Equal plight!
Marriage ending in divorce for N.Y. lesbian couple
IT WAS INEVITABLE. The legalization of gay marriage in New York is yielding the first wave of gay divorces.
Two lesbians who got hitched six days after the Marriage Equality Act took effect last summer have gone public with their breakup — which could result in one of the first gay divorces finalized in the state.
“I do very much feel like the president of the loneliest club in the world,” photographer Dese’Rae Stage, 29, wrote on her blog about her split with masseuse Katie Marks, also 29.
“How many gay divorcees do you know? It’s a horrible feeling to go through this huge life upheaval without the support of others who know exactly what you’re feeling.”
A couple since 2008, Marks and Stage tied the knot in a “popup chapel” in Central Park. Their engagement picture is on the chapel’s website and they were profiled in the Village Voice. But by January, the union was on the rocks — courtesy, Stage told the Atlantic Wire, of another woman Marks met on the Internet. They separated and Stage is filing divorce papers on Thursday. New York law requires that marriages be broken down for at least six months before a divorce filing, meaning only those that hit the
skids soon after the law was passed are winding up in the courts now. Stage said the divorce is personally wrenching, but also upsetting on another level.
“I never thought I would have the ability to get married, so when I chose my forever, I meant forever. In a lot of cases, straight people accept divorce as a possibility. It never entered my vocabulary.”
But Marks told Atlantic Wire, which first reported the impending divorce, that she doesn’t think there is a difference between “hetero and gay divorce.”
“They both suck,” she said.