> "Would you argue that blacks who couldn't vote should have elected leaders who would have let them vote? ...With rights come responsibities. Not before."

Ideally, maybe. In reality, black men fought in wars long before they were given the right to vote (something women STILL don't have to do today, despite having suffrage).

Sometimes you prove your mettle first, then get benefits. There is some wisdom in the Chinese saying, "When people forget how to live, they create laws." Navratilova should do the right thing herself, not be forced to.

Liberals-feminists-gays who say the richer, more powerful person in a live-in 8-year "arrangement" owes the weaker party nothing are both short-sighted and hypocritical. If Martina had a penis there'd be universal glee at her having to cough up money she "earned" to compensate her stay-at-home lover for "lost opportunities." Millions of men in childless marriages still had to pay big bucks to "partners" who did not work outside the home. Were they right to be angry? Did feminists support them?

should stay in Martina Navratilova's pants and it is none of my business, your business or Salon's business.

Cheap tabloid panty diving and snorfing journalism.

Ewe!

When you partner up with someone like Martina or some really rich celebrity, you're not going to be able to keep your own job, because people like that live in one house for a few months then go somewhere else or decide to go to Italy or have to go do business in Australia or something.

And whoever they decide to make their partner has to be willing to drop everything and follow them.

When one person puts his or her life completely on hold so as to provide for the emotional needs of another person, then that other person just can't say "Oh sorry, I changed my mind, now run along and go back to that other life you completely abandoned to serve my needs."

Martina wants someone who will build her whole life around Martina, until Martina wakes up one morning and decides otherwise.

That sucks and she deserves to be sued.

Shame on Martina Navratilova. Apparently, she wants to be taken seriously as a spokesperson for the LGBT community, but then stoops to disavowing the trappings of a "legitimate" relationship? Notice that I say, "legitimate", not "legal". The issue here is not whether gays and lesbians do or do not have the legal right to marry in certain states; neither is the issue whether Ms. Navratilova ought to have had a pre-nup with her now ex-lover/partner/spouse. She didn't, so that's that. The issue is trying to have it both ways, i.e., trying to be viewed as equal citizens under the law, and then devaluing the very nature of the relationship with legal double-talk. The Lee and Michelle Marvin palimony case was thirty years ago, for heaven's sake! The precedent was set then for unmarried couples whose relationships dissolve. A galimony case should be no different from a palimony suit. Only the genders are different, not the legal precedents, not unless you claim that a lesbian relationship is invalid to begin with. Whether or not one is able-bodied or not is also not germane. When two people live together as spousal equivalents for that many years, the partner who is given the boot is legally entitled to a settlement. Period. What galls me is not that Navratilova is fighting to have the amount of the settlement minimized. After all, husbands and unmarried males do that all the time. What galls me is that she would try to disavow the value and validity of the relationship. Shame on her. I agree with Bayard: grow up, Martina.

"She is one of the two or three greatest women ever to play the game of tennis." Ummmm...doesn't that sentence need an edit?

The problem here is not gender. The problem is that there is an expectation of support after a relationship breaks up.

There are definitely cases where one person makes sacrifices with the expectation of bettering the team. And then if the team dissolves, there is something owed to that person. But this should not be presumed.

There are at least as many cases where one person in a relationship lifts the other up. Gives them opportunities that they would never have had (as is likely in the case with Ms. Navratilova), and improves their life during the relationship. But then the relationship doesn't work out.

Why, because someone formed a relationship that didn't work out, would the legal system therefore presume that the stronger (economically or otherwise) of the two should continue to support the other?

That seems like a crazy bit of twisted and obsolete logic left in our legal system from the days when women were thought to be incapable of supporting themselves. It was more about welfare than justice. This need not now be applied to gay couples. It needs to be removed from laws regarding any couples.

agreed “to evenly share all funds and assets earned and obtained by either while together.” These assets apparently include four multimillion-dollar homes.

Seems very unlikely that Navratilova and wife earned and obtained enough to buy multimillion-dollar homes in the time they were together, post Martina's athletic prime, unless it was from investments made with earnings made in Martina's athletic prime.

Sometimes you prove your mettle first, then get benefits. There is some wisdom in the Chinese saying, "When people forget how to live, they create laws." Navratilova should do the right thing herself, not be forced to.

And how many rights were you denied that you had to prove yourself to deserve, Mr. Man? How many times have you had to "do the right thing" even though you were denied the right that would force you into doing it? How easy to set barriers for others you yourself never need to cross.

And if Navratilova "proves her mettle," does that mean only she can marry, or all gay people? If the former, how many other gay people must "prove their mettle" for marriage to be available to all gays? Is it a percentage? Some kind of lottery? An appointed panel?