From the NYT:
A little bit of post-election payback, or simply bureaucratic ineptness?
Never attribute to malice what can more easily be explained by incompetence.
It could be more than that. What proof does the state have, just from the document provided by Ms. Kilpatrick, that Jeremy Wilkening is indeed a man?
Sounds silly, but it wouldn’t be as silly if Mr. Wilkening’s first name were Pat, or Chris, or Robin.
Before the mayor of New Paltz decided to make a political statement, the presumption was that the marriage certificate indeed represented the union of a man and a woman. Since then, that presumption cannot be made in the case of marriage certificates from New Paltz. And for better or worse, same-sex marriage is not recognized by New York law.
I’m sure Ms. Kilpatrick can establish identity with other documents and then effect the name change. She simply cannot do it on the basis of a marriage certificate alone. And for that, blame must be laid at the bureaucrats in New Paltz who failed to take this consequence into account.
I don’t think SS would issue a card for Mrs. Jermey Wilkening but they would for Mrs. Suzi Wilkening.
[Nelson Muntz] Ha-ha! [/Nelson Muntz]
snerk
I’ll admit to a bit of that when I first read the article, but then I realized…this is something else they can blame on us. Do you really think most of these mid-state New York suburbanites are going to sit down and rationally work out that this is just another twist in a terrible miscarriage of justice and rights, or do you think they’ll sit down and start gnashing their teeth and complaining about “those damn queers who made my life difficult”?
This so perfectly exemplifies irony that it’s tragically funny.
Or maybe they’ll say, " Oh, so THAT’s what discrimination feels like, maybe we should work to have the laws amended to include marriage for gay people."
Hey, I can dream.
You crazy optimist, you!
What poetic justice it would be if it happened to someone who voted for a referendum banning gay marriage.
The same thing happened out here on the west coast. I can’t remember if it was SF or Oregon, but the SS administration decided to reject all marriage licenses from the area where SSM was being performed. They simply didn’t want to leave it up to their administratiive staff to decide which licenses were valid and which were not.
Hey, you guys are supposed to be the show-tunes experts, not us hets, but “Cockeyed Optimist” strikes me as right on target here. (Pun not originally intended, but what the hey! ;))
[Pedant]Except insofar as it’s not remotely ironic at all. It really chaps my hide that the government is wasting all this time and money making a big frufurrah about gay marriage, whilst letting such vital issues as educating the general public about the proper definition of “irony” fall by the wayside.[/Pedant]
But, yeah, y’all can expect to hear about his over and over from now on as one of the horrible, fabric-of-society-destroying side effects of letting gays marry. Better start writing up your counter-arguments now.
If I were an affected opposite-sex couple, I’d be mostly angry with the state for not being willing to differentiate between sex: I would neither blame the gay agenda for trying to destroy marriage, nor conversely be happy to “take one for the team” (not that anyone’s asking me to.)
Then again, I’m against government sanctifying marriage in general, but if anyone should have it, same-sex couples should.
I suppose if I were such a rabid homophobe that nothing could convince me to tolerate gay marriage, I might be even more angry at the gays for negating the validity of my marriage. But like I said, at that point nothing could convince me otherwise.
If I were more on the line, I’m not sure who I would blame more: unless of course there is evidence that actual government bureaucrats threatened this move if New Paltz did this. Then I would be angry at the “local action” protagonists for doing things they knew would mess with my marriage.
And in any event, even if it was truly unexpected I would be opposed to other places trying this same tactic, in case mass invalidation of marriages becomes more widespread, if I didn’t have a firm stance about the issue already.
I think that more than a genuine backlash against the current localities, the upshot of this might be pressure to not try this tactic in other places.