We're Not Married??

The date was Oct., 6, 1960. Frank and Betty stood before the late Rev. James Feehley at St. Bartholomew Catholic Church in Wilmore, Pa. with Betty’s 5-year-old daughter and two witnesses. They declared their love for each other and with the blessing of the Rev. became Mr. and Mrs. Frank Skrout. They were married....or were they?

“Not according to us, not according to our records,” Patty Sharbaugh, the elected Cambria County official in charge of the records, said. “They’re not married.”

No, they were not married, according to the state of Pennsylvania. The late Rev. who performed the marriage ceremony never sent in the required “return of marriage” document to the office of the Cambria County Register of Wills/Clerk of Orphans Court, as required by law. The certified marriage license does not exist. There is no record of Frank and Betty ever being married 49 years ago.

“All these years we’ve been living in sin,” the good-natured Frank Skrout said jokingly in an interview on the front porch of the their longtime Wilmore. “I might as well play the field. What the heck.”

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The Skrouts lived their entire life in Wilmore, a tiny borough in Cambria County, about 55 miles east of Pittsburgh. Frank went to work for Bethlehem Steel and Betty did sewing at factories in Johnstown, Windber and Portage. They have one son, a grandson, five grandchildren and five great- grandchildren.

They discovered they weren't married when Betty tried to apply for a pension due to her through the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. She needed her marriage certificate to show her married name. When she applied at the county court, no record of her marriage could be found. According to the county records, Frank and Betty Skrout were never married.

Tony DeGol, secretary for communications of the Altoona-Johnstown Catholic Diocese, said the marriage certificate should be available.

“Those records are the property of the parish and they can be found,” he said.

Patty Sharbaugh said if the Skrouts can locate the information from the church, she will record it, back-dating the marriage to Oct. 6, 1960.

“We’ve had a lot of fun with this,” Betty said. “But it’s like the priest told us: We were married. The records are there – somewhere.”

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Marriage Annulled: Wife not a Virgin

A Muslim couple's marriage was annulled by a French court on the grounds that the woman had lied and told her husband that she was a virgin. In its ruling, the court concluded the woman had misrepresented herself as a virgin and that, in this particular marriage, virginity was a prerequisite.

In its judgment, the tribunal said the 2006 marriage had been ended based on "an error in the essential qualities" of the bride, "who had presented herself as single and chaste."

The French daily newspaper Liberation made public the April closed-door trial in Lille, causing such an uproar that, against the wishes of both the man and woman involved, the case will be appealed. Critics of the court saw the decision as undermining decades of progress in women's rights by treating the case as a breach of contract. Marriage, they said, was reduced to the status of a commercial transaction in which women could be discarded by husbands claiming to have discovered hidden defects in them. France has a Muslim population of about 5 million, out of a country of 64 million, the largest of any Western European country, but has fought to maintain strong secular traditions in the face of changing demographics. Critics see the ruling as condoning the custom of requiring a woman to enter marriage as a virgin, and prove it with bloodstained sheets on her wedding night.

The court decision "is a real fatwa against the emancipation and liberty of women. We are returning to the past," said Urban Affairs Minister Fadela Amara, the daughter of immigrants from Muslim North Africa, using the Arabic term for a religious decree.

Justice Minister Rachida Dati, whose parents also were born in North Africa, initially shrugged off the ruling but the public clamor reached such a pitch that she asked the prosecutor's office this week to lodge an appeal. What began as a private matter "concerns all the citizens of our country and notably women," a statement from her ministry said.

The irony is that the unnamed couple involved, both the man and the woman, were satisfied with the court's ruling. Neither of them want the case to be appealed. The woman is a student in her 20's and the man is an engineer in his 30's.

The young woman's lawyer, Charles-Edouard Mauger, said she was distraught by the dragging out of the humiliating case and he quoted her as saying:

"I don't know who's trying to think in my place. I didn't ask for anything. ... I wasn't the one who asked for the media attention, for people to talk about it, and for this to last so long."

Xavier Labbee, the lawyer for the bridegroom in question, says it was not the young woman's virginity that was at issue.

"The question is not one of virginity. The question is one of lying," he said. "In the ruling, there is no word 'Muslim,' there is no word 'religion,' there is no word 'custom.' And if one speaks of virginity it is with the term 'a lie."

Although divorce was also an option, annulling the marriage is preferable because it wipes the slate clean for both parties. Divorced Muslim women are allowed to remarry, but they are expected to be forthcoming with their new husband about the previous marriage, and divorce can carry a cultural stigma for women.

