Getting married in South Carolina -- echoes of 1949

In the past week, the number of states that either have, or are just a step away from, marriage equality went from 19 to 32 -- without the U. S. Supreme Court doing anything but say "no" to the request to review five cases from three different Circuit Courts of Appeal.   But the combined states that don't already have marriage equality in those three jurisdictions is 13.   They all were affected.

One of those states is South Carolina.  So yesterday there was news of at least one county clerk issuing a marriage license to two women.

So . . . what's the echo of 1949?

I grew up in Sandersville, Georgia in the 1930s-1940s.   In those days, abortions were illegal.  When a young couple needed to get married in a hurry, they would drive to Aiken, just across the border in South Carolina which, unlike Georgia, did not have the three-day waiting period between getting a license and getting married.

Whenever someone said they got married in South Carolina, you could pretty much assume an unplanned pregnancy -- or at least the parents' discovery that their daughter was having sex with her boyfriend.    The remedy, in those days, was not an abortion but a quick wedding -- and the sooner the better, so you could pretend the pregnancy occured after the wedding.

So there would be a quick trip across the border, usually at night before a South Carolina Justice of the Peace who stayed up late -- with a bit of fudging on the actual date for the folks back home.  No one was fooled;  but it sort of saved face.   It was one of those southern, small town things: Don't name it, and you can pretend it doesn't exist.  Once you name it, it's a scandal.

Now that same-sex marriage is legal in South Carolina but not yet in Georgia (there is a case in the courts), we may again hear of "getting married in South Carolina," -- not quick and furtive like 1949, but planned.  I can see it now:   Charleston seems like a pretty romantic place for weddings.   Cue the caterers !!   Spruce up the wedding chapels !!   A new industry for the Palmetto State.

Don't, however, make any long term investment in the wedding industry in S. C.   My guess is that we're a matter of months away from marriage equality in Georgia too.

Ralph