According to news reports the rush of same-sex marriage seekers in San Francisco has resulted in a waiting list-type arrangement at City Hall. Fifty couples at the front of the line will be hitched for sure; the overflow couples will be married as time permits.
I imagine it is unprecedented that City Hall could not accomodate all comers on any given day, so I’m just wondering if hetero couples – who presumably have planned their wedding arrangements (flights, hotel rooms, banquet halls, etc.) long in advance of this spur-of-the moment same-sex rush – are being given priority. Or are there two processing rooms, one for straights and another for gays? Just curious about the logistics.
Most people who plan elaborate weddings (flights, hotels, banquet halls) do not get married at City Hall. They either have a religious ceremony in a church or either a civil or religious ceremony in a private place. IMO, anyone who plans an elaborate wedding and depends on City Hall bureaucrats to play a time-critical role gets exactly what they deserve when they’re left in line.
I haven’t been down to City Hall, but I doubt very much that they have separate processing lines for straights and gays. They probably don’t make them drink at different water fountains either.
True enough, but those people still need to get a marriage license before their weddings. I don’t think they’ll look too fondly on camping out all night to get one.
Getting a marriage license involves picking up a blank form. It’s generally done weeks in advance of a big planned wedding, so it doesn’t have the time pressure. It’s also likely to be a completely different window in City Hall than where the line is queuing up to get married. To get the form, you talk to a clerk. I’d presumed the big bottleneck at the SF City Hall is the line to see the judge or whatever civil authority performs the actual wedding.
Where I got married (Tennessee) the paperwork took probably 15 minutes to fill out, pay for and register properly in this big record book. The actual ceremony with the judge took under 1 minute. The paperwork can be done up to 30 days before the actual wedding but many people don’t get it until the day they plan to be married, especially since you don’t have to get blood tests anymore.
No, the lines were for the issuance of the paperwork. Volunteers were even recruited to help with the process because of the overwhelming demand. There was also a wide range of officials “deputized” to perform the ceremony and sign the paperwork. Also, not everyone who was issued a license immediately married.
First of two hearings on the legality of SF’s actions is set to start in about 15 minutes.
In my case, the paperwork was almost unnoticably fast. The clerk spent more time digging out the gift bag supplied by local businesses than she did getting us the form and completing it. But I wasn’t in SF so it’s not really relevant. I probably shouldn’t even be posting in this thread since I have nothing but anecdote, but I was motivated by the seemingly-biased tone of the OP, as if yet another reason gays shouldn’t marry is that it’s terribly inconvenient for the straights waiting in line. I probably read too much into the OP.
When I got married, the paperwork took about half an hour to do, but only because the clerk was abysmally slow. There wasn’t a justice of the peace in sight. We did the paperwork several weeks before our wedding, on the advice of our officiant.
My guess, although I’m not sure about this, is that het couples who waited until the last minute for their license can wait until a few days after the ceremony to get the license, too. Does anyone know if there’s any real reason why you’d need the license before performing the “church” ceremony?
First off, micco, I am very pro gay rights, so yes you read too much in my OP. (Frankly what I’m opposed to is, as Damon Runyon would say, the whole “marriage dodge.” The real issue is how single people get screwed by the entitlements that married people enjoy. But that’s fodder for another thread. Got that, people? Another thread.)
I used to work in the Municipal Building here in NYC, the place where “City Hall” marriages are performed, so I am quite familiar with the types who partake in municipal weddings. Though I never actually saw a ceremony it was impossible to miss all the dolled up brides and grooms that streamed in and out of the building. True, many of them appeared like they were on their lunch hours from some greasy spoon job, but a sizable percentage looked like they could easily have afforded and managed a full-scale church hoopla. They were obviously at City Hall because that’s how they wanted to get married, and perhaps because they felt their money would be better spent on a honeymoon. I would not be surprised if the majority of those types said their vows with round-trip tickets in their pockets for flights that were departing JFK in a couple of hours. If I was one of those couples I would be mightily pissed if I went on my “honeymoon” as a single man because I got turned away at City Hall that morning.
The last thing the gay marriage movement needs is a news clip of a hypothetical hetero couple bitching on the news that their prearranged wedding plans were ruined by a “meaningless and symbolic gesture” (again, hypothetical quote). So I hope someone in SF thought that part through. Don’t you agree, micco?
