'Eat, Love, Pray' Author: Straight Couples Aren't Marrying Because Gays Can't

January 6th, 2010 12:00 AM

Back in 2006, Brad Pitt announced during an interview with Esquire magazine that he will only tie the knot with his (perhaps, still) girlfriend Angelina Jolie when “everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able.” (It's assumed he was talking about gays and not, say, first cousins or fathers and daughters – although he did leave it rather open-ended.)


Well, best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert isn't that dedicated, because she just got married to her boyfriend of many years (after swearing “never, ever, under any circumstances” to marry again after her first, bitter divorce), but she did throw out her two-cents during an interview with Time magazine on Nov. 4.


“A lot of heterosexual couples are reluctant to get married,” asserted the woman who penned “Eat, Love, Pray” and the new "Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage."  “There's a sense of, Why should I have access to this when my friends who have been together just as long as me don't?”


Allowing same-sex marriage would “make marriage relevant again,” Gilbert declared. She argued that excluding gays makes marriage “look like a country club. Almost the only way that marriage can continue to mean something in any sort of real way is if it gets more inclusive.”


In that same interview, she also warned against marrying younger than the age of 25.


“It's the single simplest measure to predict divorce,” she said. “You almost can't wait too long.”

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