Polyamory in Somerville 5 Years After Legal Recognition: 22 Official Throuples and a Poly Mayoral Candidate

In 2020, the city of Somerville, Massachusetts, the hipster community just north of Boston, population 81,000, recognized “polyamorous” relationships. It did so by extending domestic partnerships to include relationships between three or more people. (RELATED: ‘Woke’ Polygamy is Coming Soon)

In a country in which polygamy is illegal, and in a state where — for the time being, at least — only couples are recognized, the practical impact is limited. City employees who belong to a “throuple” can get benefits, and a “quad” can visit one of its members in a hospital during restricted visiting hours.

This does not negate, of course, the formative consequences of declaring that strange sexual arrangements deserve legal rights and privileges akin to those of married couples.

Five years after the city ordinance was passed, the practical legal benefits for officially registered throuples remain just as ephemeral, but Somerville is emerging as the polyamory capital of America. One “polycule” in the city, as chronicled by the London Times, has 80 people, meaning that 0.1 percent of the city’s population is sexually involved in it. The city also plays host to Indecent, which has been described as a “fetish- and kink-positive party,” as well as “smut slam poetry readings.” The Harvard Crimson reported this month that there are now 22 registered polyamorous domestic partnerships in Somerville, encompassing 5 percent of domestic partner registrations over the past five years. Somerville, wrote the London Times last month, “is the most polyamory-friendly city in America, a haven for people and their girlfriends, boyfriends, spouses, ‘them-friends,’ ‘hunnies’ and ‘sweeties.’”

A Somerville city councilor, J.T. Scott, told the Harvard Crimson this month: “Everyone on the City Council knows someone who is polyamorous. This is Somerville.”

In Somerville’s ordinance that allows for throuple domestic partnerships, persons are required to “reside together” and “consider themselves to be a family” to qualify. But for polyamorous activists, this was too restrictive on their expansive sexual relationships. So when bordering Cambridge, Massachusetts, recognized polyamorous domestic partnerships in 2021, the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition worked to eliminate the residential requirement, which the Harvard Law Review described as “cost-prohibitive.”

This month, student reporters at the Harvard Crimson, Harvard’s student newspaper, spoke to “10 polyamorous residents in Cambridge and Somerville” to consider the effects of the domestic partnership recognition.

One woman detailed how she met a man at a “non-monogamous speed dating” event while also having a girlfriend. Another area man told the students in “a series of online Zoom meetings” (during which his “hair and beard [were] impeccably combed”) that he sees polyamory as an alternative to marriage. Another woman said she displays a polyamorous flag in front of her house and has engaged in all sorts of arrangements. None of them had contracted a domestic partnership. In fact, the through line seemed to be that they all engaged in a host of sexual relationships that they cycled through and replaced every so often.

One woman, Sarah K. Biddle, who goes by “they,” explained that she has three separate relationships. She got “emotional” on the phone with the Harvard student reporters when contemplating the idea of entering into a domestic partnership. “I used to always think, oh, if I want to have that, I have to choose someone,” she said.

This still all seems a marginal issue, except for the fact that one of the two candidates for the Nov. 4 Somerville mayoral election, Willie Burnley Jr., a current member of the city council, identifies as polyamorous. Burnley and City Councilor Jake Wilson were the two candidates to advance in September’s preliminary election, ousting current Mayor Katjana Ballantyne.

Burnley, a socialist, has spoken quite openly about his sexual proclivities.

Burnley told the London Times this month that he considers himself to be a “relationship anarchist” and opposes any “hierarchy” in his sexual relationships. Evidently, then, Somerville’s recognition of “throuples” and “quads” as domestic partners must be too quaint for his own sexual inclinations.

Burnley is perhaps unique among those involved in free-flowing sexual relationships in that he believes monogamy is “very self-destructive.” He explained that, after a heartbreak from a monogamous relationship, he “realized my most important relationship is with myself.”

Burnley, who also identifies as queer, went on to explain that he does not like denying himself anything sexual that he wants.

“And frankly,” he told the Times, “I’m a bit indulgent — I don’t like the idea of denying myself something that I want and could potentially have, just because society says no.”

In the course of this interview, Burnley waved to someone he said was “another person in the community.” When asked if polyamory gets complicated in the small city, he said, “Oh, certainly.”

Yet despite the fact that his own unrestrained sexual activities likely keep Burnley away from utilizing Somerville’s recognition of polyamorous domestic partnerships, he is enthusiastic about the legitimacy it gives to his lifestyle.

“We’re actually moving forward as a society, and there’s a place that actually sees us and respects us and wants to celebrate us enough that they made room legally for our relationships,” he told the Harvard Crimson.

As for his politics, Burnley supports the effort to get Somerville to “divest” from Israel, is a proud police abolitionist, wants to implement rent control, and has pledged not to clear homeless areas. He has the support of Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey.

In the preliminary election, Wilson attained 42 percent of the votes while Burnley received 34 percent.

The election next week is sure to be an interesting test of how residents of Somerville feel about this citywide movement toward polyamory.

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