Let’s Speculate About Gay Divorce?

Yesterday, The New York Times’ City room blog contemplated a social issue that doesn’t exist, but may exist sometime in the future: gay divorce.

The article spends a lot of time explaining that couple sometimes break up—even couples with the mayor in them! Then we get to the real meat of the story: gay couples may encounter divorce complications that straight people do not.

The article predicts two potential issues. First, getting divorced in states where gay marriage isn’t legal could be tricky. How can the state dissolve a bond it didn’t acknowledge in the first place? (On the other hand, if states don’t want gay people to get married, maybe they really want them to get divorced and will make the process very transparent and user-friendly!)

Second, since a lot of gay couples have been seriously but unmarried-ly cohabiting for a while, divorce settlements could be tricky. Do you take years of cohabitation into consideration, or just years of marriage?

Then again, maybe there won’t be a tidal wave of gay divorces:

“A lot of divorces occur because people didn’t know each other that well,” said one divorce lawyer, who had reasons to have his request for anonymity honored. “A lot of gay couples have been together for a lot longer than straight couples before they get married. They’re less likely to get divorced, because they know each other better.”

It’s all food for thought, but the post also seems premature to me. Gay marriage passed four days ago (if you round up!), and already we’re talking about divorce? It’s like putting a little note in a birth announcement reminding recipients that everyone will one day die.

But what I think isn’t that important—what do you think? Of gay divorce? Of the timeliness (or lack thereof) of this article? Click on the post title and scroll down to leave a comment!

NYTimes Op-Ed on Friends, Factors, Gay Rights

In a New York Times op-ed on Saturday, Frank Bruni talks about how much gay rights have advanced since he was in college—when gay marriage wasn’t even talked about—and attributes the sea change to strong straight-gay friendships. In other words, friendship has been a factor. In other other words, Friendfactor!

In voicing his support for same-sex marriage, Mayor Bloomberg has mentioned — and appeared with — his niece Rachel, who is lesbian. “It brings it home,” he told me on the phone this week, though he added that beyond his desire for her to have everything she wants in life, “Government should not tell you what to do unless there’s a compelling public purpose.” He sees no such purpose in blocking same-sex marriage.

I asked Avery how he arrived at his support. He mentioned gay friends whose weddings he thinks it would be a blast to attend.

I asked Bratton. “My sister, Pat, is married to her partner in Massachusetts,” he said, adding that the two women have been together for decades and have a grown son.

In closing, I would like to point out how weird the New York Times author headshots are. Frank Bruni seems very nice, but his picture is lit so he looks like a cross between Voldemort and a racecar driver. In an abyss. Why? Discuss in the comments!

The New York Times’ “Ex-Gay” Profile

This article is a little old, and a little long, but I think it’s still post-worthy.  Last Thursday’s New York Times featured a feature by Benoit Denizet-Lewis titled “My Ex-Gay Friend,” profiling Michael Glatze.

Glatze used to be a gay rights activist, working at a San Francisco magazine for gay men and committed to supporting gay youth. He was also in a serious (and gay) relationship.  Denizet-Lewis describes Michael 1.0:

Michael had seemingly read every gay book ever written. While I was busy trying to secure a boyfriend, he was busy contemplating queer theory, marching in gay rights rallies and urging young people to celebrate (not just accept) their same-sex attractions. Michael was devoted to helping gay youth, and he was particularly affected by the letters the magazine received regularly from teenagers who were rejected by their religious families. “Christian fundamentalists should burn in hell!” he told me once, slamming his fist on his desk. I had never met anyone so sure of himself.

But Glatze identifies as straight now, and is affiliated with the Christian right. Glatze says, of his satisfaction with “ex-gay” life:

God loves you more than any dude will ever love you… Don’t put your faith in some man, some flesh. That’s what we do when we’re stuck in the gay identity, when we’re stuck in that cave. We go from guy to guy, looking for someone to love us and make us feel O.K., but God is so much better than all the other masters out there.

Like several other Glatze quotes in the article, it doesn’t sound like he’s criticizing homosexuality–it sounds like he’s just criticizing humans, for not being God. Glatze only explicitly criticizes homosexuality when he says, “God creates us heterosexual. We may get other ideas in our head about what we are, and I certainly did, but that doesn’t mean they’re the truth.”

I recommend reading the whole article, but for blog purposes I thought the most discussion-worthy passage came from Denizet-Lewis’s encounter with Ben, Gatze’s ex-partner.

“A radical queer activist and a fundamentalist Christian aren’t always as different as they might seem,” [Ben] said, adding that they’re ideologues who can railroad over nuance and claim a monopoly on the truth.

Do you guys see similarities between the gay activist and the Christian fundamentalist position—Michael 1.0 and Michael 2.0? Also, maybe more saliently: The article alternately portrays Michael as someone who was never really gay, as someone who is still gay, and as someone who is genuinely transformed. What does “ex-gay” mean to you?