A Texas gay couple who was married in Massachusetts in 2006 filed for divorce last fall in a Dallas family court.  Dallas Judge Tena Callahan, who accepted the case last fall, took a step further from granting the couple a divorce and ruled that the state’s ban on gay marriage violates the U.S. Constitution. Texas has a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott will argue that a Texas court can’t dissolve a marriage that it doesn’t recognize; oral arguments in the appeals case will be heard on Wednesday afternoon in a Dallas appeals court. Earlier this month a District judge in a Travis County (Austin, Texas) denied Attorney General Abbott request to intervene in a same-sex divorce case in that district

In other states where gay marriage is not legal, divorce by gay couples has met mixed results. In March, a Pennsylvania judge refused a case by two women who married in Massachusetts now seeking a divorce, while New York grants such divorces even though the state doesn’t permit same-sex marriage.