County clerks issued more than 8,500 marriage licenses in the first week same-sex marriage was legal in California, more than two and half times an average June week, a Times survey found. The tally includes licenses issued to both same-sex and heterosexual couples, although county clerks in many locations indicated that the majority went to gay and lesbian couples. The state, which is not tracking the gender of applicants, has replaced "Bride" and "Groom" on marriage applications with the terms "Party A" and "Party B." In Los Angeles County, the state's most populous, 1,806 licenses were issued from ...

I was in meetings at work, most of yesterday today. Which means I have a lot to catch up on, so it’s hard to say whether I’ll be able to blog much at all today. In the meantime, there’s other stuff out there I highly recommend. Probably the best place to start is Jonathan Rouch’s post — also published in the Wall Street Journal, “Gay Marriage is Good for America.” I don’t necessarily agree with Rauch about everything. (He leans libertarian. I don’t.) But I think if more people took his invitation to “imagine your life without marriage,” we’d be ...