Party A to Party B: "I thee wed."

At Yahoo, "'Bride' and 'groom' to be restored to Calif. forms." Since June 16, forms used by county clerks for couples applying for a marriage license used the terms "Party A" and "Party B". Boxes to be provided on new forms provided by the state health department (available in November, after the election) will allow marriage parties to check optional boxes designating themselves as "bride" and "groom". There is precious little information in the story on what motivated the new change.

The article summarizes a response by a characteristically clueless California bureaucrat as follows: "The department thought it had to remove "bride" and "groom" from marriage certificates to comply with the California Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage, she said." I suspect a more accurate statement would be: Reflecting their disdain for traditional marriage, state employees in the department gleefully removed the terms "bride" and "groom" from marriage certificates following the California Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage.

Comments

[Matt W.]

Having worked for a company that did the type and database work for Marriage certificates, it probably had more to do with some programmer having to write a piece of code that allowed for the capability to have options like bride and groom to be input into the database. At the same time, the paper Marriage Licenses are printed on would have to be reprinted, and all the old papers would have to be destroyed or used up. (This is because a Marriage License is a valid form of ID, and loose M.L. paper can easily be used to make a fake M.L.)

Getting new paper for a county in Texas can take 6 to 8 weeks, and paper type isn't even standardized 100% here (ie- bexar county prints it's own specialized certificates)

[BrianJ]

Dave, I was visiting San Francisco June 16-18. I took a break from my work to visit SF City Hall and spoke with one of the volunteers about the new forms, licenses, rules, etc. Based on that experience, I think your "more accurate statement" assumes too much.

[Clark]

Reprinting forms is surprisingly expensive too. I think people neglect the bureaucrat hassles.

[Phouchg]

Why attribute to malice something you can attribute to stupidity?