Divorcing Gays and Gay Divorce

Daniel Borrillo (1)

1 CERSA - Centre d'études et de recherches de science administrative

The problematic of the symposium brings us to a double reflection: on the one hand, we may wonder about the breaches of marriage because of the homosexuality of one partner, we thus may come back on this case law, and notice that long before gay marriage, there existed an abundant case law on the issue of divorce of gays. On the other hand, the formality of a breach implies that the union has a character so important that its end also needs to take a public aspect. This is why divorce, as marriage, overflows the private sphere. In France we have a paradoxical situation : homosexuals keep being forced to divorce if they are married to a person of the opposite sex as long as the heterosexual spouse decides to break the marital life; if the same homosexuals are committed to a person of their own sex ( through Pacs : Civil union), they cannot divorce, as the three months notice of one member of the couple is enough to automatically break the relationship. I propose to think about the theme of the symposium from a different perspective by considering this tension

Mots clés: gay marriage; divorce; same-sex marriage

Domaines: Droit

Daniel Borrillo. Divorcing Gays and Gay Divorce. Gay Divorce, King's College Law School, May 2006, Londres, United Kingdom. ⟨hal-01232605⟩