Country star Kenny Chesney has commented on the use of the word 'fraud' in the legal papers that annulled his marriage to Renee Zellweger back in 2005, and stressed that it did not, as some gossipers have suggested, mean he was gay.
There was much speculation as to what Zellweger meant, exactly, when she annulled her marriage to Chesney four months after their wedding, citing one of the reasons why the courts should rule the marriage never really existed as 'fraud'. In annulment cases (in California at least) 'fraud' normally means that the consent to marry on one side or the other was "obtained" fraudulently, ie one of the couple lied about something to persuade the other to marry. Which led to the speculation that the 'fraud' had been Chesney lying about his sexuality.
Zellweger subsequently told reporters that the "fraud was simply legal language and not a reflection of Kenny's character", which didn't really tell us anything. But in a new interview with CBS's 60 Minutes show, Chesney says the marriage ended because he hadn't realised what exactly married life was about before getting wed. He tells the show: "[The gay rumours are] not true. Period. Maybe I should have come out and said, 'No, I'm not [gay]', but I didn't want to draw any more attention to it. We thought the least harmful [stated reason] was fraud because it [is] kind of broad ... doesn't specify. And boy ... we were wrong. The only fraud that was committed was me thinking that I knew what it was like ... that I really understood what it was like to be married, and I really didn't".
On his wedding to Zellweger, and the annulment, he says he has no regrets: "Not at all. Not one bit. Even though I'd sit here and say I wish we'd gotten divorced instead of all that annulment stuff, and saved me a lot of public humiliation... I still don't have any regrets. I loved her, you know? And it was real".