LGBT Blogging Day

Bloggers are supposed to write about lesbian and gay families today. Mine is doing homework in my office as I write this because New York City held only half a day of school today. I don’t mind the kids at work, but I am baffled that the city can’t hold their half days on Fridays. It’s not a gay issue, it’s just annoying.

Speaking of New York politico’s, Governor David Patterson simply declared a few weeks ago that couples married in other states would be treated like married families in New York. Suddenly New York has married gay & lesbian families, albeit without federal recognition. Almost every other state has passed a local version of the federal “defense of marriage act” which would preclude their governor’s from following Patterson’s lead. Between the federal defense of marriage act, the 82% of states that have barred any lawmaker from supporting same sex marriage, and the opposition to gay marriage among all three remaining Presidential candidates, gay marriage advocates have a steep road ahead.

John McCain is the most strident anti-gay candidate, saying he was “proud” to lead the effort in Arizona to ban gay marriage. After some prodding both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have clarified that they do not believe that homosexuality is immoral. Both Clinton and Obama endorse civil unions for gay couples.

Is gay marriage (or civil union) any more successful than the national straight divorce rate of 50%? Gay and lesbian couples were granted marriage rights in the Netherlands in 2001; since then the divorce rate of same-sex marriages is identical to that of heterosexual couples. In the United States, Massachusetts has the lowest overall divorce rate. Within months of gay marriage laws in Massachusetts a trickle of same sex divorces began. The first Massachusetts gay divorce was between a thirty-something couple that had grown apart but were deeply emotionally attached to their cats. They finally agreed to allow the cats to reside full time with one partner with the provision that he provide his ex-husband with regular cat updates.