Outdated forms leave same-sex couples confused; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8/16/14

Mackenzie Carpenter, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Outdated forms leave same-sex couples confused:

"Judge McGough has performed 59 same-sex weddings in Allegheny County since May 20, and while the couples uniformly praise the warm welcome they receive in the Marriage License Bureau, a few find the application form’s designation “unfortunate,’’ he said.

Other counties have not taken the same wait-and-see approach.

In Beaver County, money is tight and new forms weren’t in the cards, so “we just white out bride’ and ’groom’ and replace them with ’applicant,’ ” said Carol Fiorucci, the register of wills, While they wait for the new forms to arrive, “We want to be sensitive to the subject, and we want to be courteous,” she said.

“We had our software companies change our application forms the day after the law changed,” said Michael Ginsburg, register of wills for Westmoreland County, from bride and groom to “applicant.”

On the day a federal judge ruled the state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and the Corbett administration announced it would not appeal, couples started showing up in Mr. Ginsburg’s office for marriage licenses.

“We hadn’t had time yet to make the changes, and when they saw ‘bride’ and ‘groom’ on the forms, some of them were bothered by that,” Mr. Ginsburg said.

“A couple of them got excited, though and started arguing which one was the bride and which one was the groom.”

Late Friday, Holli Senior, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Health, emailed a statement that said since the ruling in May, the department “has been exploring options to determine what changes may be necessary to the state’s marriage application and other vital records forms. We will continue to work with all counties and ensure that they are provided with information as it becomes available.”