“I Mean…What?!?” – Abe Gurko

Congratulations California…you can now do it. And when I say it, I mean take that leap of faith that straights have been doing for centuries by getting married….like Bethenny Frankel. To be clear though, with marriage comes divorce. Here is a happy statistic: 50% of all marriages will end up in divorce. Before gays go running off in droves to become bridezillas, please think long and hard before you become like straight people, getting divorced at the first signs of a bad sex life, whining and complaining.

Look, I am not opposed to gay marriage. Live and let live. The notion of marriage has always seemed a bit archaic to me, straight, gay or otherwise. Monogamy is a challenging notion that defies gravity: that which is forbidden becomes obsession. Yes, there are those lovely exceptions; couples that are perfect for each other…harmonious…the ideal couple. I’ve seen that maybe twice. More often you hear, “Relationships are tough, I feel trapped” or “Not tonight, I’m not in the mood”, having survived an eleven year relationship.

There is a great line in the movie The River Wild with Meryl Streep that speaks to this idea of marriage and easy divorce:

MERYL: I think my marriage is over, Mama. Everything has become so unbelievably hard.
MAMA: Excuse me, but you don’t know what hard is. That’s because you give yourself an out. In our generation, we had no out.  That was the pact of marriage. Do you think if I gave myself an out… with your father, given his orneriness and his deafness…(oy)…that I wouldn’t have taken it years ago?

I went to my first gay wedding in California in 1999. It was a gorgeous affair in a grand, Spanish-style mansion built in the 1920’s in Montecito attended by the happy couple’s “100 closest, dearest friends”. We all stood in a large circle on the sprawling grounds as the couple went around in the circle, “honoring” each and every one of us for sharing in this momentous occasion.  I attended my first gay divorce, six months later to the day. Same couple, same house, less lavish affair. My point is, as gays start getting married…do so with the utmost clarity and commitment. Don’t take the out. Create healthier statistics.