On a recent Friday night, about a dozen families gathered in a Southeast Portland tap house. Children giggled and shrieked over the warm hum of lively conversation and clinking glasses. Couples mingled with throuples.
The group was celebrating a new city policy passed March 11. It adds legal protections for non-monogamous people in diverse family and relationship structures. That includes people with more than one partner, families with more than two parents, step-families and intergenerational households.
For Amy Nash-Kille, City Council’s vote to update city code means the broader culture is beginning to acknowledge her way of living.
“I think the most important thing that this city code does is help to establish the inherent worth and dignity of people who have unusual family configurations when considered by society at large,” she said.
Nash-Kille, who testified at City Council in support of the policy, has been in a throuple, or committed partnership between three people, for 17 years.
“The specific language that has been included in the amendment proposed by Councilor Koyama Lane helps make it clear that non-monogamous families are indeed families, and that we are worthy of protection,” she told Street Roots in an email.
The original version of the policy didn’t include protections for polyamorous people. City Councilor Tiffany Koyama Lane’s amendment added to a proposed policy aimed at preventing discrimination against members of the LGBTQIA2S+ community by landlords and employers and ensures everyone can use the public bathroom that aligns with their gender identity without fear of legal repercussions. Portland Police Chief Robert Day submitted a letter of support for that protection, saying it’s in line with existing Portland Police Bureau policy.
The policy allows people to sue for claims of such discrimination.
David Carlson, legislative campaign coordinator for the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-Monogamy, told Street Roots he shared a potential non-monogamy policy with City Councilor Mitch Green last year that the organization is urging cities to adopt.
Several months later, Carlson said, Green’s office sent the proposal to Koyama Lane’s office, where her staffers packaged it with the LGBTQIA2S+ rights policy already underway and introduced it to City Council in February.
“By normalizing non-monogamy, we are not just taking care of ourselves, we are rewriting how families and how relationships look for everybody,” Carlson told the crowd of celebratory families at the tap house. “We are making it so that people can be their most authentic self every day.”
Protections for love of many kinds
The changes signify one in a growing number of wins for a national campaign by OPEN.
“The first step to having rights is to acknowledge the existence, and to legally protect it,” Carlson said.
He said the policy uses the same enforcement mechanism used to protect civil rights. The policy updates the city’s definition of “sexual orientation,” expands definitions of family and relationship structures, and adds them to a list of identities that have a legal basis to sue for claims of discrimination in housing, employment and public places.
“If you feel that you have been discriminated against, you can go to BOLI (Bureau of Labor and Industries), or you can sue in civil court,” Carlson said. “And that is actually really intentional. We don’t want to maintain the carceral system. So we didn’t want to maintain that work by creating fines and criminal retribution for discriminating against people.”
Aubri Qian, Senior Council Aide to Koyama Lane, said the policy is a step towards safety for everyone — especially as President Donald Trump’s administration strips away rights at the national level.
“There are so many people that I knew who were really active around gay marriage but who were silent when fighting for my rights as a trans woman,” Qian said. “There is an element right now of acknowledging that we are all in it together. We have to fight for all of us.”
Despite the national campaign, this wasn’t just an astroturf situation. Dozens of locals signed up to share their stories, and describe the need for the policy. Both Qian and Koyama Lane said strong public testimony fueled City Council’s decision to approve the policy.
“The thing that excites me the most is actually just democracy working,” Qian said. “I am incredibly proud, excited and fulfilled to say we had over 40 people sign up for verbal testimony on a Thursday at like two in the afternoon. Who showed up and said, ‘Hey I want to tell my story.’”
At the tap house celebration, Koyama Lane expressed admiration and gratitude for the community’s efforts to advocate for themselves. She put a special emphasis on people who said submitting public testimony put them in a vulnerable position.
“I strongly believe that is what moved the needle,” she said.
Basic civil rights
This code change provides employment, housing and hiring protections — regardless of the shape or appearance of a person’s romantic and familial bonds.
