You're listening to the micro version of the Savage Lovecast, www.com.

If you're stuck in a relationship quandary, or if you're looking for sexual harmony,

well, there's nothing you can't ask on Savage Lovecast.

So the city of Somerville did a thing.

Somerville, Massachusetts, population 82,000, winner of the Best American City Award in

1972, 2009 and 2015, suburb of Boston on the Mystic River, but not the setting of Mystic Pizza, the 1988

1988 comedy starring Julia Roberts that set in Mystic, Connecticut.

I looked it up anyway.

Somerville did a thing earlier this month that I probably should have paused to note here

on this thing I do, this podcast thing.

The Somerville City Council revised its domestic partnership law to cover polyamorous families.

Polytriads, quads, quints under its new domestic partnership ordinance, the New York Times reported earlier this month,

the city of Somerville now grants polyamorous groups, the rights held by spouses in marriage, such as the right to confer health

insurance benefits or make hospital visits. Before we get to the inevitable, predictable right-wing

freak out, which got a lot less traction than it would have if it weren't for COVID, Trump,

the worldwide movement to fight anti-black police brutality, the climate catastrophe, and

Nikki Minaj's pregnancy, and the way all of this shit kind of puts everything into perspective.

I want to highlight first just how stupid it is that so many people are dependent on the romantic

partners for health care, for health insurance.

It's almost as dumb as getting health insurance through your employer because you could lose your job, right when you need health care most.

Like, say, during an economic crisis kicked off by a worldwide pandemic that could put you in the hospital, like jobs, relationships sometimes end.

Sometimes they need to end.

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