Last month, the Somerville, Massachusetts city council passed an ordinance to add polyamorous relationships to the town’s “nondiscrimination” rules. A 2020 ordinance made the town the first in the U.S. to legally recognize polyamorous relationships.  

But for reasons unknown, the new ordinance draws lines on what counts as a recognized “domestic partnership,” limiting it to six people. As one person jokingly asked on Twitter, “What about all the heptagamists? Bigotry, I tell you.” 

Whenever marriage is redefined away from its God-given design and from the biological realities of male and female and children, any line drawn is completely arbitrary. Marriage becomes little more than a question of preference. 

Somerville’s redefinition of marriage, like culture’s, is only a knock-off. Though it can be obscured, marriage can never be replaced. Marriage is the union ordered by God toward the creation of new human life, and only two people of the opposite sex can ever produce a child.