?

0:56:21 Matt: I love that. Unfortunately, I'm still hearing stories of people everywhere that have to hide their relationship status because they're teachers or otherwise maybe in a more conservative profession or area. I'd love to get to that world where people don't have to do that and where employers can be understanding.

0:56:30 Diana: Right. Yeah.

0:56:34 Thomas: Yeah, in general, I think people should just kind of mind their own business. I guess I'm glad that the yeah, we're probably out of time here. But yeah, I'm glad that that's the message. One thing I'm really happy about the DNC for is is showing like actual love and actual families, you know, when it's all like the RNC, like the partners of these monsters, like don't even want to be there. Some of them aren't there, you know? Some of whom are dead and buried in golf courses. And then on the left, it's like, no, that loves each other. Here's Doug Emhoff's ex is there holding a sign that says Doug. It's like come

0:56:41 Matt: Radical.

0:57:02 Diana: Yeah. I, Love

0:57:12 Thomas: On, like that's actual family and actual, you you know, in all its imperfection or whatever, that's overall people loving each other in a way that's really wholesome. And I'm so glad to, I hope the broader public starts to notice like, wait a minute, which side looks like they have happier families, like just of those two sides, you know?

0:57:12 Diana: It. It's so good, absolutely.

0:57:31 Diana: Beautiful to see, and it's important for the left to get to claim our space as the real party of family values, the real party being pro family and supporting family and demonstrating the beauty of family, and and it being beyond just the image of couples. I loved the blended family examples. I love seeing the different configurations of happy people and all of the really real stories that we heard. I really loved hearing Doug Emhoff share his love story and talk about what a great stepmom Kamala Harris is.

0:58:04 Thomas: Sure. Well, great note to go out on. Adams, thank you so much. I want to make sure that you had time to plug anything you want to send listeners to.

0:58:12 Diana: Thank you so much. Chosen Family Law Center, we're at chosenfamilylawcenter.org. I welcome you to follow us along on social media, followers and shares really do help spreading the word about the different public education things we're doing, and in New York we're having a really fabulous benefit on October 23rd, a wonderful place, the theme is going to be Families in Bloom, and celebrating the diversity of families and the kind of work we do with clients, and it's going to be inspiring and uplifting, and so would love to see some wonderful faces there, and uh, following along with what we're doing online is great. And I'm personally at Diana Adams ESQ on all socials.

0:58:50 Matt: Awesome. Speaking of inspiring and uplifting, I've been following you for a while and I just really appreciate your work and I'm just so glad to be able to tell you in person. Thank you so much.

0:58:56 Diana: Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Wonderful to get to meet you.

0:59:00 Matt: Keep it going.

0:59:00 Diana: Thank you. I will.

0:59:01 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.