July 22, 2006 5:11PM # ‘Marriage’ Problems By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE There were [15,000 divorces in Massachusetts](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr53/nvsr53_21.pdf) last year. Guess which one made the front page of the *Washington Times*, above the fold, today. Well, none of them, actually. But the separation of Julie and Hillary Goodridge, plaintiffs in the landmark same-sex marriage case *Goodridge v. Massachusetts*, did. With a classic *Washington Times* headline: “[Gay ‘marriage’ first couple splits up in Massachusetts](http://www.washtimes.com/national/20060721-111920-1539r.htm)” It’s not a real marriage, you see, no matter what the Commonwealth of Massachusetts says, so “marriage” has to be in ironic quotes. But what’s the point of such a prominent display of this story? Is the (apparent) failure of one marriage, even that of a landmark plaintiff couple, supposed to undermine the case for legal equality? If Linda Brown had flunked out of high school, would that have undermined the moral authority of *Brown v. Board of Education*? If John Peter Zenger’s newspaper failed, would that undermine the case for freedom of the press? ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).