Prop. 8 married couple now getting divorced
Opponents of Proposition 8, California’s gay marriage ban, celebrate outside of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco after the law was ruled unconstitutional.
The first same-sex couple to marry in Southern California is now getting divorced, MSNBC reported. The couple was one of the lead plaintiffs in a 2008 lawsuit challenging Proposition 8, California's same-sex marriage ban that was struck down by an appeals court yesterday.
Robin Tyler and Diane Olson had gone to the Beverly Hills Courthouse every year since 2001 to request a marriage license. But their requests were continuously denied. They then became lead plaintiffs in a lawsuit that lead the state Supreme Court to overturn California's gay marriage ban in 2007, NBC Southern California reported.
More from GlobalPost: Prop 8: California gay marriage ban struck down as unconstitutional
Tyler and Olson finally married at the Beverly Hills Courthouse in June 2008. Proposition 8, the measure that defines marriage as being between a man and a woman, was then passed by voters six months later. Tyler and Olson were among the original 14 couples to challenge Proposition 8 in 2008.
Yesterday, after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decided that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional, MSNBC reported that Tyler and Olson had filed for divorce in January.
"We're human and we went through difficult times," Tyler told NBC Los Angeles. They had been together for 18 years.
Though people often say that 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, that statistic is difficult to confirm, Time Magazine reported in 2010. A report by the US Census Bureau in 2011 says that 35.6 percent of women ages 40 to 49 had divorced by 2009.