Attempted Divorce

From American Public Media’s The Story.

Cassandra Ormiston (warning, this is a podcast) has been fighting the state of Rhode Island for her right to divorce her legally married lesbian partner for years.  They are out of money and out of energy to continue fighting for the divorce there, and Cassandra is moving back to the state she got married in, Massachusetts to establish residency there and fight the divorce battle all over again.

See, in Rhode Island, someone in the anti gay-rights community brought up the idea that Family Court didn’t have jurisdiction over the case, despite the fact that no divorce has been granted for many years outside of Family Court.  Then the Superior Court decided they didn’t have the jurisdiction, so both courts are asking the Supreme Court who has jurisdiction to grant a divorce.  These two people are left in the wake of a mess that shouldn’t be political in the first place.

As the interviewer rightly points out, in a world where people are fighting tooth and nail against gay couples’ right to be together under the law, why would those same people fight to make it impossible to be apart?

If you want my opinion, it’s to make the whole marriage thing seem like more trouble than it’s worth.  The same way the pro-life protesters try to make having an abortion and running a clinic that performs abortions more trouble than it’s worth (did you know that in Arkansas, they change building codes to make abortion clinics illegal, mandating door sizes and construction and paint colors and the like, and changing them at will?).  The same way the Jim Crow supporters tried to make voting more trouble than it was worth.

Cassandra has given up.  She’s out of time and out of money and out of spiritual and emotional energy for the fight, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a fight worth fighting.