Article 180 of the Civil Code states that when a couple enters into a marriage, if the "essential qualities" of a spouse are misrepresented, then "the other spouse can seek the nullity of the marriage." Past examples of marriages that were annulled include a husband found to be impotent and a wife who was a prostitute, according to attorney Xavier Labbee.

However, in a rare show of agreement, politicians on the left and right said the court's action does not reflect French values. "In a democratic and secular country, we cannot consider virginity as an essential quality of marriage," said an expert on French secularism, Jacqueline Costa-Lascoux.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon said an appeal must be lodged "so this ruling does not set a judicial precedent." The appeal was filed and three judges could hear the case sometime this month, said Eric Vaillant of the appeals court in Douai, near Lille.

Personal Opinion:

Maybe its just me, but I have difficulty seeing how a request to nullify a marriage becomes a national debate on French values and women's rights. Even the parties involved are content with the court's ruling and are against any further appeals. To me this is just a case of the government butting into the private lives of private citizens who would rather put an unfortunate situation behind them.

New York Recognizes Same-Sex Marriage

Gov. David A. Paterson has directed all state agencies to begin to revise their policies and regulations to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, like Massachusetts, California and Canada. In a directive issued on May 14, the governor’s legal counsel, David Nocenti, instructed the agencies that gay couples married elsewhere “should be afforded the same recognition as any other legally performed union.”

The directive makes New York state the only state that recognizes gay marriages performed elsewhere, while it is still illegal in New York. It has fueled speculation that Gov. Paterson may soon push for gay marriage. In a videotaped message given to gay community leaders, Mr. Paterson described the move as “a strong step toward marriage equality.” And people on both sides of the issue said it moved the state closer to fully legalizing same-sex unions in this state.

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“Very shortly, there will be hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, and probably thousands and thousands and thousands of gay people who have their marriages recognized by the state,” said Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell, a Democrat who represents the Upper West Side and has pushed for legalization of gay unions.

This is expected to cause revision to as many as 1,300 statutes and regulations in New York governing everything from joint filing of income tax returns to transferring fishing licenses between spouses. Agency heads were directed to identify a list of state regulations and statutes that were likely to need overhaul, including measures affecting a spouse’s ability to collect a deceased spouse’s pension and to continue to use public housing. Mr. Nocenti wrote that state agencies should review all rules and regulations to determine whether they conflict with recognition of same-sex marriages and report back to him by June 30. He said that state agencies that did not provide “full faith and credit to same-sex marriages” could be subject to liability.

Opponents of gay marriage accuse the governor of trying to circumvent the state legislature and say the issue should be decided by the voters and not by executive directive.

“It’s a perfect example of a governor overstepping his authority and sidestepping the democratic process,” said Brian Raum, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, a national organization opposed to same-sex marriage. “It’s an issue of public policy that should be decided by the voters.”

Forty-one states are currently limiting marriages to that between a man and a woman; Massachusetts and California remain the only states that legalize gay marriage while others only allow civil unions. The previous governor of New York, Elliott Spitzer, had introduced a bill last year that would have legalized gay marriage. The Democratic-dominated Assembly passed the measure, but the Republican-led Senate has refused to call a vote on it.

The Paterson directive cited the case of Patricia Martinez, who works at Monroe Community College and who married her partner, Lisa Golden, in Canada. The State Appellate Court in Rochester ruled that she could not be denied health benefits by the college because her marriage was legal and New York state had a longstanding policy of recognizing marriages performed elsewhere, even if they are not explicitly allowed under New York law.

While gay rights advocates widely praised the spirit of Mr. Paterson’s policy, some saw more than a little irony in the fact that New York has yet to allow gays to marry.

“If you’re going to treat us as equals, why don’t you just give us the marriage license?” said Alan Van Capelle, executive director of Empire State Pride Agenda. “So this is a temporary but necessary fix for a longer-term problem, which is marriage equality in New York State.”

Mildred Loving Dies

Richard and Mildred Loving got married and made history in 1958. They were the couple that overturned one of the last vestiges of racism in America. She was black and he was white and interracial marriages were forbidden in their home state of Virginia. They got married anyway and eventually took their case (Loving v. Virginia) to the Supreme Court. In its decision, on June 12, 1967, the court struck down the Virginia law and similar laws in 16 other states.

"Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival," wrote Chief Justice Warren. "Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."

Mildred Loving (nee Jeter), 68 died Friday, May, 2, 2008. Her husband Richard had died in 1975 in a car crash. They had three children Donald, Peggy and Sidney. According to her daughter, Peggy Fortune, Mildred died at home in Milford.

"I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble — and believed in love," Fortune told The Associated Press.

For more on the Loving story click here. This June 12 is Loving Day and will be the 41st anniversary of the Supreme Court decision. It is celebrated to honor the legalization of interracial marriage.