If you mean did they realize there would be a large rush followed by a steady level of traffic higher than previously normal, then yes, I hope they anticipated that and staffed extra people. If you mean do I hope they addressed the added rush by adding a straight-only express line to prevent inconveniencing any non-gays, then no, I hope they were clueful enough NOT to do that. I can’t speak for gay people, but I wouldn’t think they’d want that kind of separate-but-equal treatment even if it’s done to avoid PR that could harm their cause.
If not a separate “straight” line, how about a separate “legal” line? The whole issue isn’t about gay marriage; it’s a rule of law thing.
Here in Michigan licenses are procured at the county level. While we don’t have a blood test any longer, we have a three day waiting period (effectively four days the way it works). At this point you take the license to the priest/judge/pastor/delegated-authority to have signed, and you’re married.
When I needed to get my marriage license, circumstances were such that if I wanted to get married on the day that I did, there was literally only one day that I could have procured the license. And if it had been screwed up by idiots participating in illegal activity (and I don’t mean gays, an illegal strike, or any illegal action) causing me to miss my wedding, I sure as hell would have made a point to at least try to get it publicized and have the perpetrators shamed. What I was doing was something serious – not a novelty; something legal and made legal the correct way – not by a lawbreaking mayor.
I know I’m going to be attacked for being anti-gay marriage, but if you do it’s probably because the attackers’ agendas place no bearing on what law and order is established for in the first place, nor why we have due process, nor how things came to be in the first place.
I saw something on the news about this. There were hetero couples waiting in line along with everyone else. I imagine a few of them decided to get married that weekend on purpose just to show support and join in the fun.
Being that it was Valentine’s Day weekend, I bet there were a lot of people who planned that day for their wedding day far in advance. Also being that it was Valentine’s Day, they should have expected a crowd anyway, same sex or not.
As it happens, I am an ordained minisiter and if I lived anywhere near the area, I’d be there volunteering my time to aid in the marriages.
Since the San Francisco City Clerk’s offic only issues 6 to 8 marriage licenses on an average day, there aren’t likely to be too many hetero couples turned away. Though personally, if I saw a line like that, and had the option of driving a few miles to another city, I’d sure do that rather than wait in line for hours!
By the way, SF looks like it has issued about 3,000 marriage licenses in these last 3 days – at $95 each. That’s close to 1/3 of a million extra dollars income for the City Clerks office. About the equivalent of 1-1/2 to 2 years of marriage license business at the normal rate. And now the Judge has let them continue at least 4 more days until the hearing. They’ll probably take in another quarter million by then.
I don’t know what Mayor Newsom’s salary is, but he’s probably brought in enough to cover it for a couple years by this action. To say nothing about the business this has brought to the city. Many of these couples reside outside SF, so they likely rented hotel rooms, ate at restaurants, and spent other money at city businesses. Quite an economic boon for the city!
What makes you think that the homosexual couples are doing this on the spur of the moment? I bet a great deal of them have been wishing they were married far longer than most of their fellow heterosexual applicants. If anything, priority should be given to those couples who have been waiting the longest to apply – namely, the same-sex couples who long ago committed to marriage but couldn’t legally sanctify it because the law did not permit it.
To get a church ceremony, do you really need to have a civil license first? I’ve never for one from any of the couples I’ve married, but then I’m in a different jurisdiction.
Tried posting this repeatedly last night and got the damn databse error…grrrr…
Anyway, I have no intention of attacking you as anti-gay. I would point out, however, that your circumstances are your own and if your plans were upset by someone else who acted without malice then you have no call to be making a stink about it. You planned poorly and left yourself only one day to do something critically important to you. It would have been your tough luck if it hadn’t worked out.
I would like a cite for your assertion that the mayor has broken the law. While there is a crackpot right-wing lawyer calling for his arrest, there have been no charges filed and no judicial finding of fact or law on the matter. My understanding is that the mayor is acting in good faith under what he believes to be his authority as chief executive of San Francisco County and that his actions are authorized under the equal protection clause of the California constitution.
The Alabama statute, while on the books, was unenforceable because of the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v Virginia that miscegenation laws are unconstitutional. Removing it from the books was a symbolic gesture.