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Beyond Visibility: Celesbian break-ups aren’t so hard to handle anymore

There is an argument that says unhappy straight couples should stay together “for the good of the kids.” There is also an argument that says unhappy gay couples should stay together “for the good of the community.” But a couple of months ago when Tammy Lynn Michaels blogged about the time Melissa Etheridge accidentally sent a box of dildos to their kids, and a couple of weeks ago when Melissa Etheridge made the public claim that Tammy Lynn accidentally burned one of their children with a cigarette, I started to think maybe neither of those “stay together” arguments makes much sense anymore.

YOU’RE RUINING GAY MARRIAGE WITH YOUR GAY DIVORCE!

The whole “You’re ruining gay marriage with your gay divorce!” thing reached its fever pitch in 2009 when Rosie O’Donnell announced that her marriage to Kelli Carpenter was on the rocks. One major blow was the fact that Rosie had positioned herself as the highest-profile same-sex marriage activists in the country back in 2004 when she married Kelli just weeks after Mayor Gavin Newsom made it legal in San Francisco. At the time, she told reporters: “We were both inspired to come here after [President Bush] made the vile and hateful comments he made [when he voiced his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment] … One thought ran through my mind on the plane out here — with liberty and justice for all.” Rosie purposefully fashioned herself into a political symbol of the same-sex marriage movement only to file for divorce a few years later. Another blow was the fact that Rosie and Kelli’s split came on the heels of California voters passing Prop. 8, a moment in time when LGBT people really didn’t need another wallop to their morale. I can’t tell you how many times I heard my lesbian friends say about Rosie and Kelli: “They should have stayed together! We don’t need to give straight people a reason to think gay people shouldn’t be allowed to get married – especially not right now!” (Not that the super-high opposite-sex divorce rate has caused straight people to think of revoking their own marriage civil liberty, of course.)

In addition to the plea for lesbian couples to stay together for the good of the community, another interesting thing happened during Kelli and Rosie’s break-up: Gay ladies circled their wagons around the couple.

You know how you’re allowed to talk s–t about your own family and your girlfriend is allowed to talk s–t about her own family, but it’s totally out of bounds to talk s–t about each other‘s family? That was the prevailing attitude of lezzy ladies in 2009. You cannot visit the comments sections of any Rosie/Kelli break-up blog post on any website on the internet without witnessing an angry gaggle of gays shooting down straight commenters with a little of this: “Mind your own business!” And a little of that: “You don’t get to have an opinion about this because you don’t understand what it means to be gay!” I went back and counted over 30 emails in which my queer friends were saying that exact thing about mainstream media coverage of the split: “If the symbolism of their marriage didn’t mean anything to you personally, you can’t understand the symbolism of their divorce!”

Luckily for Rosie and the Gays, after mainstream media outlets covered the initial break-up announcement, the gossipy guesswork about the whos and whats and hows of their split fell to disreputable websites and soon fizzled out in favor of reality TV break-ups like good ol’ Jon and Kate (Plus 8).

WHAT A DIFFERENCE THREE YEARS MAKES! Fast forward to 2012 when those same lesbian friends who were so protective of Rosie and Kelli sent around and email titled “DickBoxGate” urging everyone to pick a side between #TeamTammy and #TeamEtheridge. Only this time, the high-profile lesbian divorce was a BYOB free-for-all with links to salacious speculation coming from every corner of the internet. And not just your TMZs and your RadarOnlines, like with Rosie and Kelli. No, these posts were coming from E! Online and Entertainment Weekly and and The Huffington Post. And rather than the “stay together” and “protect our own” mentalities that pervaded the Rosie/Kelli split, the #TeamTammy vs. #TeamEtheridge fisticuffs has been open game from every angle. (Just witness the comments in Dara Nai‘s interview with Tammy Lynn if you don’t believe me.)

And it’s not just Tammy and Melissa. A couple of months ago when Sara Gilbert announced her break-up with longtime partner Ali Adler, and was then seen arm-in-arm with Linda Perry, who just happened to have broken up with Clementine Ford right around the time Gilbert split with Adler, well, the internet machine went crazy again. E! Online reported on the couple shuffle, and so did People magazine. The internet’s favorite feminist website, Jezebel.com, even compiled interviews to create a timeline of who cheated on whom: “Now, I’m no mathematician and no one really knows what agreements go on behind closed doors, but it looks like Linda and Sara started hooking up four months before she broke up with Alison. Verdict: shady.”

And the Perry verdict from lesbians in the comments on Jezebel and E!: “Homewrecker.”

SOME GAY PEOPLE ARE JERKS!

Why the change? Why are we not hearing any “Stay together for LGBT rights!” cries? Why are lesbians so happy to throw their Sapphic sisters to the Perez Hilton-shaped wolves of the world wide web in 2012?

I’m inclined to point to the trend of trolling and say “bloodlust,” but I think the explanation is a lot more complicated than that.

For one thing, the momentum of the LGBT rights movement is flowing in the exact opposite direction than it was in 2009 when Rosie and Kelly broke up. Prop. 8 has been ruled unconstitutional. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has been overturned. Even though he hasn’t come out in full support of same-sex marriage, President Obama and his administration have stopped defending the Defense of Marriage Act and have become vocal supporters of equality. A 2011 Gallup poll showed that a majority of Americans support same-sex marriage for the first time in history. And more and more states are pushing through legislation to make same-sex marriage a reality.

Plus Dr. Robert Spitzer – whose 2001 study suggesting “highly motivated” homosexuals could turn themselves straight has been cited in court cases across the country for the past decade, including the Prop. 8 trials – recently renounced his position as “fatally flawed” and apologized to the gay community. In doing so, Spitzer basically ripped away the last vestiages of the validity of reparative therapy. “They’re here, they’re queer, get used to it,” is his scientific opinion. In addition to all that happy news, we have more high-profile lesbian couples in the media than ever before. There’s Jane Lynch and Lara Emby; Wanda and Alex Sykes; Rachel Maddow and Susan Mikula; and, of course, Ellen and Portia DeGeneres, both of whom have become much more outspoken about their relationship and marriage equality in the last four years.

And because the environment for gay people has changed so much since 2009, because we have so many victories to celebrate and so many high-profile couples to cherish, I think lesbians have started to relax and allow the rest of the world in on our little secret: Life is as messy for gay people as it is for straight people. Also: Some gay people are jerks. And it doesn’t hurt the LGBT community to admit either of those things. In fact, the Etheridge/Michaels divorce has opened an important dialogue about gay spousal support and child custody. It may be an ugly conversation, but it’s a necessary one.

In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout Finch tells her brother Jem: “I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.” At the end of the day, isn’t that the real message of the LGBT community? “We want the same rights as you because we’re the same kind of folks as you.” We’re folks who want the right to get married and folks who want the right to get divorced. And, for the good of the community, we acknowledge that for gay celebrity kinds of folks, equality in 2012 looks a lot like the flash of a Paparazzi camera.

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