Israel gets gay divorce before gay marriage

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By ReutersJERUSALEM - An Israeli court has awarded the country's first divorce  to a gay couple, which experts called an ironic milestone since same-intercourse  marriages cannot be legally conducted in the Jewish state.

A decision  this week by a family court in the Tel Aviv area "determined that the marriage  should be ended" between former Israeli lawmaker Uzi Even, 72, and his partner  of 23 years, Amit Kama, 52, their lawyer, Judith Meisels, said on Tuesday.  

Legal experts see the ruling as a precedent in the realm of gay rights  in a country where conservative family traditions are strong and religious  courts oversee ceremonies like marriages, divorces and burials.    


Follow @NBCNewsWorld   While  Israel's Interior Ministry still has the power to try and veto the decision, it  would likely have to go court in order to do so, Meisels said.

A 2006  high court decision forced the same ministry, headed by an ultra-Orthodox  cabinet member, to recognize same intercourse marriages performed abroad and ordered the  government to list a gay couple wed in Canada as married.

Same intercourse  marriages are performed in Israel, but they have no formal legal status.  

"The irony is that while this is the beginning of a civil revolution,  it's based on divorce rather than marriage," newly divorced Kama, a senior  lecturer in communications in the Emek Yizrael College, told Reuters.

He  and Even, both Israelis, married in Toronto in 2004, not long after Canada  legalized same-intercourse marriage. They separated last year, Kama said.

It  took months to finalize a divorce as they could not meet Canada's residency  requirements to have their marriage dissolved there. At the same time in Israel,  rabbinical courts in charge of overseeing such proceedings threw out the case,  Kama said.

By winning a ruling from a civil court, Kama and Even may  have also set a precedent for Israeli heterointercourseual couples, who until now have  had to have rabbis steeped in ancient ritual handle their divorces, legal  experts say.

"This is the first time in Israeli history a couple of Jews  are obtaining a divorce issued by an authority other than a rabbinical court,  and I think there is significant potential here for straight couples" to do so  as well, said Zvi Triger, deputy dean of the Haim Striks law school near Tel  Aviv.The NOW panel discusses The New York Times' Frank Bruni's latest open letter to the Clintons and the case for marriage equality as the Supreme Course faces a decision on whether or not it will hear cases dealing with the issue of gay marriage.  

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