“Family or relationship structure means the actual or perceived involvement, or lack thereof, of consenting individuals in intimate personal relationships,” the policy states. “Intimate personal relationships include, but are not limited to, multi-partner or multi-parent families and relationships, step-families, multigenerational households, diverse family structures, consensually nonmonogamous relationships and consensual sexual and/or intimate relationships, including asexual and aromantic relationships.”
Jamie Love, executive director of Sex Positive Portland, told Street Roots the policy will help prevent discrimination against people who have already come out as non-monogamous and are looking for a job.
“I am sex-positive, I am queer and if for any reason this work is not tenable anymore, I am already out of the closet,” Love said. “This gives me protections when I go to look for work, or if I get a typical wage job, that I have the protection from being fired if people find out that I am non-monogamous.”
Sixty percent of non-monogamous people surveyed in a 2025 study conducted by OPEN, in partnership with Dr. Amy Moors of Chapman University reported experiencing stigma or discrimination based on their non-monogamous identity.
According to Carlson, OPEN designed the language he originally suggested to Green to be as inclusive as possible. Non-monogamous partners who do not live together are also protected from discrimination by the ordinance, as are families living in intergenerational households.
At a celebration, Jimena Alvarado, a tenured professor at the local community college who has multiple partners, spoke with Street Roots about what the new policy means to her.
“This fills me with a lot of hope, because it starts to recognize the way that I live my life and the family that I have built,” Alvarado said. “I am queer and an immigrant. Chosen family is everything to me because I don’t have bio family anymore.”
Carlson told Street Roots that OPEN added the intergenerational piece to ensure that protection would extend beyond polyamory — to include more of the identities that people who have been historically discriminated against might hold.
“This isn’t just about non-monogamous folks,” Carlson said. “This is about making sure all forms of families and relationship structures are protected.”
Koyama Lane told the celebratory crowd she counts herself among those served by the new policy.
“As someone who has an intergenerational home, it is just so beautiful to see different family structures be honored and honestly just get what you all deserve, what all families deserve,” she said.
Discrimination and challenges
Eleven out of the 12 people that Street Roots spoke with for this story reported at some point living in fear of institutional repercussions because of their relationship structure.
Nash-Kille dealt with months of bullying about her two partners after she “miscalculated” the risk of sharing her family structure with a coworker. She said she didn’t report the harassment for fear of her employer finding out about her multiple relationships. When she finally told her boss, she was supported. But she says that isn’t always the case.
“I have heard about families who have lost their teaching jobs or have lost custody of their children because of their non-monogamous relationship,” Nash-Kille said. “I am grateful that we have been spared those kinds of losses. However, I have spent my life being guarded about my family. I have never been able to be casual about sharing my weekend family plans at work, for instance. We have always had to be careful to choose the right realtor, the right mortgage broker, the right service providers for our family to help us keep our family safe.”
Carlson has spoken to people across the country who have experienced discrimination for practicing non-monogamy.
“You can be legally discriminated against in all 50 states on the state level for being non-monogamous: in housing, work, public services, especially through health care,” Carlson said. “There’s people who, if they are married and non-monogamous, have had their doctors not do STI testing for them. And there’s adultery laws in 15 states currently, and they don’t get used a whole lot, but they do get used for this.”
Expanding protections
Carlson and OPEN are continuing work on a national campaign to enshrine these civil rights protections in more cities. They expect at least five more upcoming wins.
“We have done so much in the last year,” Carlson said in mid-March. “Just this week we had three cities in three states pass these same protections. Seattle, Sacramento, Stockton and Pasadena are in the works to pass this legislation next, as well as Hazel Park, Michigan.”
Still, many non-monogamous people say additional protections are needed — in areas like parental rights, inheritance rights and health insurance coverage. For example, Alvarado says bureaucratic discrimination is forcing her to prioritize one partner over the other.
“I am in the process of transitioning romantic partnerships with my employer because of insurance coverage,” she said. “I dream of a day when I might be able to cover multiple partners through my health insurance. And I would love to imagine a day when our cohabitation might be considered legally binding and not something that I have to work around.”
This article appears in March 25, 2026.