You're listening to the micro version of the Savage Lovecast at savage.love.

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 the Savage Lovecast. A little good news, courtesy of the Chosen Family Law Center, legislation has been introduced

in Berkeley, California, and Oakland, California that would ban discrimination based on family

and relationship structure.

This comes after Somerville, Massachusetts.

Last year amended its anti-discrimination laws to include family or relationship structure as a protected class, meaning landlords, employers, public servants,

the police can't discriminate against people based on their being in an open relationship or

in throuples or quads, just like they can't

discriminate against people based on their race or their religion or their sexual orientation

or their gender. And the year before in 2022, a court in New York ruled that throuples, at least

when it comes to housing law and renewing leases, have the same legal rights couples do. Steps in the right direction.

And reading about these cases, the law in Somerville, the ruling in New York, the proposed

new legislation in Berkeley and Oakland, giving me a little deja vu. It's taken me back to the first

domestic partnership registries for same-sex couples that passed in the early 1980s, and then the

enactment of civil unions. A decade later, same-sex couples, we couldn't get married. There

wasn't support for gay marriage then, but there was a recognition that gay relationships existed

and our relationships were kind of sort of like family relationships, and we needed some form of

recognition under the law to protect people who were in these already existing, whether you liked it

or not, gay relationships. They were, when they passed, these domestic partner registries and

civil unions, they were definitely half a loaf.

But we were starved for carbs for any recognition of our relationships at all. And we took the win,

...