08-6-2002 - 7:57 a.m.
With Gay advocates like this, who needs homophobes WTF is this guy all about? Some men are pigs. you heard it here first It's dialogue right out of a Divorce Court judge's nightmare. "I ran the house. . . . When he came home there was a wonderful table set and dinner every night. For 20 years, I lived to make things seamless and easy for him." So says the partner who claims to have given up a career to make a home and raise the children that each brought from a previous marriage. "A great storyteller," says the other. But this is not the classic "he said/she said" in the wake of a long and formerly wonderful relationship. It's a "he said/he said" battle over what happens when a long-term homosexual relationship breaks up. This gay disunion is also a stunning study in hypocrisy. One-half of the unhappy couple is Joseph Barri, a high-powered Massachusetts lawyer and a leading proponent of marriage rights for same-sex couples. Make that some same-sex couples. At the same time he was fighting to deny marriage rights to his long-time partner, he was protesting the Boston Globe's refusal to print a gay-union announcement about his current romantic involvement. The most hardened opponent of gay rights couldn't have done a better job of making the cause look like a joke. Barri's long-time partner, Jack Venzer, wanted the kind of settlement a lawfully wedded wife might expect: the house (worth about $3 million) and half of everything else. Barri offered Venzer a few years of monthly support payments but refused a more generous settlement on the grounds that Massachusetts law doesn't recognize gay marriage. How convenient. And how completely Barri undermined his credibility as a champion of legal protections for gay partners.
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