Left In Lowell

Everyone is talking today on the blogs about the “amicable separation” of the Goodridges, the couple whose lawsuit went before the State Supreme Court and changed the face of legal marriage in Massachusetts. A lot of people are wondering what this means for the discussion of gay marriage.

To me, it’s as simple as this: the right to a legal proceeding for divorce is as important a right as marriage. It is the legal reasons for marriage (state civil marriage, people, before you get all wrapped up in the semantics) which prompted the MA Supreme Court to rule in the Goodridges’ favor in the first place.

Imagine you are a gay couple. You’ve produced offspring together (adopted, artificially inseminated birth, surrogate motherhood, whatever). You own a house together, in so much as you can, you both have halvsies in everything. If you were straight and married, and things had come to the point where you couldn’t amicably divide things like child custody and house sales, you would turn to the courts. Now, the courts have not always been fair (like favoring moms over dads on custody for decades) but at least it’s all legal and can be sorted out. But gay couples, until the last few years, did not have the same avenues of the family court systems. Sure, they can take each other to court, sue, etc, but family law itself didn’t apply - they weren’t legally married in the first place, so they can’t have legal divorce.

This is why the Goodridges sued to gain the legal status of their straight peers…so that the legal, binding, and comprehensive rights of a couple stood up in the courts - whether that’s about health care, an end-of-life decision, the protection of children in the event of one person’s death, or even the use of the courts in divorce proceedings. It’s why the Goodridge decision was landmark, and fair. And right.