August 11, 2008: California gets its first gay divorce -- from a three-day marriage

by Jeffrey Cottrill

FRESNO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA -- It was inevitable. When California legalized gay marriage this year, you knew that gay divorce wasn't far behind.

Court records have just revealed that the state's first gay divorce began at the end of June. Fresno County's Adelita Guajardo and Theresa Ramirez married on June 27 -- and the latter filed for divorce only three days later. Ramirez cited irreconcilable differences.

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"Sometimes people are together for ten or 20 years and then get married, and there is a different feeling," attorney Norm Fletcher told Santa Barbara News Press, regarding the case. "There is no longer a relationship based on trust, but based on a piece of paper."

Fletcher added that the ability for homosexuals to marry may of itself have led to the breakup. "In a way," he told the paper, "gays and lesbians had a common enemy in the form of the state and society. People who have common enemies tend to stick together." But once married, Fletcher explained, "it's no longer you and me against the world -- it's you and me against each other."

Gay divorce is obviously as new to California as is gay marriage, but there have already been gay divorce cases in Canada, the U.K., and other parts of the U.S.

California legalized gay marriage in May, and the state issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples for the first time on June 17.

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