I find it odd, though, that the name of the bride and groom are not mentioned in the story.
More like this
The state of California now issues gender-neutral marriage licenses: they simply register the legal relationship of "Party A" and "Party B", where the relevant individuals fill out their actual names. That sounds reasonable and straightforward to me — it's a state-mandated contract.
Wouldn't you…
It was a sixties-style wedding, only 20 people including the Baptist minister and the bride and groom. I was there with my friend. The guests were all family except for three close friends of the couple and the officiating Minister, chosen because his church was rent-free home for innumerable…
For those who are new to the blog (which is a lot of people...), a good friend of mine (best man at my wedding) is a journalist based in Cairo, who does regular shifts as a wire service stringer in Baghdad. He sends occasional email updates about what's going on over there, and I repost some of…
If you haven't heard by now, Sarah Palin compared criticism of her to "blood libel", the disgusting medieval falsehood that Jews used Christian blood in religious rituals. While some have chalked this up to paranoia, I don't think that's correct (besides, Palin's paranoia stems from the bursting…
Having been to Austria, seems about right. No really, it was a nice place to visit. Someone was a bit to officious.
A link to the English language translation of the original story is at the Improbable Research web site
http://www.improbable.com
It has the names of both the bride and the groom.
The real treat is the name of the newspaper--Oberoesterreichischen Nachrichten.
That should be Oberösterreichischen Nachrichten, though. The article: http://www.nachrichten.at/lokal/oesterreich/506441?PHPSESSID=38e3f9c782…
Hey, at least they're using a "no means no" standard. If I understand the article correctly (my German is pretty shaky), the rule is intended to prevent a family from pressuring an unwilling person into marrying...though one rather hopes that most such cases are caught sometime before they get to the standing at the altar stage. In short, this does seem to be the same sort of situation as a TSA official who is, IIRC, legally obliged to take a bomb threat seriously, no matter how clearly it was meant as a joke or sarcastic remark.