New York judge recognises ‘multi-person relationships’

Thursday, October 13th, 2022

A New York judge has ruled that people in polyamorous (multi-person) relationships are entitled to the same legal protections as married people.

In a ruling on a dispute over a rent-stabilised apartment, Judge Karen May Bacdayan of the Civil Court of the City of New York opined that the legal protection of same-sex relationships shouldn’t be limited to two people.

Bacdayan wrote that “the time has arrived” for polyamorous relationships to have legal rights. She said the problem with previous same-sex rulings is that “they recognise only two-person relationships.”

Judge Bacdayan’s decision comes at the heart of an LGBTQ case involving an apartment dispute.

In the case, a male tenant who was living with a boyfriend died. However, the tenant who died had a gay spouse living elsewhere.

After the death, the boyfriend tried to renew the lease, but the landlord claimed the man didn’t have a right to renew the lease because the two weren’t married. The boyfriend argued he was a “non-traditional family member.”

The judge sided with the boyfriend, writing, “The existence of a triad should not automatically dismiss respondent’s claim to non-eviction protections.”

“What was ‘normal’ or ‘non-traditional’ in 1989 is not a barometer for what is normal or non-traditional now,” Bacdayan wrote in her decision. “Indeed, the definition of ‘family’ has morphed considerably since 1989.

In 1989, New York decided that the surviving partner of a same-sex relationship counted as “family” in the Braschi v Stahl Associates Co case. Bacyadan claims it essentially paved the way for legalising gay marriage in the United States.

“The New York State Court of Appeals became the first American appellate court to recognise that a non-traditional, two-person, same-sex, committed, family-like relationship is entitled to legal recognition,” she wrote.

Bacdayan now says it may be time to move forward because the previous decision was “rooted in traditional ideology.”

“Why … is the limitation of two persons inserted into the definition of a family-like relationship for the purposes of receiving the same protections from eviction accorded to legally formalised or blood relationships?” she asked. “Is ‘two’ a ‘code word’ for monogamy?”

“Why does a person have to be committed to one other person in only certain prescribed ways in order to enjoy stability in housing after the departure of a loved one?” she added. “Do all non-traditional relationships have to comprise or include only two primary persons?”

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said Bacdayan’s decision puts America on a “slippery slope.”

“The media laughed off the conservative movement’s concerns about the slippery slope when Democrats pushed to sexualise the military 20 years ago. Now, almost two decades later, with American parents in the fight of their lives over transgenderism and judges paving the way for ‘plural marriage,’ it, unfortunately, proves we were right,” he wrote in The Washington Stand.

“The LGBT’s fight was never about marriage—it was about every social norm,” Perkins added.

“If ‘love’ and ‘consent’ are all that define a relationship, then proponents of incest, paedophilia, and group marriage can follow the LGBT playbook all the way to validity,” he wrote.