Another funny Valentine

When Yolo County Clerk-Recorder Freddie Oakley decided to distribute her specially made “certificates of inequality” to gay couples who wanted to get married on Valentine’s Day, one Woodland journalist didn’t just want to ask questions about trying to get married—he wanted to try to get married.

Josh Fernandez, staff writer for the Daily Democrat, convinced a reluctant—and straight—photographer to join him at the clerk’s desk so that the pair could experience the nerves, the excitement and the ultimate disappointment of being told that they could not legally marry. According to his post on www.insidewoodland.com, “My experience obviously can’t compare to that of the “real” gay couples who go year after year in hopes of getting married, only to get rejected time after time. Each of the dozens of couples who came to get married, no matter how happy, how functional, how beautiful, how successful, how brilliant, how stable, left with a hole in each of their hearts and a huge, rocky mountain to climb on their long walk back.”

If you want to see some good footage of Oakley explaining her opposition to gay-marriage bans—including the fact that one gay partner can’t secure legal U.S. citizenship for his or her beloved from another country—visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvzihv8uyBk and view the 10-minute mini-documentary from a Youtuber who watched as long-term lovers approached Oakley and were denied their right to wed for the fifth year in a row.