A sign of the times: the first gay divorces

The statistics may be sad, but even incurable romantics would admit it had to happen. A year after gay marriages were introduced in London, figures released yesterday show that the capital has had its first gay divorces.

An unlucky five of the 314 same-sex partnerships registered with the Greater London Authority in the past year have broken down irretrievably. Perhaps proving that equal rights bring equal risks, the rate of breakdown is almost exactly the same as heterosexual couplings after one year of marriage.

Of the 268,000 shiny, happy people who got hitched nationwide in 1999, some 3,494 of them divorced in 2000, a rate of 1.3 per cent. The new London Partnership Register shows that 1.6 per cent of the officially recognised gay and lesbian relationships have ended in "de-registration".

Brian Coleman, a gay Tory member of the GLA, said he had been sceptical about the registrations precisely because they "needlessly aped heterosexual society". But, he added: "At least de-registration is not as expensive as divorce."