Unhitched - Reuters has a dispatch this morning from France on a court decision voiding recent gay marriages conducted by a rogue town mayor. Meanwhile, in Canada, two of the first homos to become legally wed are looking for a divorce, as the NYTimes relates. And Ben has noted an LA Times article on the children of gay divorce. 

Since Bhaus readers regularly chime in about their wedding plans, I was wondering how people feel about the dissolution of marriage.  I'm in the middle of reading Jon Rauch's tome on gay marriage ("Why it's good for gays, good for straights and good for America") and he makes an interesting point.  Marriage, he says, isn't really about love.  It's a social compact, between the couple on one hand and society on the other, that the spouses will take care of each other for life, thereby alleviating the burdens that would otherwise fall on the community.  This is the quid pro quo that society gets in return for all of the benefits it bestows upon the married couple.

In that sense, even no-fault divorce that is mutually agreed to by the spouses is still a breach of trust - with the community.  By returning to singlehood, the ex's have cast off their duties to one another, and society must once again assume that responsibility.  This is, in Rauch's view, the core problem of divorce, and why people should not be allowed to hop from marriage to marriage as they "fall" in and out of love.  What do our good readers think?