Today we're excited to be joined by Brett Chamberlin from OPEN! Brett (he/him) is a social impact organizer with over a decade of leadership experience building a more just and joyous future. He is the founder and Executive Director of OPEN, the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy. Prior to launching OPEN, Brett worked in the environmental movement as the Director of Community Engagement at The Story of Stuff Project and the co-founder of the Post Landfill Action Network. He lives in the California Bay Area.
We'll be chatting with Brett about progress for non-monogamous folks over the past few years, from securing rights to overall awareness of non-monogamy as a relationship style.
For this week's episode, we're discussing the current political and legal landscape for polyamorous and non-monogamous folks. We're fortunate enough to be joined by two experts on this very matter, Dr. Heath Schechinger and Diana Adams!
Dr. Heath Schechinger is a distinguished psychologist, scholar, and educator in the field of relationship structure diversity. Over the past 15 years, his work has delved into the challenges of monogamy, infidelity, and the emergence of diverse family and relationship configurations. He is a founding Co-chair of the American Psychological Association Division 44 Committee on Consensual Non-monogamy, Research Affiliate Faculty at The Kinsey Institute, Co-founder of the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition, and Board Member for the Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-monogamy. In addition to his roles in these organizations, he offers consultation services and maintains a private practice.
Diana Adams (they/them) is an international legal leader in advocacy for queer family forms beyond the romantic dyad. Diana is the Executive Director of Chosen Family Law Center, a nonprofit advocating for diverse family structures, & runs a boutique law firm providing mediation services nationwide for those hoping to negotiate intentional or polyamorous families. Diana’s TED talk ‘Why US Laws Must Expand Beyond the Nuclear Family’ explains their expansive vision of family. Find them on all socials @DianaAdamsEsq.
The Multiamory crew is thrilled to speak with lawyer Diana Adams, who runs a law firm based in New York and Frankfurt that primarily provides family law and mediation services to the LGBTQ community, polyamorous families, same-sex couples, platonic co-parents, and non-nuclear families. In this episode, we got so much helpful information from Diana, including the many kinds of legal agreements available to polyamorous families, actionable steps poly families and parents can take right now to start protecting themselves, and her predictions for how poly marriage rights and poly parenting rights may be changing on the horizon.
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