Bureaucracy Reflection: Obtaining a Homosexual Marriage License

Ashley Hinton

Blog Post: Bureaucracy Reflection

            The bureaucratic task that Brianna and I selected was obtaining a homosexual marriage license in the state of Massachusetts. At first we thought the topic would be difficult to take on, only because gay marriages aren’t accepted in most states. After finding that it is allowed in more than five states in the U.S, we were able to continue our research at ease.  After finding which states were legal and which weren’t, we then choose to focus mainly on the process of obtaining a marriage license in Massachusetts only, being as though the process is slightly different in each state. We found that the first step to becoming a homosexual married couple was to request very crucial paperwork. In Massachusetts, you must have a notice of intention of marriage, given in compliance of the law, which is a document that provides the names; genders, citizenship, age, race and occupations of both parties and along with other needed information. The paper work was pretty straightforward. There was some information we felt as though was unneeded. We also felt as though there was a lot of extra work we had to do because we were a homosexual couple getting married.

            If I could change one thing about the bureaucratic process, it would be of the last few steps in our flowchart (step 6). In step six of our flowcharted process it states that your marriage license will only be valid for sixty days. This is the only part of our process I would change. I feel like homosexual couples work so hard to get to this point and they shouldn’t have to go through the process all over again if they feel they aren’t ready in sixty days. I think this system in particular is so complicated because gay marriage isn’t something that’s necessarily accepted everywhere. It’s not something that’s happening everyday and so the process will never be easy. After completing the research on this project, I found that a flowchart is a great way to represent information that is difficult to understand. The flowcharts that were designed in our class were extremely helpful in understanding different bureautic processes and helped us to understand the systems of our world and how they function.