The 1934 version has acquired an entirely new meaning:

Trapped in a bad marriage?

Sorry, really. But you’ve got nothing on Larissa Chism and Tara Ranzy, a divorce-seeking Indiana couple doomed to live unhappily ever after and after and after by a legal Catch-22.

Chism, a psychiatrist, and Ranzy, an educator, wed in Toronto in January 2005. In March of this year, they filed a divorce petition.

In many respects, their case was rubber-stamp simple. They had no children; they had already divided their property; neither was pregnant. Unfortunately, an eagle-eyed court employee noticed the one complicating fact in their one-page joint submission: Larissa and Tara are both women’s names. Indiana does not grant or recognize same-sex marriages.

And so, a court there ruled Sept. 4, Chism and Ranzy cannot end their marriage because their marriage does not exist.

Nor can they simply return to Toronto to obtain a quickie divorce here, as one prominent Indiana social conservative suggested to the Indianapolis Star. Ontario, like same-sex-marriage-granting Massachusetts, requires one spouse to be a resident for a year or more before a divorce can be approved.

A perfect illustration of the chaos wrought by contemporary gender confusion; although if it had to happen to anyone, a psychiatrist and an educator seems fitting.