With divorce rates on the rise throughout the world, it appears that the dissolution of same sex marriages, or gay divorce, isn’t anywhere near as common. In fact, less than 1% of same sex marriages actually end in divorce.

Gay website PinkNews.com discovered that fewer than 250 gay marriages actually ended in divorce in the UK. In the two years between 2005 and 2007, 24,629 gay weddings took place in the UK. Since December 2006, when couples have been able to petition for divorce, only 245 couples have filed for a dissolution of their union.

Of those 245, just 108 have been so far ended in dissolution, with three ending in separation and one declared null and void. In June this year Matt Lucas (of Little Britain fame) became the first celebrity gay divorcee when he ended his marriage with Kevin McGee, just two years after their wedding.

Stonewall’s Ben Summerskill stated:

This is a small number and it confirms that many people entering into civil partnerships take it very seriously indeed.

Certainly there is no credible evidence that lesbian and gay people do not live in stable relationships.

We hope the Office for National Statistics will include questions to build on this in the next census.

The difference between gay marriages and heterosexual marriages in terms of divorce rates is quite staggering. 2005 divorce rates suggest that 45% of marriages will actually end in divorce, and half of them before the tenth anniversary of the marriage.

In 2006 in the UK there were 275,140 weddings in England and Wales, and 132,562 divorces.

Recently the law in California changed to allow same sex couples who were in civil partnerships, or for want of a better word, marriages, to get divorced. The first couple to take advantage of the ruling allowing gay divorce, had only been married for three days, it has been revealed.

The couple, Theresa Ramirez and her partner Adelita Guajardo were married in Fresno County, California, on June 27th, and were divorced just three days later on the 30th.

Theresa Ramirez filed for divorce citing the familiar reason of “irreconcilable differences”.

Norm Fletcher is a lawyer in Santa Barbara:

Sometimes people are together for 10 or 20 years and then get married and there is a different feeling.

There is no longer a relationship based on trust, but based on a piece of paper.

He believes that the irony is that because they were now allowed to legally marry, it could be what actually caused them to split up.

In a way, gays and lesbians had a common enemy in the form of the state and society. People who have common enemies tend to stick together.

It’s no longer you and me against the world - it’s you and me against each other.

The ruling to allow same sex couples to marry in California has caused a lot of criticism, and stories such as this won’t help gay marriage opponents to sympathise to the situation.

As 1 in 3 marriages now end in divorce, it only seems natural that gay marriages will also suffer the same fate. According to reports from Bristol the divorce rate among same sex marriages is indeed on the rise.

In the first six months of 2007 there was only one gay divorce in the city, but a further seven gay divorces in the latter half of the year. This is according to Her Majesty’s Court Service.

Same sex marriages became legal in the UK in December 2005, and almost 20,000 gay couples got married in the first 12 months. 178 of those civil partnerships happened in Bristol.

The number of gay marriages in the following year nearly halved, and the first gay marriage in Bristol between Darryl Bullock and Mark Godfrey ended in divorce in July 2007. Mediation services in Bristol have also seen increased numbers of same-sex couples looking to end their marriages and requesting advice on how to file for gay divorce.

Gay divorce is very similar to heterosexual divorce, but the terminology is slightly different. When a gay marriage ends in divorce it is termed a ‘dissolution’ as opposed to a ‘divorce’.

With a large majority of marriages ending in divorce these days, recent statistics from the National Association of Gays and Lesbians shows that gay marriages are less likely to end in divorce than heterosexual ones.

According to the data, only 17% of gay marriages end in divorce, which is a much higher success rate than the 50% of heterosexual marriages that end in divorce.

Stig Laursen is a spokesman for the National Association of Gays and Lesbians, and he believes that gay marriages have a much better chance of success that heterosexual ones because of the fact that gays and lesbians tend to co-habit before getting married much more than heterosexual couples do.

He dismisses claims that gays and lesbians may have some secret formula for successful relationships:

I really don’t think gays and lesbians are any better spouses than anybody else.

Gitte Nørskov said the statistics showed that the belief that homosexuals were in any way promiscuous was a myth. She stated that you’re more likely to make a success of your marriage if you wait to get married.

You’ve got more experience, and you have a better idea of what a relationship is all about.