Matthew Breen of The Advocate (a gay newspaper):
I’m divorced. My ex-husband and I were married in 2008. Gay relationships, just like straight ones, often end in separation, and yet it’s surprisingly difficult to admit that after nearly 10 years together and two years married, we parted. Years working in gay media and advocating for LGBT rights (including marching in Prop. 8 protests that started the very day we moved back to Los Angeles) have made me reluctant to make any kind of declaration that my relationship ended. I’m not proud of my divorce, but c’est l’amour. I’m relieved that California made the legal process the same for us as it would have for anyone else.
Equality isn’t always pretty, and that’s a sobering realization...
8 Comments
Is this the next big push for SSM, the "right" to be divorced in every state? Rolling my eyes was the best I could muster for this crock of an article.
Anywhere their "marriage" is treated with the (zero) respect it deserves,they're as good as "divorced" already,so why complicate things?
It takes a wife to make a husband. No wife = no husband.
oh boy
If NOM had published the entire article, rather then snipping a bit out of context to push their ideas, you would realize this is an article about Equality for all, and the need for equal rights across state lines. This article is little more then a Quick editorial piece that NOM used to fill out and further its hateful Blog.
Article in Full:
One of the most remarkable advances in civil rights in 2011 was doubtlessly the passage of marriage equality in New York. We celebrate that, along with many other remarkable high points in news and culture throughout the year. Also in this issue, Andrew Harmon reports on the bizarre end of a lesbian couple’s marriage in a story involving a custody battle, kidnapping, Mennonite missionaries, and a secret compound in Nicaragua.
These stories intersect over marriage, and in the case of the kidnapping, the end of one marriage. In many respects, even more so than marriage, divorce is a fundamental indicator of our society’s stake in our rights. Whereas marriage is caught up in notions of culture, tradition, and religion, divorce, for all its messiness and heartbreak, is a strictly legal matter. (You didn’t see atheists banding together to picket couples marrying at City Hall in New York on July 24, 2011.) But as Harmon’s story demonstrates, we have a disordered patchwork of laws, and being married in Vermont doesn’t necessarily afford one the possibility of divorce in 30 other states.
This is personal for me. I’m divorced. My ex-husband and I were married in 2008. Gay relationships, just like straight ones, often end in separation, and yet it’s surprisingly difficult to admit that after nearly 10 years together and two years married, we parted. Years working in gay media and advocating for LGBT rights (including marching in Prop. 8 protests that started the very day we moved back to Los Angeles) have made me reluctant to make any kind of declaration that my relationship ended. I’m not proud of my divorce, but c’est l’amour. I’m relieved that California made the legal process the same for us as it would have for anyone else.
Equality isn’t always pretty, and that’s a sobering realization. Odd as it may be to say, until we have the right to marry and divorce, we’re being denied equal access to government, to courts, to protection of the law.
Right and wrong shouldn't be equal,and there is no legitimate "rights" issue involved in the definition of marriage.Zeroing in on some things he said while ignoring his unreasonable premises is perfectly legitimate.
@In Context
Yes, NOM only shared an excerpt from the article. But they also linked to it, and they didn't say much about it to begin with that would warrant such hostility from you. I don't understand what you mean by NOM trying to "push [its] ideas." They clearly said in the title that the author is arguing for "divorce equality."
I just don't understand your qualms with the sharing of this story.
Right and wrong shouldn't be equal--and they're not!
All people should be equal; that *is* what's right.
Your position is not equally valid. Measured on a scale of legality, morality, history, one side is weightier.