Greetings From Justinland
There's No Place Like Home archives sign SEND YOUR LOVE INTO THE FUTURE I Link, therefore I am Your Love Boat Crew Take a Walk in Our Garden 100 things clix Goatboi Gallery Tell Dr JJ all about it
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.



Go Back
Previously in Justinland: Our Last Five Entries

Wagons Ho! - 4-23-2004

This Old Barn - 4-17-2004

Death and Taxes - 4-15-2004

MMQB:Leftover Peeps - 4-12-2004

The Alamo; The Movie not the Shrine - 4-10-2004


pot luck? Take a chance

comments
hosted by DiaryLand.com