A new study from the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law shows that gay and lesbian couples have a lower divorce rate than straight couples. On average, 1.6 percent of queer couples end their legal relationships each year (that includes marriages, civil unions, and domestic partnerships), but for straight couples, the divorce rate is 2 percent. For gay couples in actual, legally recognized marriages, the rate's even lower: 1.1 percent.
So what's going on? Why are gays and lesbians better at staying together? Let's speculate wildly!
Explanation 1: We take those cake toppers really literally
For years now, every time any newspaper, magazine, or blog has an article about gay and lesbian couples, the story is inevitably illustrated with stock art of a pair of same-sex cake-toppers. We've been trained through the media to believe that gay couples are sealed permanently together, our little plastic feet literally attached together in an inseparable solid flat blob like army guys. And if we ever actually tried to divorce each other, where are we going to go? It's lonely up there at the top of the cake, and neither one of us wants to climb down all those tiers and get frosting all over our tuxedos. We'll just stay together up here, thank you very much.
Explanation 2: Benefits of wardrobe-doubling are too great to call off
What are you going to do, straight men, when you wake up on Monday morning and discover that all of your underwear is in the laundry? Borrow your wife's? And straight women, are you going to wear your husband's cute new dress shoes to the opera? No. You are not. Straight couples are stuck having to maintain two completely separate wardrobes, effectively nonsharable, except for the occasional tube sock.
Gays, on the other hand, form a massive super-wardrobe when we get together. Even if we're radically different sizes, we can at least share beard-grooming products and arrange each other's neckties. Once you get a taste of your wardrobe doubling overnight, it's hard to call it off and go back to a closet full of clothes that you bought for yourself.
Explanation 3: Divorce would be disruptive to our secret gay plot
As we know, gay marriage is part of a secret plot to take over the world and make everyone gay. As reported at the Secret Gay Agenda Conference in Chicago this year, our efforts are proceeding apace, and now that gay marriage is legal in most states, heterosexual men and women are realizing that there is no longer any social institution forcing them to spend time together. Soon heterosexuals will lose interest altogether in marriage and child-rearing, and will instead adjust their focus to a career in the theater or handbag design, or for the more butch among us, barn-raising and motorcycle fixing.
At this point, divorce would be a distraction from our mission. What if we had allowed Liberace to obtain a divorce? There's a chance he could have reverted and fallen in love with a woman, and that's a risk we simply can't take.
Explanation 4: We're keeping our divorce secret for the sake of the dog
It's possible that gays and lesbians do, in fact, end our relationships at a rate comparable to straight couples. But we don't want to upset the family dog by letting it know that anything's wrong. Rather than force the dog to chose between us, or to share custody between two different houses, we'll simply remain together and try to make the best of the situation. Oh, sure, we may move into different bedrooms, eat our meals at different times, and our conversation may be a bit frosty. We may even bring home new "special friends." But we simply can't let the dog know that our love has cooled. It would break his heart.
The cat, on the other hand, knows everything.
Explanation 5: Gays don't want to redefine the institution of divorce
Look, for hundreds of thousands of years, divorce has existed as an unchanging, blessed institution handed down to us from almighty God. Who are we, arrogant humans, to imagine that we could redefine what the Lord has ordained? Since before recorded time, divorce has been a cornerstone of God's plan for heterosexuals. Divorce shouldn't be redefined for queers, who have only existed since Armistead Maupin invented us for Tales of the City.
Let's leave divorce to the heterosexuals. They do it so well.
