Saturday, 25 October 2008

Gay divorce

I suppose one should not use the word "divorce" to describe the dissolution of a civil partnership, it being a word most properly used to refer to the ending in civil law of a marriage. But it is interesting to see the report of the "first gay divorce" being carried by the BBC news website.

One interesting thing about the report is that the civil partnership involved has only lasted 22 months. This gives a balancing picture to that presented in the media of gay and lesbian couples who had been together for many years entering civil partnerships, giving an impression that these relationships are uniformly stable. No, these relationships can break up and they can be shortlived.

Equality kicks in, of course, and there is now the question of settlements between the ex-partners of civil partnerships - according to the BBC report the same rules apply as for marriages. I can see civil partnerships becoming less popular in favour of "living together", in rather the same way as for marriage, if large settlements become a "risk factor" for gay or lesbian couples. But in a discussion in the BBC report of the payments that might be made by one partner to another, there is the following gem:

Gay unions are statistically less likely to produce children and therefore it is likely that less maintenance orders will be made.

Perhaps I should not have done so, but I did have a good giggle when I reached this sentence ...

1 comment:

Paulinus said...

Gay unions are statistically less likely to produce children and therefore it is likely that less maintenance orders will be made.

You mean, they actually wasted time doing a statistical analysis on that. Clearly people with too much time on their hands. Or are they just stupid?