West Hollywood’s throuple law shows where the culture is headed

By Patricia Johnson, Op-ed contributor Saturday, November 07, 2026

In the beginning, God created them male and female. He joined one man and one woman in covenant, declaring, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Jesus Himself reaffirmed this design without apology or qualification (Matthew 19:4-6).

That was the standard. That was the blessing. That was the foundation of human flourishing under the creator’s authority.

Now look at where we stand

On November 5, 2026, the city of West Hollywood, California, unanimously passed an ordinance allowing throuples, foursomes, and other multi-partner “domestic relationships” to register with the city clerk. These registered polyamorous partnerships receive limited legal protections, including hospital visitation rights and certain tenancy safeguards, while the mayor and activists celebrate the expansion of “non-traditional family structures.”

Attorney and activist Christina Fialho, who pushed for the measure, did not hide the trajectory.“This law is just the beginning,” she told the Los Angeles Times, adding that it could help people “envision a future they previously considered out of reach.”

Just the beginning. The words should chill every conscience still tethered to Scripture

This is not progress. It is the logical, predictable, and accelerating collapse of the moral order that began the moment Western society decided God’s clear word on sexuality and marriage was negotiable. The spiral did not start with Obergefell v. Hodges. It started earlier with the sexual revolution’s rejection of chastity, the normalization of no-fault divorce that treated lifelong covenant as disposable, the deliberate separation of sex from procreation and fidelity, and the cultural insistence that personal desire is the highest authority.

Each step was sold as compassion, tolerance, and liberation. Each step moved the line further from the creator’s design.

First came the redefinition of marriage itself

What God joined as male and female became, by judicial fiat, any two adults of any sex. Scripture’s repeated and unambiguous condemnation of homosexual practice (Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; 1 Timothy 1:10) was dismissed as outdated bigotry. Churches that once stood firm began affirming what God calls sin, trading the fear of the Lord for the applause of the age. The “slippery slope” that was mocked as alarmism proved prophetic. Once the definition of marriage was severed from biological sex and God’s created order, there remained no coherent principle to stop at two people.

Now the door is open to three, four, and beyond

Consent is the only remaining boundary, and consent is a thin reed against human fallenness.

The same logic that demanded recognition of same-sex unions now demands recognition of polyamory. The same activists who insisted that “love is love” will not stop at the number three. Fialho’s own words confirm it: this is only the beginning. What follows will be the normalization of ever more inventive arrangements, the further erosion of children’s need for a mother and a father, and the continued hollowing out of the very concept of covenant fidelity.

Scripture saw this pattern long ago

The men of Sodom were not merely inhospitable. They were given over to sexual perversion so brazen that they sought to violate angelic visitors (Genesis 19). Jude tells us they “indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire” and serve as an example of those who undergo eternal punishment (Jude 7). Romans 1 describes the progression with surgical precision: when people suppress the truth about God, He gives them over to dishonorable passions and a debased mind. It is not hard to imagine what comes next.

We see repeatedly in the news the gradual softening of attitudes toward pedophilia, with calls to reframe it as a mere orientation or to lower the age of consent under the banner of liberation. After that, the same relentless logic points toward the normalization of bestiality. The downward spiral is not an accident of history. It is judgment.

Christians who soft-pedal this reality in the name of “winsomeness” or cultural relevance are not loving their neighbors. They are abandoning them to destruction. True love tells the truth: marriage is the lifelong union of one man and one woman because God designed it that way for human good, for the raising of children in security, and for the display of Christ’s covenant love for His church (Ephesians 5:22-33).

Every departure from that design is rebellion, and rebellion carries consequences: personal, familial, and societal.

The culture will continue its spiral. West Hollywood will not be the last city. Courts and legislatures will be pressed to grant more rights, more recognition, more normalization. The pressure on faithful churches, schools, and families will intensify. The question is not whether the world will keep descending. The question is whether the people of God will keep standing.

We must. We must refuse to redefine what God has defined. We must preach the whole counsel of God, including the hard passages on sexual morality, without apology. We must raise our children to see that true freedom is found in obedience to the Creator, not in the endless expansion of forbidden desires. And we must call all people, including those entangled in these lifestyles, to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, the only one who can cleanse, restore, and make new.

The cities of the plain were destroyed by fire from Heaven. Our own culture is choosing a slower, more deliberate destruction by exchanging the truth of God for a lie. The beginning Fialho celebrates is, in reality, another step toward the end of a civilization that has forgotten its maker. The only escape is the old, narrow way: repentance, faith, and return to the design God established from the beginning. Anything less is participation in the spiral.