Acknowledging Gay Marriage through a Gay Divorce?

An interesting conundrum for states that border Mass that I first read about on cnn.com. If a couple is married there and your state has been silent on gay marriage, how do you handle a gay divorce?  What are the implications? Does it tacitly support and legitimize gay marriage to treat a gay divorce like a straight one?

Well Rhode Island is going to be dealing with these issues in the next few weeks.  A lesbian couple there, who married in Massachusetts has filed for divorce, putting one judge in a very awkward position. Rhode Island's laws don't explicitly prohibit gay marriages, nor do they acknowledge them outright. (A Mass judge recently ruled that gay and lesbian couples from Rhode Island could get married there because there is no law prohibiting it--Massachusetts has a law prohibiting a marriage from being performed for out of state couples if it wouldn't be recognized in their home state.) Now Rhode Island is left in a tricky position, does the state have any juristiction to aribtrate a divorce for a marriage that they aren't sure they recognize?  The Attorney General for Rhode Island has said that it up to the the Courts and the Legislature to decide how they want to handle this. They better hurry, the first trial date is set for December 5th.

It is sad that a state's position on marriage may come about through the ending of the very thing that the position would be supporting.