Inside Pauley Perrette’s Dramatic Exit From NCIS
On the personal front, Perrette got engaged to former British Royal Marine turned aspiring actor Thomas Arklie on Christmas Day in 2011, but she said on multiple occasions (as a number of celebrities did during this period) that they wouldn’t get married until same-sex marriage was legally recognized as well.
When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional on June 26, 2015, paving the way for gay couples to tie the knot in every state, Perrette was one of a number of betrothed stars whose path to the aisle finally looked clear.
“We have been engaged for four years because we worked for a federal marriage-equality law, and that Friday was the strangest day,” Perrette, a longtime LGBTQ+ rights activist, told FOX411 a month later. “My life as a civil rights activist and as a straight ally has been marching, speaking, donating, marching, donating, speaking, marching, speaking, rally, holding poster signs, and then it was over. It was so weird.”
A number of her gay friends were getting married, she said, but she admittedly hadn’t thought about herself yet.
“There are certain benefits [to marriage],” Perrette said. “With us, we have different insurance and things. There are certain benefits that we would have from being married, and every time I thought about it, I thought, ‘How many same-gender couples have been together 25 years and can certainly benefit from that, too?’ So, for me, now, it’s pretty exciting.”
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